You get what you get, and you don't get upset!

My daughter is a big fan of the book "Pinkalicious" in which the little girls mother tells her "You get what you get, and you don't get upset!"

Any parent out there will know the value of this lesson for the little ones, but it's a great lesson in life for all of us. Take my day today, for example.

My wife has the car today, so I had no transportation during lunch. Events of the day are aligned in such a way that I will not get the opportunity to do my usual 3 miles of walking tonight. Normally, I would just go walking at the mall during lunch, or at the park. Since I have no car today, I couldn't even do that. I also like to find a nice spot to do a short, slow, mindful walk during my lunch when I can, but my office park offers no such peaceful area of beauty.

So, taking a lesson from my daughters bedtime story, I put on my earbuds and pulled up some nice relaxing music (something I don't normally use when mindfully walking, but with the busy highway traffic I felt it warranted) and walked around our park twice. Around and back was 1 mile. I walked that, and then found an empty room and did my walking meditation in that plain little room. With my earbuds in, and a guided walking meditation, I was able to enjoy both of these walks, despite the lackluster surroundings.

I had my lunch in our office kitchen at a little bistro table with a giant bowl of communal candy leftover from Halloween sitting there. It gave me tremendous pleasure - VAST pleasure - to take my hour long lunch of carless confinement and turn it in to an hour of pleasurable walking and meditation, as well as eating a very healthy lunch in front of a giant bowl of candy that I had absolutely NO desire to touch.

I walked away from lunch today feeling tremendous gratitude for the strength I have developed over my old cravings, the mindfulness that has allowed me to make so much enjoyment from so little and a very solid sense of happiness for being firmly in the NOW!

MondoSamu