A few years ago, I learned an important lesson about emotion; some days feel better than others, while other days feel worse – for no apparent reason. Some days, I wake up and feel on top of the world, while other days feel like it’s crushing me.
Navigating these up’s and down’s requires that you be able to assess yourself in an honest way, as well as examine what might be contributing to the way you feel in a given moment.
This morning, I woke up later than usual and felt rushed from the moment I woke up until around 8pm when I finally hit ‘end’ on my last phone call. I felt like I never had a chance to fully calibrate myself for the day, or take a moment to rest between the back-to-back meetings I had – and I paid a price for it.
Sometimes you wake up and feel like you’re on top of the world. Other days, you wake up and feel like you looked the devil in the eye before you took your first breath of morning air. This morning, I woke up to the latter, with one of the most vivid sets of dreams I’ve had in months.
Normally, a trip to the range is a quick fix for resetting. However, no sooner had I shot my first round when my red dot sight began to fade out, rendering the gun essentially useless and void of any aim. I switched gears and started firing my Glock, before noticing that it kept getting locked back after every few shots. One gun in need of repair, I can live with. Two? That’s a different story.
“Well, now I’m worse off than when I started…”
I flagged down Joe, an employee at the range. All he shoots is Glock, and I knew he’d be able to quickly diagnose the issue. In a matter of seconds, he had it figured out. An internal spring the size of a pencil tip had broken, and it was causing the gun to lock back instead of chambering another round.
Standing there with Joe, I felt something that I had felt before. I felt like the younger version of myself that had broken a tool in my Dad’s garage, and I had to admit my inability to correct the problem. At 36, some things feel like they haven’t changed a bit.
Beyond feeling like I had broken something and lacked the knowhow to fix it, I realized that there’s a part of me that still longs for the instruction, love and approval that only a Father can bring. Now, I’m the one who is giving it, but feel a large void of that energy in my own life, and that causes me to feel like I’m burning the wick at both ends of my spirit sometimes.
There are a lot of things that wear my spirit down, and today I felt like I encountered every single one of them in a single line that didn’t stop. Tomorrow, I know that things will feel different. They won’t feel so broken, incomplete or spent. Sometimes, all you can do is buckle up, make sure you keep your composure intact, and pack your guns up for another day.
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