Water and Hotness

Water is the only thing in my life where I can adjust the hotness. 

(Yeah, that’s supposed to be a joke.) 

When we look around while out in public,  one thing we may notice is that some people look “hot” and some people look “cool.” Both of those are considered good  (or “bad” – but in a good way), which just goes to show how weird American English is. 

More to the point, most of us are neither hot nor cool; we fall somewhere in the range of so-so to blah and it takes a good bit of effort to change that. 

Effort is the point. We all have some power to affect our situation, whatever it may be. Our choices often boil down to:

• Enjoy it for as long as it lasts 
• Endure it for as long as you can
• Change it by your actions
• Get help 

Enjoyment wouldn’t seem to require much in the way of choice,  yet many people refuse to accept happiness when it’s right in their lap. 

Endurance is a matter of stamina, attitude, and patience as you wait and hope that the cause of the badness will change or go away. Attitude and patience and hope are all choices. 

Changing a situation by your own actions is the most direct application of your power and the scariest, as you bear the burden for the consequences in a more obvious way than these other options. 

Choosing to get help is always a brave and humbling choice. 

Two points I want to make (so I don’t forget them later) is you should always look for your own power and you should never tell someone else how to use their power, especially as you’re not in their situation. 

Even when you’ve been in what you think was the same situation, you aren’t them, so you didn’t bring their baggage to it and that makes it different.

Yes, this does apply to every situation, including our current political one. So, consider this piece part of #writersresist .

(The idea for this piece came to me in the shower. AquaNotes just proved their worth again.)