I was listening to my iPod on the way home tonight and a lyric in a song caught my ear:

When stink fades into smell..

I think this is akin to “Things look better in the morning” or “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger”.  Basically, sooner or later, the things that make us gag because they stink so bad will eventually not even elicit a response from us.

Is it because we actually learn to live with the new normal, that we grow stronger and can handle things that we didn’t know we could?  Do things actually get better?  Or is our first reaction always exaggerated doom so there is no place to go but up?  Maybe it’s some sort of combination of three.  But I am always completely amazed by the things that we humans handle.  Natural disasters, deaths, debilitating pain, homelessness, etc.  I don’t know that I could handle those things and keep my sanity.

I remember reading or hearing once about a theory that if everyone could take their problems and label them and put them in a pile and we could all walk around and pick the pile of problems that we wanted to take on, we would all eventually come back to our own pile.  Our pile somehow would look more manageable.  It would feel “comfortable.”  We have some level of understanding with our own problems, a feeling of familiarity and intimacy with them.

I’ve always liked this.  When I’ve felt overwhelmed or down, I’ve thought, “I bet I would come right back to this pile of problems.”  Now I know they probably wouldn’t stink to me either.

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On another note, Matt and I have completed a beginning beekeeping class and passed the first part of the NC Certified Beekeepers test.  I’m keeping a blog about being a new beekeeper (Buzzing Around in My Head), so if you are interested, come by.

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I saw these fortune cookies on tumblr.com and thought they were hilarious.  I may try my hand at writing some.  These are all from Pleated Jeans.com.