It's slightly annoying when other people's monkeys become your circus.... It's incredibly irritating when they turn their elephants loose on the crowd that you are in!
~Tonya Schrougham
This last week has been incredibly crazy! Just when life felt like we were finding a normal, we get hit with a cost increase in a budget area that was not scheduled to change until the beginning of next year. While one part of me is really happy with my initial reaction to this particular surprise with an insanely short window for adjustment and decision making (I had my worse case scenario plan together within 15 minutes of being informed of this change), I do find myself drifting into the world of worry on occasion. I do not make decisions lightly so having the pressure to need to readjust with no warning whatsoever and less than two weeks before the cost increase hits is not exactly something I like.
One thing I am learning during this season in life is that while I LOVE the popular meme that makes the rounds on Facebook and Pinterest:
I am beginning to notice that some people turn their elephants loose on me while I'm admiring the insanity of their monkeys.... Then comes the moment of truth.... Do I stay in their circus or is it time to exit the vicinity completely? It seems like it should be such an easy choice! After all... Who in their right mind stays in the path of the stampeding elephants?!
But what happens when the elephants do not look like elephants? What happens when the other people in the path of the stampeding elephants are relationships you value? Relationships that have meant something to you in moments of growth? Then the decision to leave or stay even in the stampede of insanity that only sees the scary little mouse that is actually a mere blip on the radar of life. All of the sudden a challenge becomes the thing that throws everyone's world out of balance. And so the elephants stampede... Reaction to the perceived threat begins a chain reaction of choices that have impact beyond the immediate apparent "solutions" they offer.
This particular change has me frustrated at times, mad at other times and at other moments excited at the possibilities. I become frustrated that a short time frame has been forced on me (I'm determined not to pour money down that particular drain when the end result is the same in the long run). I become mad in other moments when all I see is yet another broken promise and the impact that has yet again on my life when I thought I had distanced myself enough from this particular person. In the end, however, I keep coming back to the excitement at the possibilities.
You see, I like familiarity. I like what is comfortable. But deep down inside I know that comfort and familiarity are not the things that make me grow. I grow when I step outside that comfort zone and embrace the unknown. In the end I realize that this change and decision is not much different than our decision this year to begin recycling. The choice to recycle led to a decrease in our garbage to the extent we just in the past couple of weeks dropped our trash service opting to transport our trash ourselves as it saves us money. As we have been looking at cutting expenses in our budget over the past couple of months we have addressed and looked at nearly every area except the area that we are now being forced to address. With that comes a certain excitement at the possibilities... my truth... this particular change contains the potential to declutter my life emotionally as it allows me to move more fully past a painful piece of my story. It allows me to make decisions from a less emotional place and genuinely assess what works and what does not work for our family both financially and emotionally. In embracing the freedom of choice that comes with this change I allow myself the ability to exit the circus and leave the monkeys and elephants behind for someone else to deal with! Will that be our family's choice? Maybe, maybe not, but what I now have is a freedom to choose.
And reassessing the impact of other peoples monkeys and elephants in my life is something I am discovering I need to do more often!
In the end it really is a form of exhaling....
Yep, that would be why these monkeys and elephants found me...
The need for
Exhale.
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