The End

Am I the only person that worries about the world today? Well, obviously not because I can look on the internet for five seconds and find a survival guide for the end of the world. I think since the beginning of recorded time people have worried about the world ending. I think for me it really doesn't matter when I play all the what if's out. What if China starts a third world war and launches nuclear missiles? What if a horrible disease starts from all the anti-resistant antibiotic germs? What if aliens attack? And trust me at 3:00 a.m. I have gone through and written a flow chart of what exactly all the consequences of these events might entail. Why would I waste good sleeping time doing something so insane? I don't know, but one reason is I am a control freak. I notice these things bother me more when the other parts of my life seem to be spiraling out of control. Another reason is I am just a worry wort. My therapist says I am a passionate person with the cares of the world on my shoulders, but asks me regularly how that is working for me. Have you solved world hunger yet? Do you have an answer to the nation's problem with standardized education? Does you ex-husband magically care now that he didn't buy toothbrushes for the boys or pay the dentist bill? I hate my therapist sometimes. The answers, when it comes right down to it, are simple. If China starts a nuclear attack, if bacteria infests the world population and if aliens attack, I will deal with it. Trust, in a nut's shell, is the answer to all my worries. Trust in myself to be able to handle life's problems.

Trust is a most difficult subject for me and especially trust in myself. I have noticed something about the people in my life though. The people I most admire have the most confidence in themselves to be able to handle what ever life throws their way. They TRUST in themselves above all else. Do they have lives that always go to plan and no challenges? Are they healthy, happy, and living in wedded bliss? No, not most of them. Most of them have crazy busy schedules, kids, sickness, divorce, their own businesses, mortgages, deaths, military service, and the list will go on and on with the challenges they face. The one thing they all have is a trust that they can handle these speed bumps in the road of life.

Where does this trust come from and why do some people have it while others can't trust anything? As the old saying goes, the only things for certain in life are death and taxes. I don't agree with that, because I know some people that don't pay taxes and, according to my son, there are funky little phones that allow the dead to tap into certain frequencies and talk to the living after they have passed on. Not sure I buy into that, but I'm sure for Christmas we will test that little theory. I think the only thing that is for certain in this life is change. Everything will change and that is a fact. Sometimes things change only slightly and sometimes there is a Tsunami that wipes out entire villages in the blink of an eye. One second you are shopping at the mall making plans for summer vacation and the next you are searching frantically for your five year old that was right beside you, calling out his name. Life as we know it will always change and I have discovered that I am pretty good at adaptation. Debt, divorce, cars breaking down, kids getting sick, work, relationships, bring it on! What I'm not good at is accepting those changes with a positive attitude and a feeling of confidence that this too shall pass. I dwell in the zone of anger and blame in times of change resenting the fact that I didn't decide to make this change and somebody is going to have to pay for it. It is hard for me to trust in myself, even though I have overcome some pretty huge obstacles in my life. I also worry constantly about these changes. They are like a maze with a thousand monsters waiting around every corner growling just loud enough for me to hear them and closing in from every direction. Yes, I have always been a glass-is-half-empty person. I'm practical, negative and sarcastic sometimes, but also creative, positive and hopeful.

Death is a good example. I never want to die. Hold on all my religious fellow travelers! I don't know what happens when someone dies. You don't know until you die and that is one of the most scariest things for a control freak to accept about death, the great unknown! I want to believe that I will become one with all the universe and always be linked with my children and loved ones, so that is what I choose to believe. Beyond that, it is another twist in the maze and it scares the crap out of me. I don't want to find out, ever. If my body runs out, give me a great robotic one. I'm dealing with death as I age, but my ability to trust in myself to handle change has been the greatest gift. If I'm brutally honest, I'm afraid of leaving my children and of them leaving me more than the grim reaper coming to call. My best friend in the entire world, my first friend, lost her son at the age of 20. She struggles daily, but she is such a survivor. My heart breaks for her and her family and their ability to just live on. She has taught me that I will keep going on, no matter what too, and that my boys will change so I better value every stinking second of my time with them. I thank her son Tyler all the time for teaching me that lesson, but I still wish I could bring him back to his Mother instead. I never want to know what that feels like or how my life would change without my kids, but she has also shown me they are never gone from our minds and hearts just out of reach of our hands. I will be an empty nester in no time at all it seems and that is so scary to me. Yet, I trust each of my boys and myself enough to let them go, make mistakes, learn and live. Yin and the Yang! Negative and positive together in balance.

I guess that is how I should look at the world when I get into one of my gloom and doom, chicken little moods. The world may be different and we all might become glowing green radioactive zombies, but we might really enjoy brains and that is just okay. Aliens may take over the earth and cure diseases and world hunger. The bird flu might wipe out half the population, but Stephen Hawking might finally come up with a way to download our consciousness and cheat death all together. It's exciting really when you make a choice to be more positive and trust yourself enough to do whatever you need to do. Maybe that is why so many confident people accomplish so many wonderful things. Trust allows them a freedom to reach beyond the fear and imagine all sorts of possibilities. I'm sure these people still worry, we all do. They are the heroes that hear the growling and keep going anyway until they finish the maze.