Walk It Out
I bet if you think about it long enough, there was probably a time {maybe more than one} when you thought that you just wouldn’t make it. And the fact is, you’re here reading this right now. I have actually written about this before. But today I feel compelled to write about it again. I had not planned on it, but seeing so many struggling, I thought I would speak on it again.
I worked two decades with a population where the life expectancy was 6 months. I am referring to AIDS. Back in the 80’s and 90’s, the prognosis wasn’t good. And yet today, I know many who are alive and no longer have a death sentence looming over them. Why is this important? Because they too, felt that they wouldn’t make it. Now many years later, they not only made it, but many of them are doing very well. So, this was my take away from 20 years working with those who thought and were told, all was lost.
The reality is that many times science get’s it right. I said many times, but there are no certainties. That thinking that we’re powerless, is often a death sentence in itself. I once read a study that came to the conclusion that when we think we have nothing left to give, we really have 60% more to give. Now I don’t know if that’s true, or how they determined that, but when I think back at the few times that I thought I was done, I really was just getting started. I think we have this amazing ability to blow things up in our minds, rather than to walk the problem out step by step. And when we do that, I think of the saying, “The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.” We have made whatever we’re dealing with so big, that many of us are like, “Fuck that first step”, and we get consumed by our own programming.
I am not trying to convince you that all will be okay. Nor am I trying to minimize your issue, or give you false hope. I revert back to, “walk it out”. It might be bad, and true, it might get worse. But it hasn’t yet. Walk it out. The road is paved with people stuck on the side of the road who have given up. I feel for them, I pray for them. But we got to get in the mind set of walking it out.
In a 10 year span, my wife had 7 life altering surgeries. She will never be able to work again. I’ve held her motionless body, as paramedics worked on her. We lost all of our money and our 7 homes {which were owned outright}. And at the lowest point in our lives, our daughter passed away. We had it bad. Cut to a friend of mine, he was incarcerated for quite some time, for something that he didn’t do. They proved it by passing several polygraph tests. And when I realized their story trumped my story, I met someone who became a Quadriplegia late in life. Today, all of us are doing better, because we walked it out.
A few weeks ago, I posted on FaceBook that we should not overlook the war in Ukraine, and stop focusing on the high price of gas. People lost their mind saying, “I have every right to bitch about the price of gas.” Of course you do. I just can’t think of one time in my life when bitching made anything better. Might have made me feel good getting something off my chest, but that didn’t change the fact the the problem was still there. So, I stopped bitching many years ago.
So what am I saying? The only thing that is certain is the uncertainty. And I choose to walk it out. I’m not going to bitch, be bitter or feel broken because I’ve had a bad day. Because I have lived though the unimaginable. Nothing prepares you for losing a child. Nothing prepares you for going to prison for something you didn’t do. And nothing prepares you for losing your ability to be able to move. We simply can’t prepare for it. But we can walk it out. So if you’re feeling that you’re at your end, start walking…
