On Sunday mornings one of my best friends since…well, forever, comes over after her hike, for coffee and a donut (the coffee is for her, the donut is for me).
Don’t laugh, it’s our thing. She’s the healthy hiker and I’m the slug who sits waiting patiently for a donut. We used to hike together, but that’s a long story about sore feet, with way too much whining (mine) for today.
Anyhow, even though she’s exhausted and I’m a donut scarfing Jabba The Hut on Sundays, we still get together for a few hours to offer each other advice on life (which if you knew us would be laughable), and we do. Laugh—a lot that is.
Lately we’ve been pondering that old idiom: Getting to the bottom of things.
Why do people say that?
Why did we do that? Why, as human beings is that something we do enough to warrant its own idiom?
We needed answers.
If you look it up here’s what you get: Getting to the bottom of things—
To discover the real but sometimes hidden reason that something exists or happens.
And therein lies the rub.
In the history of human relationships when have we EVER had a clue as to why anyone does anything?
Why does someone go out to get cigarettes…and never return?
Why do the Republicans give Donald Trump ANY airtime?
Why are some people liars?
Why are most landlords idiots?
Why didn’t he call for another date when he said he would?
Why do bad things happen to good people?
I used to believe the reason would reveal itself, like the missing piece of the puzzle, if I would just give it my undivided attention.
So I would chew on the dilemma, like a dog with a bone. I’d obsess about it, call my friends to talk about it, worry myself sick about it and cry myself to sleep over it.
Then I’d start over again the next day.
I was relentless in my pursuit of the truth, and like one of those competitive, deep water free divers, I’d put on my two hundred pound weight, hold my breath and hope not to die on my way to the bottom.
But with every trip to rock-bottom I left a little bit of myself down there.
You know, lack of oxygen, lost brain cells, and stolen time. I can never get those days, months, years back.
My friend agreed. She had done the same thing after her divorce. She was determined to discover the real and hidden reason her husband had left she and her two young sons. And just like me, (and probably you too) she was dragged to the bottom. The depths of her despair. Unable to surface, her lungs bursting, gasping for the fresh, clean air of truth.
Here’s the thing we eventually came to realize you guys.
Don’t fucking look for the bottom!
You will never find the truth, the hidden meaning as to why something happened. So don’t go there.
What you want to know doesn’t reside there, not even close. It’s not even in the same zip code.
As you dig and chew and dive below the surface with the weight of the world around your neck, you get further and further away from where you need to be:
1) Making peace with the situation;
2) Accepting the fact that you may never know all the reasons;
3) Making your way back to the surface where you can start your giant. life. reboot.
So quit looking. There is no bottom.
Yeah, we got all that from coffee and a donut (‘cause wisdom needs sugar and caffeine).
Good stuff, huh?
Carry, carry, carry on UP!
xox
