There are certain things in life that appear to me to be inevitable.

Change - people, circumstances, jobs, cars, weather, weight

Death

Taxes

Celebrity bloggers featuring Paris Hilton nine days out of ten

Wal-Mart not having my favorite coffee in stock on a consistent basis

Running late on Sunday morning

Gizmo sitting directly between me and whatever book, website, or television show I’m trying to read/watch/study at the time

What I’m discovering is change in myself is inevitable, and the sooner I accept it and move on, the happier and lighter I feel at the next bend in the road.

Those of you who have known me for any length of time know I have historically had a low tolerance for stupidity. In the past I would lose my temper relatively quickly whenever something reached my Personal Stupidity Threshold and it was katy-bar the door. I’ve done and said some pretty stupid things when I reached my PST (I’ve decided to give it an acronym - makes it sound classier, don’t you think?) and the consequences of those actions were very rarely positive.

I realized this morning, when responding to a friend who brought up my PST and whether or not I would really be a good fit for something because of it, that I’ve come to accept things differently than I would have in days past. It’s not been an “A-HA!” moment of clarity, those so rarely happen for me, but a gradual understanding of life, other people, and my interactions with them.

One of my co-workers told me this week that she was going to start charging me a nickel every time I said “I’m sorry” or “I apologize” because I say it so much. It made me stop and think about how apologetic I am, and how much I focused on what I was doing wrong versus what I thought ought to be right.  It makes me stop and think again before I say something, because so often the first thing out of my mouth is “I’m sorry” whether it’s something I can control or not.

I went to a ladies’ thing at church on Thursday. It was mostly women a good bit older than me, quite frankly women older than my own mother, and the topic was the noise in our heads and how we’re too attached to our cell phones and all this other stuff. I didn’t really even get the point. At one point in life, I would have just slipped out the back because I felt like it wasn’t applicable to me, or I was bored, or whatever.

This time, I stayed. I thought about all the things in my head, and how I find time to talk to God, and how I do it in my own way and that’s okay. God gets me, and does not expect any more or less than me just being me. And he understands I can talk to him while listening to the radio, or doing something else, or even at work dealing with a difficult person. I realized what she was saying wasn’t entirely accurate for me personally, and it may have been partially a generational thing.

I thought about other conversations I’d had with the leader, and her frustrations at not having more younger women there, and it helped me see part of what the picture is. I wouldn’t have thought of it had I not stayed to hear the whole thing. And if I’d not stayed, I would have missed out on the blessing of praying for each other in a still and quiet room, and “getting” that sometimes it is okay to turn off the noise, even for a few minutes, even my “white noise.”

What does all this have to do with my PST? I don’t know when it happened, I couldn’t tell you the precise day, but I’m more patient than I used to be. I don’t fly off the handle and cry or burst out every time something does not go the way I think it ought to go. I understand and accept that I’m a passionate, emotional person, and it’s okay to cry sometimes, but I don’t do it all the time these days.

This world does not revolve around me, or any one other person. It seems simple enough, and I’ve long thought that, but in holding everyone else to my personal standards of this or that, I’ve been trying to make them fit MY expectations and desires, not just who they are and what they do. And just like God loves me the way I am and is okay with me, he’s okay with those other people too. We’re all different, but we’re all sons and daughters. Even the meth-heads trying to get their pseudoephedrine.

I don’t intend to be a doormat, but I’m honing my way of digging in my heels. The goal is to stop being defensive about every critical remark or action that doesn’t jive with my personal standards/ethics/etc. and just be me. Every action’s equal and opposite reaction does not have to be “action” at all. It can just be a moment of pause “okay, brain let’s sort this one out and decide quickly if this needs a response or simply just a nod and move on.”

It is the inevitability of growing up.