The Jolly Green Giant may lament being ridiculously tall and a verdant green, but no matter how much he stresses over this, he will always be tall and he will always be green. He can exercise until his muscles burn and he will not shrink an inch. He can go through vats of skin care products and he will always have an unmistakably greenish hue. The bottom line is that a tree has no business fretting over being a tree, that's just what it is and what it was designed to be. However, for many of us, there are areas of our life where we actually have the power to make substantive changes but we never seem to make a dent. We fret and we worry, yet we are absolutely blind to the fact that we either are too weak to affect changes or are too inured in our paths to do more than grumble and moan.
- A friend of mine is always complaining about his weight and the fact that nothing he does seems to make any difference. He maintains a very active presence on social media and with every post there seems to be a buffet of junk food surrounding him. Soda, cakes, cookies, doughnuts, chips, grease, fat.
- A man I know constantly bemoans his unhappy marriage. He prattles on about how he has done everything he can think of to make things better, yet every single time he mentions his wife it is with nastiness and harsh words. He never speaks of her with fondness or pride or respect.
- A colleague at work recently had a quintuple heart bypass. His major contributing factors were that he was severely overweight and smoked two packs of cigarettes a day. Six months after his surgery, he has made no changes in his lifestyle.
- A junior co-worker of mine is worried about getting a permanent position in his field. Yet he seems to arrive late and leave early every day and seems completely unengaged when he is at work.
Mr. J.G. Giant may fret and fluster over being tall and green, but there is nothing he can do to ever change those characteristics. For many of us, there are things about ourselves that cause us to worry and to wail, yet so often we have the ability to take charge and make a real difference in the outcomes, yet we can't seem to make progress. Sometimes the answers are difficult. Sometimes they are not.
