I’M STILL A LITTLE STUCK on how to make the best of a bad situation and this cartoon by Roz Chast came to mind.  In my post from a few weeks ago, I was thinking about the notion that as baby boomers, we were raised with the expectation that all it takes to achieve one’s heart’s desire is hard work.

So what do you do when things don’t turn out the way you expected?

While my family and I have been hyper aware of this issue for almost three years, it’s a universal question which a lot of people have trouble answering.  I’ve seen simmering resentfulness and bitterness – I’ve even felt it occasionally – especially when things get really difficult.  The other approach, exhibited by our friend above is at the opposite end of the spectrum and while funny, feels false and delusional.

Mary Elizabeth has a characteristically light-hearted way of coping with some of the disappointments as they come along.  Perhaps some of you have even been with her when she expresses this.  Whenever we are particularly thwarted in doing something we could have done before the stroke, I might express some chagrin, and she’ll pause and exclaim loudly, “Yes, but I’m A-L-I-V-E!” like somebody on a particularly dramatic afternoon talk show.

Yes, she is alive, and we can never forget that, since it wasn’t always a given. But I think we’re both conscious of our new limitations – and certainly conscious of how different our life is from what we expected it would be.

At this phase in life, we might have expected to be slowing down a little, enjoying the fruits of a life spent working hard and making sacrifices.  We might be shopping around for a second home which could become a retirement property – or anticipating the excitement of college trips with our kids in a few years.  As our children get older, we might have started traveling again, looking for exotic destinations.

But we’re not doing any of that.  Instead, we’re experiencing first hand what it’s like to really – not hypothetically – but really think about our marriage and our relationships with our children and when everything else is stripped away, to see what connections are left.  We’ve been given the opportunity to see what it’s like to face difficult times, to find a chance to see how deep those inner reserves really are.  How much can we take?  We’ve come close, but we haven’t quite hit our limit.

Finally, it’s a great opportunity to Get Real.  In fact, our lives don’t get any more real than this.  Every day.  It’s not what we expected.  It’s not what we wanted.  But there it is – it’s the life we’ve been given and we have no choice but to live it.

So we have to let go of where we thought we’d wind up, and focus on the road ahead.  Afterall, maybe along the way we’ll “meet some neat people!”