One of my favorite singer/songwriters is Mary Chapin Carpenter. I’ve been hooked since her 1992 hit “He Thinks He’ll Keep Her”.
There’s always a line or two in each of her songs that makes me either laugh or cry.
The lines that make me cry in “He Thinks He’ll Keep Her”.: “For 15 years she had a job and not one raise in pay. Now she’s in the typing pool at minimum wage.” I was newly engaged and then newly married and not even sure what she meant exactly, but the way MCC sang “MIN-I-MUM WAAAAGGE”-
I could just tell that woman in the song was hurting.
These days, almost 32 years later, when I’m working in my kitchen I ask Alexa to shuffle songs by MCC. One I heard recently that I wasn’t very familiar with yet had a line that made me laugh right out loud: “Sometimes You’re the Windshield, Sometimes You’re the Bug.”
Man, do I feel like a BUG sometimes!
There’s this principle in scripture that I love; It says “It must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things.” (Book of Mormon, 2 NE 2:11) Another good one speaks of Adam and Eve: “If they never should have bitter, they could not know the sweet.” (Doctrine and Covenants 29:39).
I find that opposition everywhere: Day and Night, Hot and Cold, Happy and Sad, Connection and Loneliness, Birth and Death. Hot real estate markets and slow ones, uphill and downhill, hunger and fullness.
Before I decided to become a Life Coach I followed a couple of podcasts produced by Life Coaches Jody Moore and Brooke Castillo. I heard both of them talk about the idea that life is 50/50. Meaning 50% positive and 50% negative. I was immediately on board.
Up until that point I thought I understood opposition pretty well. But this idea of just expecting life to be 50% negative, or uncomfortable, was mind blowing. I had been going through life thinking that anytime it was difficult, something had gone wrong. But that wasn’t necessarily true.
I was just in the 50% part of life that is uncomfortable.
We can and do act in ways that propel us into the 50% negative side. Then, when we fight to escape the discomfort we actually INCREASE it, making life more uncomfortable (see graphic).
Accepting the negative side of life, actually INCREASES the likelihood of feeling happy!
That’s because when we’re no longer afraid of and avoiding that side of life, it’s not as painful. When we’re not in pain we tend to be happier.
The last lines of The Bug chorus say it perfectly; “Sometimes it all comes together, Sometimes you’re gonna lose it all.”
How does it feel to consider nothing’s actually gone wrong when you're feeling discomfort?
Life was designed to be this way.
You were designed to be able to handle it.
Xo,
Meredith
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