Worry is interest paid on trouble before it falls due. -William Ralph Inge

An unhealthy marriage can often be seen manifested in the spouses' daily lives. For me, for instance, this is physical clutter and disarray in my home. I mean, I have that anyway, to an extent. I'm just not the type of person that can spend ALL DAY cleaning and reorganizing, 6 days a week. I've done pretty well, I'd say, recently, and in different periods of my life. But there are times where I feel like I want to pick up and declutter, and I end up not doing it. Typically, for me, it is because I am frustrated or unhappy at the moment with something significant.

Does that mean any time you come to my home and it's messy, I'm mad at my husband? HA! No. Can't blame him for that. But it is interesting how, if you look into your own life, you can find ways that your life effects your life... in ways you wouldn't ordinarily expect.

It's easy for me to figure out that something is truly frustrating me when I'm constantly wanting to chat and talk with other people. I don't usually want to talk about whatever it is that is bothering me, in part because I might not even know. But I just love to chat with other people when I'm long-term frustrated. And yet, if I have a short errand-like phone call to make, I'm a lot less likely to make it during these periods.

So, I've come to the realization that I have certain "tells" for myself about when I'm unhappy about something, or what have you. But I have yet to figure out how to pull myself out of it the moment I notice the "tells." I suppose that would be the ups and downs of being a human in this world. Not everything goes according to plan; in fact, it usually doesn't. Not everything even goes in a direction you can foresee, let alone one that you would hope for. The question is: Where do we draw the line between just letting things go and starting anew, and "fixing" what went wrong, what's going wrong, what's bothering us? Perhaps that's on a situation-to-situation basis. Perhaps not...

Unfortunately, a post of this sort doesn't have an answer. Not one that I can see. It's simply a matter of living. A quote that I recently came across from Marion Zimmer Bradley stated this: "It has never been and never will be easy work! But the road that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveler than the road built in despair, even though they both lead to the same destination." Perhaps it isn't about what we do, how we do it, when we act, when we don't. Perhaps our outlook is what matters most, and we can't control the outcome any better by worrying than by hoping. Perhaps we can't even really control the outcome... and we have to learn to accept this and do the best we can with what we're given.

Dorothy Dix said, "I have learned to live each day as it comes, and not to borrow trouble by dreading tomorrow. It is the dark menace of the future that makes cowards of us." I think this expounds on a section of Matthew chapter six (Bible) quite well. In this, Jesus states not to worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will take care of itself, and today has enough trouble of it's own. He also begs the question "Who of you by worrying can add one hour to this life?"

So, though this post isn't about worrying, I think the same wisdom might apply. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again (with a smile and a song?). Don't give yourself any excuse to be less than your best, and at the same time, realize that you deserve a break when you really do work hard. Otherwise, you'll go batty. As I sometimes do! And... if you're like me... your house will show it.