You can do everything right....

“Do everything right, all the time, and the child will prosper. It’s as simple as that, except for fate, luck, heredity, chance and the astrological sign under which the child was born, his order of birth, his first encounter with evil, the girl who jilts him in spite of his excellent qualities, the war that is being fought when he is a young man, the drugs he may try one or too many times, the friends he makes, how he scores on tests, how well he endures kidding about his shortcomings, how ambitious he becomes, how far he falls behind, circumstantial evidence, ironic perspective, danger when it is least expected, difficulty in triumphing over circumstances, people with hidden agendas, and animals with rabies.”

From Picturing Will by Ann Beattie

I freakin love that! It’s awesome because it says everything right there. It means we can do everything right, all the time and despite that effort, we may still fail. What we’re told by all of the marketing and social media experts is to follow them and we won’t fail. But everybody fails, even my wife and me as parents, we have done our best, and yet we can look back and see where we could have navigated better.

We're always hoping and helping people create their future, but what about right now? We think about all those things that are happening all the time, and then we think, oh we should not be bothered by any of that, we should just push it down and power through it and not be affected by it! We just have to do the next right thing, take this elixir, take this golden antidote, whatever is the next big cure, diet, investment, etc. We have to stop believing that there is some thing that we're not doing, that we should be ashamed of, and realize life is hard and it’s ok to struggle. Because of all of these things, and a million other things that Ann doesn't write about, life is hard. Nope, we can't get through it without pain, we're going to feel shame, we’re going to feel fear. And then we’re going to have the desire to have power and control over our pain, shame, and fear and all of these circumstances that we can’t control which will lead us to make some really bad choices. If we don’t allow ourselves to say “Wow! I’m having a hard time here, she’s having a hard time, we’re all struggling. It’s okay.” Then now, maybe we can gently and calmly roll up our sleeves and see if we can do something about life. What is it that we’re going to do? Hopefully, connect with ourselves a little bit more lovingly and connect with others in a loving kind way and not be in this huge competition. Feeling the pressure to compete! Be our best selves! Not be bothered by any of these things! We should prosper! If we do everything right ALL the time then the child will prosper, if we do everything right all the time we’ll prosper! We should ALWAYS be prospering! The truth is that’s a bunch of malarky.