What If? Or What Is? — How Do You Live?

Kindness is how I reward myself. How do you reward yourself?

“Ok, it’s your turn Miss Perfect,” a very angry fiery voice to the left of the next row of seats in Lindsay’s Café ignites as I sat down.

“I am Miss Forever Grateful, not Miss Perfect,” a confident, calm voice to her left fired back.

My ears shot up like a dog hearing footsteps outside in the dead of the night. I slowly glanced in that direction, at about six elderly females sitting around a table waiting to be served.

“Look,” Miss Fire explained. “This is our twenty-sixth lunch in three months and, Rachel complains about her husband’s infidelity and being old. Janice complains about her children and grandchildren, wishes she didn’t have any and wants to go back to her Perfect Age. Beverly hates her life and wants to go back to her Turning Point Age. Liz, complains about not having enough money and wishes she could go back to College to choose a different profession. My beat,” she said her hand on her upper chest swaying her body left to right, “is financial and men issues while searching for the fountain of youth. We all agreed that menopause is a witch and wished to go back to a point in our lives to change something. Don’t you have anything to complain about?”

The only female in the group with her real hair color, white, grabbed a deep breath, then a sip of lemon water, from one of six glasses on the table and released, “I am grateful for life.”

“You are such a hypocrite!” She threw out. “You are the only one of us who isn’t trying to change who you are and how you look. You hate yourself that much?”

My brows shot up. I like myself for who I am and how my creator made me. Because I refused to change how I was made and looked, does that mean I hate myself?

“What are you, Death?” She fired back. “Don’t you ever take a holiday from complaining?”

Her brows expanded closer to her dyed hairline, her eyes popped and her mouth agape. Miss Grateful went on. “I have problems like all of you. But I refused to go into the past for answers. My answers are in my present and future. You spend so much time complaining you miss life and living. Dyeing your hair and acting irresponsibly, won’t bring back youth. You can’t go back to, and for anything in the past. You are older and wiser, start living using your wisdom.”

“But you are making it sound so easy,” one of them said.

“Life is easy and hard. Young or old, life is never without pain. Enjoy the time you have left. You spend too much time on ‘what if,’ instead of focusing on ‘what is’. ‘What is’ is facing you now, and is what you are supposed to be focusing on. ‘What if’ is gone and isn’t coming back in your lifetime!” she preached.

They stared at her, two of them bit into their lower lips, as tears eased down.

She adds more, “You are unhappy because you are living in the past instead of focusing on what is going on in the present and future!”

“It’s too much to handle,” one of them said.

“Did any of you try to fix the problems life sent your way?”

“Aging is hell,” one of them says.

“I am the only one in this group not fighting it. I have back problems. I do yoga. My husband has heart issues, so he exercises more. Being diabetic, he changed his diet. Being hypertensive, I change my diet. Arthritis bothers us, we become more active. Brain fog visits, we do lots of memory games and puzzles. Anxiety, we do meditation,” she educates them on how she handles life as it changes.

“So whatever life hits you with, you don’t back down, but come up with a solution?” Miss Fire asked after swallowing a lot of air.

“That’s why I don’t complain. Complaining and ‘what if,’ stops you from living and being happy. What-Is, won’t. If I have one second left on this earth, I refuse to spend it complaining about WHAT-IFS. I want it to be happy with WHAT-IS!”

“So, your focus on ‘What-is’?” Slipped from my brain and shot out of my mouth as they all turned to look at me. “Sorry,” I apologized quickly.

Miss Grateful smiled and said, “Learn from us. To live better than us!”

I know many people living on ‘WHAT IFS,’ adding a mountain of pain to their lives. WHAT IS, is what is facing us and we must learn how to handle the changes life will impose. WHAT IFS, can’t help us. But WHAT IS, can!

How do you live your life? WHAT IF? or WHAT IS?

If your heart could speak, what would it say?

Live your life with WHAT IS, and happiness will follow. The opposite for WHAT IF!

Thank you for reading this piece. I hope you enjoyed it.