Reap What You Sow

You reap what you sow. This is something I think about often, and in my mind I always hear it in an Australian accent because it was a line spoken by Toni Collette's father in Muriel's Wedding. And Adele sings it in Rolling in the Deep, which is ingrained in my brain because Bethany likes to listen to Adele overandoverandoverandover again. She especially likes to listen to the same song 10 times or more before she moves onto the next one. And I can't really talk because I have listened to Somebody That I Used to Know about 500 times in the past week.

But anyway...yeah...you reap what you sow. For me sometimes it often happens very quickly. I am more apt to immediately notice the negative. The other night when I was leaving Bethany's basketball game, someone was pulling out of a parking space as I was driving out of the parking lot and came within inches of hitting me. I honked (mainly to avoid being hit) and was annoyed. And pretty soon after that I was turning down a street in my neighborhood and apparently didn't look very well because I very nearly hit someone. I cringed because I knew that other driver was annoyed with me. That was my reminder. We all get distracted at times. We all make mistakes, do stupid things, say things we don't mean, hurt people's feelings (intentional or not), forget stuff. I am not above that or immune to it. Remember that, Alysia.

This doesn't mean I should let people walk all over me and treat me like crap. It just means I need to remain conscious of my own humanness. As Alexander Pope wrote, "To err is human; to forgive divine." Remember that I'm human and strive to be godlike. This is but one mission in my life, which sounds simpler and easier than it is. When I feel that I have been wronged, I need to calm my temper and remember. I don't know what anyone else is going through. I don't know the motives of anyone else. I don't know the intent of another person's actions. And I certainly cannot control what anyone else says, does, believes, or thinks.

I can only control myself. I can choose to take a big breath and let it go when a stranger is rude to me. After all, I'm fairly certain I've been rude on more than one occasion. I can practice forgiveness in my everyday life. And I can decide to spread happiness and good will. Because you reap what you sow.

I live a blessed life. Everything isn't perfect because perfection is a myth, but it's pretty good. Even on a bad day, it's pretty good. There's a lot of love in my life. I give it and it comes back to me, tenfold. There's a lot of abundance in my life (does that even make sense??). I give freely, whatever I can, without expecting anything in return. But yet it comes back to me tenfold. This isn't a magical formula and it doesn't mean that nothing bad ever happens to me. Bad things happen to everyone. There are no exceptions to that rule. It also doesn't mean I will necessarily notice right away when it comes back to me. I might not notice right away; I might never notice. I might think at first that something that happens in my life is bad, only to realize months or years later that it was actually very good; that it was actually exactly what I needed. You reap what you sow. Words to live by.