Well, who knew that yesterday’s poo metaphor would resonate with so many people? You’re all so tacky. And unsophisticated. What are you, twelve?
And that my friends, is why we connect. 🙂
Pull my finger.
While it’s one thing to acknowledge the turdy-ness of our situation and to feel what we feel, it’s another thing to find the energy and courage to hose off our sneakers (stilettos, Ugg boots) and to keep moving forward. Acknowledging the messy reality of our situation and being periodically overwhelmed by a particular emotion (welcome to the club) is not the same as languishing in it, giving in to it or throwing in the proverbial towel.
As we negotiate our own personal turd and do our best to extricate ourselves from its overwhelming stench, it’s important to remember that finding ourselves in shit is (1) a normal human experience and (2) not the same as accepting or resigning ourselves to a turdy future.
*If I get too technical at any stage, let me know.
Three Types of Turds
Okay, so you definitely won’t see these kinds of classifications or definitions in any psychology book or hear them echoing off the walls of any great Universities, but for this discussion, let’s consider three distinctly different turds:
The Surprise Turd. The surprise turd is typically the result of forces beyond our control. It’s usually unexpected (although sometimes that’s because we weren’t paying attention) and the surprise turd is always about something that’s happening in our external, but immediate, world. Invariably, it is delivered steaming hot by another person, situation or event. It is always a highly undesirable experience and it will always affect us mentally and emotionally and, more often than not, physically.
The Slow-Moving Turd. We tend to see the slow-moving turd coming our way for a while but, for a range of curious reasons (fear, disbelief, laziness, procrastination, naivety), we often fail to do anything about it. On some level, we convince ourselves that the slow moving turd will magically never arrive. Stupidly, we live in the hope that some kind of cosmic constipation will stop it in its tracks and the problem will somehow ‘fix’ itself. As problems do. ;)Clearly, hoping ain’t doing and finger-crossing is never a good plan. Left unattended, the slow-moving turd always arrives.
The Self-Created Turd. The self-created turd may or may not have anything to do with what’s happening in the world that exists beyond our mind. At this point, it would be negligent of me not to remind you that, while we all inhabit a physical, three-dimensional world, the place where we really do our living is in the space that exists between our ears. There’s a big difference between unexpectedly stepping in a mountain of crap that wasn’t our creation (like my friend from yesterday’s post) and being the problem-focused, pessimist whose life is one giant self-created shit-fest.
Who knows, maybe the Harper Turd Theory (HTT), will find its way into text books some time in the future. But then, probably not. 😉 Next time, we’ll get a little more specific and strategic about managing, and ultimately extricating ourselves from, our steaming hot turd.
