The Difference in the Lumps

I've said a final goodbye to two friends in the last month - one with whom I regretfully lost touch other than some recent connections on social media, and another who couldn't speak on the phone in the last few months but emailed steadily with me, almost right up until her death. It's hard when we start losing friends with greater frequency: not only can we not live out our intentions to connect with those individuals "someday," but we are reminded strongly of our own mortality, and how brief our time here really is.

It's easy to feel untethered at times; to fail to see the humor and the energy and the lightness in the moments we own. I was having one of those mornings recently, and at the perfect moment, I heard my phone ding... and found this reminder from a friend who must have sensed my mood from Maryland to Massachusetts (thank you, K!). From author Robert Fulghum, author of "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten," this gem: “If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you've got a problem. Everything else is an inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. A lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat, and a lump in the breast are not the same kind of lump. One needs to learn the difference."

Time to get my head on straight. I've been thinking about lumpy oatmeal entirely too much. 

© 2015 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie