Distraction is the New Normal

Focus! Stay on task! Stop your daydreaming!

So many of us have grown up with these types of messages, telling us that we are somehow wrong or bad to think about the answers to questions that do not make a lot of sense to many others. We often find ourselves thinking or speaking off topic, or daydreaming about life and a world much different than our own.

Having been berated for exhibiting the tendencies to go off into my own "la-la land," I did my best in later years to deny myself the freedom to think outside of a pre-determined norm or act creatively.

If I questioned anything, I was disrespectful. Acting without definitive plans and process meant I was flighty, without focus, and indecisive. Talking about life and philosophy--the "whys" of life--was met with comments about contemplation of one's navel lint. Talking too much, or using any platform as a stage to tell my stories were seen as my insistence of being the center of attention.

All of this, and more, led me to believe that I was an unacceptable problem child. I needed to be fixed. So, I aligned myself with conservative religious systems and joined the military. They could fix me and turn me into something that I was lacking as a human being.

Needless to say, I got into some of the same messes with the church and the military that I found with my family growing up. I am someone who questions everything at some point. It really did not go over well with the military and church leaders, either.

Over the 68 years of my life, I am often reminded that what I have been taught should be normal is not, in fact, normal. Besides that, everyone seems to constantly change the rules. Or life does it for us.

No matter who we are and how we see the world, life will often take us down a crooked path that looks nothing like we expect that we will face. It can take many shapes and forms throughout life, and we do what we must do to self-correct, and find that new normal.

Then, we are slapped upside the head with something that will spin us out of any semblance of normal for an eternity. In my case, it was hearing these words:

"I'm sorry to tell you that you have stage 4 cancer. You have six months to a year to live...two, if lucky."

That was May 15, 2012.

More than 11 years later, I am still alive, still with stage 4 NETs cancer.

I think that coming back into relationship with the easily distracted, free-spirited, creative soul has helped keep me from focusing too much on the definitive plans that life (and death) has for us all.

Distraction seems to be my new normal. It's obviously working for me for now. It's really been about not feeling that I must or should be doing anything other than what I am doing at the moment.

It really goes against all that I was taught and how I tried to live much of my life. Yet, the very core of me is learning to embrace this freedom.