The 33rd of them

We do it. For those of us who do, we do it and can't help ourselves. We ruminate. We contemplate. We take this annual event of a birthday and dissect our life and all the planets that rotate around it. That's what we do.
Or at least I do.
Today was my 33rd. At some point in time, though no one tells you when, you're suppose to start hiding your age for reasons not exactly clear to me. I suppose it's to fool your laugh lines into thinking they haven't yet been cued. Back behind the curtain, you.

This year, however, I really didn't contemplate. I took a year off. A few days prior to the annual rumination, I had a thought at the precise moment you balance on the sharp blade that delegates sleep on one side and consciousness on the other, and the thought took the wind out of me. I realized, resting in the most docile manner upon my pillow, that I was a control freak.
C.O.N.T.R.O.L. freak.
The spasm of the idea shoved me back to consciousness. How can one sleep when calling oneself such awful names? One can't.

So I started ruminating early. And this is my conclusion: I was right. I want control, I'm bloodthirsty for it. Perhaps we all are, from our rantings about never having enough money, never having enough time, never fulfilling our destiny, never reaching that perfect Utopia of existence. If only we had more...(fill in the blank). What we really mean is "control".
That's me. All these turns and pirouette and spins I do, it's all a dance to romanticize life into my control, like a mustached hypnotist with a pocket watch except without the mustache.
This fervor, this adrenaline to mold the world into a small cylindrical sphere of individual freedom, then to hang my own galaxy within it, would be a dream. If only I could get control. If only I could wrap my fingers around the source of resistance. If only life did as I said. Heel. Sit. Roll over. If only I could take the wheel and trade the vehicle in for more horse-power.
If only what I wanted to do, what I felt compelled to do, could somehow make a difference not only in others' lives, but also mine.

And oh what destruction I could bring about to my own life. What ruin. Think ashes. But worse.
When the reality finally came, long after sleep had thrown in the towel, I gasped at the thought. Me? In control? What a riot. I shouldn't be if I would, I can't if I could. I'd screw it up. Trust me.
This tittering life, even here in the freest of all nations, is not within my control. And when you zoom down from the planetary picture, into the blues and greens of the landscape, closer still until roads begin to form, lower as houses take shape, directly into the heart of my residence, right upon the very space I occupy, I can control nothing. Neither should I try. Neither should I stress when I can't.

This wasn't about giving up. Not about quitting. Not about seeing the world and all it's sparkly problems and throwing up my blunt fingernails in a gesture of despair. Not about sitting on my fat round and ignoring reality because that's easier, less exhausting, and gives you more time to watch Chuck and Lost and Burn Notice and The Office and whatever else that magical tube spurts out for evening entertainment.
Instead, it was about doing what I know I must - whatever that heartburn of calling is telling you to do, whatever possibilities whisper without rest into your ear, whatever is within your grasp if only you could conquer fear. Doing it. And then accepting the results, whatever they be. Even accepting the possibility of their absence.

Life isn't about my personal goals and how much closer I've reached them from last year to this. And it certainly isn't about what others believe should be my personal goals and why I haven't reached them from last year to this. (I'll neither name the "others" nor their "goals".)
It isn't about my plans. It isn't about getting it all within my uncommonly-strong-for-a-girl grasp. It's about doing what I know is right, never growing weary with the activity, and letting God take care of the results even when they are quite unseen.
It truly is about the fight. It's neither our burden nor responsibility to worry with the outcome, only to protect and defend the area immediately at the end of our toes. That is why I'm here. That is why, no matter how many directions my business pulls me, I wrap it up and come back. That is why I'm not leaving. This is my ground, this small plot of land within the entire soil of earth. This is mine. And I'll be here until my Commander-In-Chief (that's God, by the way) orders me elsewhere.

So tomorrow: more political sarcasm. I have an unending flow.