As James Bond would say, “Shaken…Not stirred”. Now don’t most of us wish that life was gently stirred instead of shaken violently? Gee how many of  us out there would gladly welcome a gently stirred life? How many of us wish that the pot was just left on the stove to simmer without the stir and we didn’t have to tend it at all and the dish came out perfect. No work and the perfect meal. No work and the perfect life! Is that heaven or what?

Most of us just keep gently stirring to avoid  shaking things up because if we actually shook it up like we really want, we would have to deal with the outcome, maybe make decisions that are uncomfortable, leading us to unfamiliar territory. As most of us are living in a fog and existing day to day and we keep going on stuffing the things that are bothering us. We think that we are unworthy or unable to achieve our personal best and give and receive love in the way that we need or want. I know that I have spent a lot of years of my life gently stirring and avoiding the real issues. Not that things were never shaken up with arguments and wanting to win those arguments that seemed so important at the time. Really, why were they so important?  What is wrong with us? I will say we are entitled to our feelings and when we express them and another gets defensive what do we do, well cowboy we pick up the other end of the rope and guess what we have, a rodeo. Sometimes the cowboys get hurt at the rodeo.

I went to a 12-step Co-dependents anonymous meeting tonight and we read from Melody Beatties ‘The Language of Letting Go”,  It started and mentioned that ‘Life is a Gentle Teacher’  two different times and there were a lot of us wondering about the ‘gentle teacher’ thing. We most certainly don’t understand that right now because of the pain we are in and definitely feeling shaken not stirred. We all agreed about frustration, confusion and we agree that life will keep teaching us the lesson until we actually learn it.

I read this somewhere in the last few days and posted in on my facebook page..We tend to think of the rational as higher order, but it is the emotional that marks our lives. One often learns more from 10 days of agony than 10 days of contentment. Well cowboy I should be really smart and wise, but I am humbled at all I still need to learn.

So in hindsight I welcome the shaken and not stirred because without it we have no possibility of learning, no possibility of growth, no possibility of learning to love ourselves and no possibility of loving others the way that they deserve.

So turn that negative into a positive and be grateful that life is ‘Shaken and not Stirred’!