Keep Your Fork: Something Sweet Is Coming

My new book, titled Keep Your Fork! Something Sweet Is Coming, is about finding joy in the not-so-sweet challenges that life hands us.

From the very beginning of writing this book, it was challenging for me to imply that every difficult tragedy in life will have a happy ending. There are horrific incidents that will never have meaning, and yet sometimes, they are the beginning of philanthropic causes, awareness for others, or the birth of a new fellowship or community. Perhaps they bring a new purpose to life. Or death.

The response I kept telling myself was to stress that it is simply the process of healing in the search for a purpose that is important.

Striving for meaning is as basic as our human craving for food, love, and sex.

It is a deep inner desire to fill an existential hunger. Every event in our lives leads us closer to that discovery. Our level of happiness in life is directly related to our ability to accept change and process meaning.

One of the reasons The Wizard of Oz has resonated with so many people is because it is a simple story of a tragedy that forces Dorothy into an entirely new, magical world that she would have never discovered without being literally thrown into it. By taking one step at a time down the road, she discovers courage, compassion, community, and a new way of thinking. Those slippers are just icing on the cake.

A common misconception is that we are weak if we’re not that tough guy who can just “get over it.” Simply getting your butt back out on the field is not how most people overcome a difficult challenge. A little time, a little love, and a lot of compassion can go a long way.

Be good to yourself. When we love ourselves and have compassion for our problems, we are giving ourselves exactly what we would give others. Self-care is healing and can turn into courage. Compassion for the world can only begin with compassion in our hearts for ourselves. As they advise on airplanes, put your own oxygen mask on first. Learn to feel your feelings in depth and have compassion for yourself, or you will never have space for genuine understanding of others.

We are naturally creatures of habit. We find comfort in the routine of our lives and all the actions and objects representing that comfortable routine. We usually don’t like the goodbyes that life hands us. From a young age, we grow attached to our toys, and even when we outgrow them, we don’t want to let them go. We move on from relationships, jobs, friends, and homes, but even when we know it’s time to move on, the goodbye is difficult. However, there comes a time when “it’s time.” Very often, it takes a challenge for that time to come.

It begins by sitting on the cliff’s edge and looking down below, contemplating how, when, and why. We wish we could swing over the chasm and check out the terrain before letting go of the rope, but we don’t get to do that. Instead, we have to take the leap of faith. There is often blood-rushing excitement in taking that leap and moving forward. New adventures are exhilarating and frightening at once. Life is emotion.

Before jumping, contemplate what is below that will catch you. There is often a meadow of friends, family, and love. Old experiences might also catch you and rebound you back into the air.

The truth of happiness and the power of life lessons lie in the combined experiences and their aftermath. Good or bad, what did you learn? What will be your attitude and the narrative you keep about the experience? Change is not always comfortable, but it is inevitable. In that regard, we get hit, we get up, we move on, and we remember it in words. We create our own legacy by what we say and how we say it. This becomes our story. Each of us has one. How do we want to tell it? How do we want to be remembered as relating it?

We all quote our parents and grandparents. Might they be surprised at what we remember coming out of their mouths? Might we be surprised by what others remember about us? We need to be conscious of how we talk about our lives. Words and attitude are important.

According to Tibetan Buddhism, a problem is only a problem if we label it a problem. If we look at a problem differently, we can see it as an opportunity to grow or to practice and regard it as something positive. Is it still a problem? Or are all problems negative? Even the dictionary defines a problem as something “needing to be dealt with and overcome.”

We have the opportunity to once again recognize the synchronicity of opposites. A problem is an opportunity. It is almost always a nudge to turn our path in a different, more healing direction.