Weathered vs Bitter

(from here)

Have you ever noticed other drivers looking exactly the same as you are feeling when you're on your way to work/school/home each day?

There are many versions of me driving the same streets as me every day.  I see the 40 something mother trying to explain to her teenage daughter why its not a good idea to get her belly button pierced or ask her son for the 745th time to please put his shoes on before they get to training. Or the woman eating her pastry and gulping down a coffee in the bumper to bumper traffic.  Then the time I looked across and a woman was putting her earrings on the exact same time as I was at the red light.

It's kind of reassuring that there is this evidence of so many people going through the same daily trials and tribulations as you.  When you work almost alone each day (or you're at home every day by yourself or with your little people), you forget that we are all just a little part of a whole lot of everyday confusion, stress, boredom, excitement, frustration, satisfaction and busy-ness.  That's why I like to veer off the highway on the way to work and grab a coffee from the little kiosk on the bay and look out for a moment over the water with my back to the traffic. It gives me a small smack of interruption to the chaos of mornings at home and before the chaos of mornings in the office. I can contemplate floating around on one of the many boats moored out there with a line in the water and nowhere to go. Or I just watch a passing pelican scooping up its breakfast whenever he feels like it.

(Posted on Elizabeth Gilbert's page)

I read something today from Elizabeth Gilbert that a friend posted on Facebook.  Elizabeth explains the point women can reach in their 30's/40's/50's when they can make a choice to be bitter and mad at the world for all the bad things that have happened in their life and the disappointments they may have with their lot or they can choose to have "weathered happiness".  I really like that idea. It's fought for and earned. I know many women at this stage, some become more and more mad at the world and in the process make themselves more miserable, and some crawl back up and change and decide that it's about time they got happy as no one else was going to do that for them.

Have you reached this fork in the road? Or have you always been on the happy team? Is it real happiness with yourself or a mask you're using till the true thing comes along?  Or are you feeling the pull to become the grumpy old woman (which is a very comfortable place to be by the way) and you're feeling "pissed off and pooped out".

If so, surround yourself with puppies - that always makes me happy.

(from here)

**Joining With Some Grace for #FYBF**