Lessons, Learned

This week has been -- shall we say -- less than festive.

However, it has taught me a few things, both good and not so good.

Lesson One: My friends? Are awesome.

I didn't need to be taught this, per say, but it's always nice to be reminded. A lot of people would have looked at the craziness of this week and said (probably with an eyeroll): It's just a cat. Get over it. Not my friends. My friends are rockstars. So, thank you, rockstars.

Lesson Two: Having excellent intentions is sometimes not enough.

(subpart a): I really thought that I could rescue this adorable little kitten and provide him with everything he needed and make him part of my happy home with Beansie. Clearly this was not the case. Sick sad miserable kitten, sad miserable me, sad miserable Beansie. Intentions: Good. Execution, horrific.

(subpart b): I truly believe that the girl at the shelter when I returned Yeats was trying to help me find a way to keep him. Instead, as I stood there doing the full on ugly cry, she made me feel worse and like an low, pathetic, cruel specimen of humanity. Intentions: Good. Execution: I'll be talking about it in therapy for years.

Lesson Three: Often, the thing that is the hardest to do is the thing that is right.

I don't believe that requires explanation.

Lesson Four: Sometimes, prudence is your friend. And sometimes, it needs to be tossed aside with abandon.

I just chucked my plans for the vacation I'm taking in April to buy plane tickets to go visit my mother. Because after an emotionally draining week, what was more important? Highly structured days in which I spring cleaned my house, went to some museums, and "relaxed"? Or flying down and hanging out with my mom, who is a rockstar in her own right?

Do I even need to answer that question?

Was it smart to buy plane tickets two weeks before I am leaving? Is that the most, er, cost effective way to travel? Was this necessary?

Answers to the above: No. No. Abso-freaking-loutely. The idea of going makes me feel -- lighter. Which seems to me to be what a vacation should do.

So I learned a thing or two, which -- it seems to me -- is part of the purpose of being on this earth; that would mean, then, that it was all a gift. And maybe -- maybe that's the trick. To know that it IS all a gift, and that you can take it into your heart, and loop it around, until you can see the diamond inside the nasty, abrasive, lump of rock coal.

And maybe that's the Fifth Lesson: It is all a gift. All of it. The pretty parts and the ugly ones as well.