I call my Tesla the Blue Lotus, or Blue. Because when it drives me places, I turn on the Spotify Spa or Calm station and watch the sky. I feel connected to the many spiritual meanings of the lotus, but most of all, I feel peaceful. No matter where I’m going or what’s happening.
And I’m continually reminded, when Blue takes me places, of the poster on my office wall: “My Circle of Control.” Because Blue shows me how to live it. In the circle are the things I can control and outside of the circle, you guessed it…the things I can’t.
When Blue drives, the delineation is clear. And Blue doesn’t get upset or argue.
Say we’re easing from I-10 onto I-410 at the Medical Center. We just left a stressful doctor’s appointment and the line to merge onto 410 stretches for a mile. Blue turns on the blinker and keeps driving, closer and closer until there is an opening. If it’s not big, Blue still hints at movement, and if the other car pauses, Blue moves in. If the other car doesn’t pause, Blue regroups and tries again.
No one is upset or angry that the other driver wasn’t helpful.
Anytime another driver pulls into our lane unexpectedly, Blue merely pauses to let them in. Peaceful. Accepting what other drivers do is in its Circle of Control. What they actually do is not.
I’ve really been thinking about this because the ENT told me yesterday I had to add another morning pill, one hour after the first two of the morning, and then wait another 20 minutes before coffee or food. AND the reason big pills seem to lodge in my throat is because of acid reflux and a bone in my spine—which he showed me on a model—pushing into my throat and obstructing things.
I did not handle this like Blue.
Or like Brooke Castillo would with her model.
Both Blue and Brooke would clearly see that a bone pressing into my throat was not in my Circle of Control. Neither was the timing of the medications, if I chose to follow the doctor’s instructions.
Every other thing was.
What I thought, believed, did, felt…all in my COC.
Noooooo.
Instead, my mind veered to what would happen if the bone protruded so much that I could no longer eat. And it remembered the times a pill had stuck and I thought I was choking to death. Wasting time in the past and the future, neither of which are in my Circle of Control.
And then this morning, because apparently I needed another reminder, Piper went ballistic barking in the backyard as I tried to hook her up for a walk.
I heard a critter rustling in the flower beds and could see something grey. Grey was good because it wasn’t a skunk.
Whatever it was did not care that Piper barked or that I stood right there.
Finally she emerged…an armadillo, who appeared to nonchalantly head across the yard to the other flower beds while I held Piper at bay.
I’m guessing the armadillo knew Piper was bluffing and that I donate to Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation?
Who knows.
But compared to the squirrels who sass at you, the skunks who spray and the possums who act like they’re dead, this armadillo seemed to know something.
She just kept moving.
And maybe that’s enough for me to know, too.
I can’t do anything about the bone. I can’t change the doctor’s prescription. But I can keep moving forward—doing the things in life that I love and the things that might make all of this easier.
Everything that’s in my Circle of Control.