**I’m going to go ahead and mention that I don’t know much (anything, really) about Hindu deities, and I don’t claim to…so don’t be mean if I get it wrong, okay?**
Historically, I’ve never been very good at blurring the line between “everything is my fault” and “everything is the world’s fault and life isn’t fair.” See, no matter what happened, I’d find a way to trace it back to “I suck and need to try harder.” Remember that kid in school that teachers called “underachiever” when they thought no one was listening, the one that they all said needed an extra nudge (shove. throw?) to try half as hard as everyone else? Yeah. I am the opposite of that kid. Maybe I’ve gotten lazy relaxed a little bit, but not so long ago I’m pretty sure people were muttering under their breath as I walked by, “back off, crazy type-A person!”
At some point, I started letting the universe take a little bit more of a fair share of the blame. Kind of like the opposite of “taking charge of your life;” a kind of acceptance took the place of the oppressive guilt feelings I constantly nurtured. I actually started to think that maybe, just maybe, everything wasn’t always my fault.
When I want something, no matter what it is, I find a way to get it. Maybe not right away, maybe not in a way I am exactly proud of, maybe not in the exact way I imagined…but I do. I can think of several things in my life that were hard-won that I got because I had bulldog determination: my education, my car, my health.
And a few years ago, that is exactly how I found myself in the situation I’m about to describe. See, I’ve been on a weeklong rant about Ganesha and his cruel double identity–but more on that later.
I had just left a job that I loved but at the same time was certain was eating my soul, discovered my love for yoga, and made sense of a disastrous nonsensical relationship that I hadn’t been able to shake off. As the weeks went on, life got simpler and things just made sense. I was able to walk on water, damn it, and nobody could get me down.
Long story short, I found myself craving the attentions of a certain member of the opposite sex. I’ll only admit that calling my state of desire “a crush” is a sad understatement, and leave it at that. I was torn between feeling like a hot chick on a mission and wondering if I was just a sad and lonely lost puppy dog that hangs around someone’s front door with teary eyes, saying “Love me????”
I should mention that one thing at that time rivaled my type-A-ness, and that was my stubbornness. That is why, in this situation, I found every external reason to explain why I could not convince this person that I existed. Something was in my way, and instead of being the pushy overachiever that I normally would be, I took the coward’s way out–it must be something else. The universe’s fault. The moon. The stars. The polar ice caps, the disappearance of honeybees, the flapping of a butterfly’s wings, the state of a random homeless man’s facial hair. Couldn’t just be me. Nope. No way.
So I did what any rational girl would do. I asked a knowledgeable friend, who told me to think about Ganesha, who was, after all, the remover of obstacles.
Yep. Remove obstacles. Not sure what my obstacles were, but they were there and they needed removing. Hey, Ganesha! Let’s make this happen!
Years went by, and to simplify: nothing happened. I figured the obstacle was just me being me and I became entirely amused with something else in my weird life and just kind of…forgot.
But now I am convinced that Ganesha is playing games with me. Obviously the old obstacles have been, to my knowledge, removed (if ever they were there)…only to be replaced with ones that seem larger. Ha-freaking-ha. I saw this coming miles away.
Of course, it wasn’t until last week that I learned that Ganesha is also known as the creator of obstacles. Apparently, Ganesha likes to keep us on our toes. Not that I’m assigning blame. On the contrary, I choose to think that all this removing and creating of obstacles just makes life interesting.
The lesson in all of this? The road is paved with obstacles. Sometimes the best thing to do is just breathe.
