Different

I loved the game Sesame Street sang, “One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn’t belong,” during which kid-me selected something that was different.  Comparing and contrasting is important learning.  I’m singing that tune today as I recognize different.

 

The dictionary.com World English Dictionary online entry offers the following for different.
1.  partly or completely unlike
2.  not identical or the same; other
3.  out of the ordinary; unusual

I was in a car wreck two weeks ago.  I respond to queries since, “Parts of my van were all over the road but parts of me were not,” and leave it at that.  How am I different if, most gratefully, not torn physically asunder?  I am acutely angry with breaking of traffic laws, particularly stopping at red lights.  I am a Nervous Nellie at intersections.  Sad without my goal of driving my 2002 van until it reaches 200,000 miles, I drive a 2010 van now and find all the automatic features convenient and daunting.  My devotion to a healthy spine is even greater.

My twelve year old social life was different than life for my daughter.  Technology taunts her into persistent distraction, constant call to be available.  I did homework without the corded telephone that hung in the kitchen vibrating insistently.  Home to home contact was the 1980’s norm when planning something social with friends because they had to call your house from their house.  Not so now.  Entire conversations occur silently, friends to friends in groups, often with no parents involved unless a demanding mom (like me) insists.  I may be different in that I want to talk to an involved adult.

My current house has been my home for ten years.  For the past couple, I make my bed every day.  Before that, I staged a personal coup against bed making.  I felt pressured as a stay-at-home mom to be “just so” and embraced that bit of safe rebellion.  Now the task feels different, offering a sense of togetherness I seriously lacked then.  My bed is neatly tucked and awaiting my return at day’s end as a gift to me, not submission to rules I imposed on myself. 

We can over life’s years in turns become drawn to and driven away from different.  Such a good laugh some of it is!  But like many descriptions of self, descriptions of life viewed without judgment but instead with sensitivity bring balance in the natural flow of change.  Things not identical or the same can occur in ways that feel like steps forward, that expose steps back, or that appreciate steps side to side mimicking dance.

Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true.
                                                                                                                - Swami Vivekananda

You can become blind by seeing each day as a similar one.  Each day is a different one, each day brings a miracle of its own.  It’s just a matter of paying attention to this miracle.
                                                                                                - Paulo Coelho