On Love and Fear

Lately I have been doing a lot of thinking about a concept I encountered in multiple places. The theory, that every single decision or action we take boils down to being motivated by one of two possibilities: Love, and Fear. Where obviously everything done out of Love is right, and everything based on Fear, is the wrong choice. And I have started to apply this principle to my life, my responses, and the decisions I take.

The second concept I am integrating into my life is known as the 90/10 principle. The theory here is that 10% of our life experience consists of things we have no influence on. They just happen to us. The other 90% is how we respond to those circumstances, which actually makes a huge difference in how we perceive our own life and our levels of stress, or preferably lack thereof.

Combine them, and what you get is a fairly simple rule of thumb to live by. Accept the 10% I have no influence on. And let my actions and responses be solely motivated by Love, making the rest of my life as joyful and stress free as possible. Simple, huh?

Well not quite. Apparently the Power I serve likes to toss me one curved ball after the next, taking the driller sargeant approach in training me. With our financial resources fully depleted and thousands of Euro's left to pay in last years taxes, as well as wanting to get the divorce procedure started and finalized so both of us can go our own way, finding a job is my #1 priority at the moment. I have applied to every single job offer that I even remotely fitted the criteria for, but being 45, not having worked for 8 years.. the job market isn't exactly welcoming me with open arms. Add to that that I can't work fulltime because my kids still heavily depend on my being home at least most of the time they are here and it gets even tougher. And so I was happy I was accepted for a job, working at a callcenter and solving technical issues for a satellite TV provider. It's a low level job, doesn't pay very well, and it is way below my capacities but hey, it's a job. But they did require me to study a thick syllabus then follow a 2 weeks fulltime training before I could start there. And so over the past week I studied the syllabus really well, learning all I could about Megahertzes, transponders, uplinks and azimuths.

This training started today. And I'm not in it. Because over the weekend, my daughter became very ill. When I saw her yesterday, with a high fever, white face with black circles around her eyes, and her throat hurting so badly she could barely swallow, I knew I couldn't leave her home alone all day to go to my training. She needed a doctor, and me to stay with her and take care of her. Ron is not here, he is visiting his girlfriend in Portugal and won't be back until this evening.

I really had no choice. I had to let Love and my responsibilities as a parent prevail over Fear of money problems. And all I could do was accept, call off the training and ask the company to please schedule me for next month's training since I really do want to work there, and phone the doctor first thing in the morning. And I did. With grace, and trying to keep smiling and enjoy the positive sides of it.

I really am trying my very best here. But sometimes I really wonder why the Powers that Be feel such a strong need to keep doing these things to me. I can only hope it is because They have other plans with me that will solve the problems at hand in a different way. And yes, that is a Fear based response. I never said I was perfect, just that I am trying..