A terrible thing happened to a friend of mine a while back.  I’ll spare you the details because it really was an awful experience, but it was one of those things where you wonder why such bad things happen to such good people.  Then, the other day, I was at a gathering led by a woman named August Gold.  During her presentation, August mentioned that we cannot escape what life has in store for us, and that we what we *can* do is to choose how we wish to meet these events and experiences.  We can attempt to push them away, or run from them – often into addiction or whatever kind of “getting unconscious” activities we engage – or we can open the door and say, “come on in” and move through both the experience and the learning that come with life’s challenges.

August’s comments reminded me of an important skill that most of us need in life - that certain, and inherent, resilience with which to meet things we can’t stop from happening.  Humans are truly resilient creatures, and we have a tendency to bounce back from challenging and terrible experiences.  Part of our resilience is a willingness to experience “what is, as it is”, and using our life experience as a teacher, no matter what happens.  Remember the old saying about making lemonade from lemons?  It’s like that.  It’s not about moving into denial about how things are.  Rather, it’s about how we take the bad stuff that comes along and use it to learn and to grow, or to deepen our understanding.

This doesn’t mean I’m suggesting that we all become Pollyanna’s, burying our heads in the sand and saying everything is fine when it isn’t.  Instead, I’m suggesting that we have a choice as to how we *use* the experiences that come our way.  While we can’t control what enters our life, we can decide how we want to engage it. 

And so, I invite you to notice, this week, how it is when you move *toward* what’s inescapably coming your way rather than backing away, or hiding, from it.  It’s not that you wouldn’t jump out of the way if a bus were racing toward you.  It’s that you have an opportunity to say “come on in” if, for example, you find yourself unexpectedly caring for someone who is ill, or losing a job, or having to move, or suddenly faced with a situation you have always feared.  Notice what happens when you allow adversity or challenge to be your teacher, when you accept what’s up and move through it with a willingness to learn, deepen, and grow.

As with all the experiments, allow curiosity to be your companion and notice how it is when you push away experience and how it is when you invite it in.  There’s no right answer or right way to engage what comes into your life.  Each moment is its own opportunity to experiment with different responses and see which add to your level of stress or distress, and which support your overall sense of well-being.