How To Do Stuff Well

16. How to Manage Well

Have you ever given up? Have you just thrown back your head and screamed 'I can't cope!!' Have you ever sunk down to the ground in tears and declared that you just can't go on anymore. If so, then this post is for you.

I'm not going to give you the usual advice here - the stuff you can find in any self-help book. In fact, I'm not going to give you any advice at all. Nor am I going to soft-soap you with the kind of flannel that you can find in any support group and tell you that you're good enough just the way you are. I'm not even going to tell you that God loves you and has a plan for you. So what's left?

Well, what's left is you.

Did you ever hear the story of the donkey that fell down a well? The villagers couldn't get him out and they all got fed up of hearing him braying and so they decided to dig a new well and fill the original one in, donkey and all. They started to dig out the new one, a few feet away and then they threw the earth that they took out of the new well into the old one. Of course, you know what comes next, right? The donkey wasn't like your average corpse. It didn't just lie there at the bottom of the well and let itself be buried in the soil. On the contrary, it kept shaking the soil off its back and stamping it down under its hooves. And pretty soon, it was able to walk out of that well feeling as well, if not better, than it did before.

The moral of the story is that you shouldn't take any shit. Your natural nature is such that if you follow it then things will work themselves out. So, if it's your nature to give up and lie down and be buried then feel free to follow that course. If, however, it's your nature to stomp about and rise above any shit that the world gives you, then do that instead. The choice is yours.

Also - it's your choice to decide your nature. Or, to be more exact, it's your choice to express whichever side of your nature that you feel to express at any particular point in time. I don't know about you but I'm a really complicated person. Sometimes it annoys other people that they can't get a straight answer out of me (because I'm forever contradicting myself) but I don't give a hoot. If I want to be complicated, then that's my problem.

So, if sometimes I want to lie down and have a rest - that's what I'll do. If at other times, I want to kick up a fuss, then that's up (or down) to me.

Listen up now, because I'm finally coming to the point, which is:

You, my fine, furry friend, are just like me.

You too can choose.

So do so.