STRESSED FEELINGS OF PEOPLE, ANXIOUS PEOPLE

Stressed feelings are an overload signal, like a surge protector.

If your life is a barrel, it carries everything important inside. We add and subtract, move things around.

Now and then it overflows. It’s not a ‘disturbance in the force,’ overflow, not at first.

But it is messy. Now what? You need to ask?

If you’re asking, I’m answering: Clean that stuff up. It’s not projectile vomiting or explosive diarrhea messy, and clean up won’t take a haz-mat suit, but you need to do it.

Then make room by getting rid of stuff.

What stuff?

If your life is a barrel, an overflowing barrel, start cleaning up the overflow, then do an inventory. Level off, tipper.

Weed out the extra, the duplicate, the extraneous, the ‘just in case.’ I told a guy about a big trash can moment and how much I liked hearing the sound of heavy stuff landing in the garbage truck.

He said he likes to throw things away just to feel like he’s getting his money’s worth from the trash company. It’s a good feeling, the opposite of stressed feelings, and a worthy goal to strive for.

Got to love that, right?

What’s Love Got To Do With It

What’s love got to do with anything? I’ll let Tina explain.

Or this: When you hold something in your hands, in your arms, there’s gravity going on. Why did you choose to hold what you’re holding?

Whatever the reasons to hold onto something, you can’t deny the power of attraction. You like it, you love it, can’t get enough of it.

But you need to get rid of it when it starts causing disruption in your life. I trust you know about disruption in life? Like an overflowing barrel? Good, we continue.

Once our attention is pulled too far in one direction, it’s time to make a choice. The anxiety of loneliness and loss is closer than ever; concerns for the planet, the people, the animals, the microbes, the sub-atomic particles of inter-stellar matter.

To name a few of the billions and billions of concerns.

So make a choice you can live with. You, and if you’re married, you know who you is.

The Only Choice For Stressed Feelings

Successful people learn to ‘lean-out’ sooner than the rest of us. At least that’s the myth. Or, we live in clutter instead of renting mini-clutter storage. Both?

The clutter, like a warehouse of empty boxes after the harvest season, is a mental thing. Figure that one out before you crawl into a box of memories you don’t want to leave.

The geniuses who changed the world from their garage, like Steve Jobs, didn’t go through the same life processes as most of us.

Do you think he had and kept a twelve inch black and white TV that reminded him of his big brother?

Or a red push broom with a thick handle that sweeps up better than any broom ever invented because it came from his parents after they passed?

How many swinging Ds have tools handed down through generations until it all landed in their garage? Where’s that grommet tool to repair my yacht canvas, Amazon?

They have their people; we have ourselves. Better yet, we have each other. We’re people, those people.

Barbra was right.

People,
People who need people,
Are the luckiest people in the world
We’re children, needing other children
And yet letting a grown-up pride
Hide all the need inside
Acting more like children than children

My takeaway? Don’t be a baby.

Start by getting over others as you would have others get over you.

Sound familiar?

Thank you for reading and commenting and wearing a mask and washing your hands and social distancing. (See what I did there?) I’ll meet all of you back here tomorrow.

Mark your calendars.

Last thing: I posted about respect on Facebook in response to a friend’s pain watching Trump. I referenced the Army trainee drill of ‘respect the uniform if not the man.’ He disagreed. I disagree, too, but said it anyway because he’s a veteran and would get it.

Finding a way around the crime and punishment argument felt like stress relief to me. So did unfollowing this president on twitter.

Barrel cleanup on Pennsylvania Avenue.