Sitting in my bedroom, head spinning as I’m wrapping my way around a never-ending list of things I feel l have to do and wondering how I immediately slipped back into the planner bound, laundry-down-the-hall lifestyle after a summer spent living out of a suitcase and a rental car.
Finally, sufficiently exhausted, I pick up a piece of blank paper to number my troubles (a counter-intuitive trick for someone who has spent seven years numbering her joys). I write down each problem and task and bothersome “thing.”
Mindlessly pressing play on my Broadway Musicals Pandora station, I dive into work barely catching the dramatic music that whispers from my phone. Then, Wait for It, a song from Lin-Manuel Miranda’s award-winning musical, Hamilton comes on. By all standards, it’s a great song that I’ve listened to admittedly more times than I can count.
I am up from my computer about to move on to my next “to do” when one line sings out behind a blanket suffocated phone speaker, “I am the one thing in life I can control.”
With dramatic flair to rival Ariel in The Little Mermaid, I flop down onto my bed and grab my “paper of troubles.” Quite a few of the things I was hung up on were things I had no control over. There was no way for me to fix this or amend that. All I could do was make the best of what I was given. All I could do was control myself.
Eyes shuffling between lists and ideas and dreams, I think about all the uncontrollable variables that I allow to threaten my peace. No more.
Maybe, today, I start with what I can control. Maybe today, I start with me.
Love always,
Liz
Pictured; New Mexico