Daily Wisdom 06-06-2006 Change Your Choices, Change Your Life

One of my scariest summertime fears as a child was the thought of getting stuck in quicksand.

We had a pond in one of our pasture fields. There was no actual quicksand in it, but it had a soft, mucky bottom. I hated for my feet to touch it and I was always worried that it was quicksand. My parents had done such a good job of making the dangers of quicksand so vivid that I imagined in my mind what it would be like to sink in the stuff. Seeing some bad guy mired in quicksand in a cartoon or movie, with an empty cowboy hat ominously telling you that he has disappeared in the sand, probably fueled my worries.

The Web site "How Stuff Works" (howstuffworks.com) says that "quicksand is not quite the fearsome force of nature" that you see in the movies. "Quicksand is rarely deeper than a few feet, and is basically just ordinary sand that has been so saturated with water that it can no longer support any weight."

My dad always told me that it is a person's movements and struggle to get out which make you sink into quicksand. It is the flailing around that makes you get in deeper. Also, the best way to get free is to just calm down and put your head back and you will float toward the top.

The reason I'm going into all of this, of course, is not the actual danger of getting stuck in quicksand, but because negative thinking is so much like quicksand in our lives.

Sometimes we let our worries and fears become so vivid that they threaten to overwhelm us. We play out worst case scenarios, and our minds are all too prone to getting caught in cycling through everything that we have to do, things that can go wrong, deadlines that have to be met, what if it rains, what if no one likes me, etc. Many of the "what ifs" have about as much likelihood of occurring as me getting caught in quicksand.

I thought of this when I read Psalm 69 in the Bible, where the writer enumerates his miseries: everyone hates him, they mock him, and drunken men even sing about him. Finally, toward the end, the writer goes on to express faith in God.

Brenda Anderson, author of a boo,k Playing the Quantum Field: How Changing Your Choices Can Change Your Life (New World Library, 2006) says that often we get trapped in a lifestyle of chronic bad moods. Something goes wrong: a traffic jam, the computer dies, or dinner is burnt. You're in a bad mood. Anderson says, "Bad moods become bad days, which become bad weeks, which become bad months and years. Before you know it, you're living an unhappy life and you probably think this is 'normal.'"

She reminds us that rising above the bad events is usually a matter of choice: how we respond to negative happenings, such as a delayed flight, can mean a lot more than just how we respond to one event. It can lead to a changed attitude toward life and a happier disposition.

Of course, bad things happen all the time; even tragic things. Yet it is our response to those events that make the difference between being mired in misery and rising above circumstances.

A young college sophomore with a promising football career was in a bad car accident, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. Understandably, he was bitter and in despair for many long months. A second accident injured him further. When he was in rehabilitation, he encountered a roommate who was cheerful, even though he himself was quadriplegic. The young man realized he had a choice: to go on with his life and make the best of it, or wallow in despair. It took him five years to graduate but this young man is still pursuing a football career; this time as one of the assistant coaches.

How we respond to life's many events, big or small, can mean the difference between sinking in the quicksand and the murky quagmire of stress and frustration, or rising above the events. It comes down to how we respond to each negative happening that comes along: instead of cursing when you get stopped by a stoplight, use the time to slow down, take some long deep breaths, and thank God for being alive. You will soon find yourself responding more positively to other frustrations. You will float rather than sink; you will cope rather than mope.

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Contributed by Melodie Davis: MelodieD@MennoMedia.org Melodie is the author of eight books and writes a syndicated newspaper column, Another Way