Things Will Turn Out Alright

When I do the Sail the Seven C's workshop, I share about a brass keychain my father gave me when I was 20 years old and struggling in the hospital to recover physically and emotionally from a motorcycle accident that left me with severe burns on over 40 percent of my body.  He had the words "THINGS WILL TURN OUT ALRIGHT" inscribed on both sides.  While you can't read the words anymore, now worn away from carrying them in my pocket for twenty something years, I will never forget the wisdom in those words.

Can you imagine what my father must have been feeling?  What could he do for his son all burned up in the hospital to help make things right?  Well, I suppose the answer is nothing really.  Life simply sucked at that moment, pure and simple.  Or did it?  Sure, there was the intense pain, fear, and anger present.  Yet, how much of it was I choosing?  Pain is inevitable, but isn't suffering, at least to some degree, a choice.  Truth is I was choosing the space of victim.  My head, my thinking was creating far more drama and turmoil than the terrible event itself.  What was life asking of me right then?  How might I get out of my awful funk and choose to make the best of things, such as they were? 

Today I look back on this so-called tragedy and consider myself "burned to life".  I'm here today far more awake and consciously aware of each grain of sand as it falls through the neck of my hourglass of life.  I wasted so much of my sand those many months futilely complaining, criticizing, controlling, chasing, clinging, competing, and comparing.  How are you using your sand today?  In time, don't things always turn out alright?