Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Day by Minute
With the way things have been going in my workplace (a job which I once liked), Karim's ongoing jobsearch, and the city in general I am learning that living day by day is simply not enough. I can lose my focus in an instant if I'm not careful, therefore, it is important for me, in particular, to take life minute by minute. I can be having a perfectly wonderful time boxing up merchandise in the store when someone will make some snide remark that is obviously pointed at my intelligence. In these moments, it is very difficult for me, but very important for me all the same, to keep my silence. It helps to realize the psychology of the situation. They know that I am educated and it makes them feel better when they think of me as a donkey, rather than an intelligent human being.
We could be having a breezy time paying our bills, when, out of the blue, Karim's boss will come up with some illegal reason to "dock" his pay. (This happens a lot).
I could be having a lovely well-needed nap when the phone will ring and some idiot salesperson will try to sell me magazines and a subscription to a timeshare that I couldn't afford if I were working two jobs.
Learning to take life a minute at a time is the most difficult thing I have had to undertake. My first reaction to stressful situations is to lash back, stress for stress, at whatever, or whoever is the cause. I know that everything that happens in life is a lesson. Anna's is a HUGE lesson for me. It is a lesson in the element of change--nothing stays the same. What once was good is now bad and it is time to move on. The same with Karim's job. The lesson for him is patience and endurance. I could never put up with the kind of rubbish he puts up with every day. I would have tossed it in and called the department of Labor a long time ago.
We are also learning to rely on each other, minute by minute. Since we are both under a lot of stress (and fasting through Ramadan), we are both on edge a lot of the time, and it is so much easier to speak in anger or irritation than it is to focus on words of love and caring, especially when we don't feel good about ourselves. I think we have made more apologies to each other in the last month and a half than we have in our entire two and a half years of marriage.
I know that everything will work out in time, but sometimes "in time" seems to take an eternity. Days? Weeks? Months? Years? (Heaven forbid). The only way to get there is one minute at a time...and that's not easy.
