make it happen

I'm going to tell you a story that could be considered a confession. Confession is good right?
If you are an organized and efficient soul this story will make you shake your head and thank your lucky stars that you are you and not me.
If instead, you find yourself in this story then we are two peas in a pod, kindred spirits stumbling along the rocky road of life together.
And if we are, please keep an eye out for my jewelry, I'm not sure where I put it.

"For crying out loud," I exclaimed feelingly.
I was staring down at my missing bracelet and it was staring reproachfully back.
I had been looking for it off and on as the afternoon wore thin right along with my patience.
I had tried to remember the last time I'd worn it.
I'm not sure how this would have helped me but it seems to be the first unanswerable question I plague myself with when something is missing.
There were several forces that had conspired against me. I say this as a sort of self defense, a smoke screen as most self defense is.
Firstly, my elderly mother lives with me and a combination of eccentricities cause her to wander at will, moving things, and removing things. This contributes to my own feelings of memory loss. I am certain I placed something just THERE and now it has wafted off, never to be seen again until I happen upon it in her sock drawer. Caring for someone with dementia is destined to make you feel at times like the blind leading the blind.
The second force arrayed against me is my own lack of organizational aptitude. If 'Keep like with like' is rule one, then 'Keep it all in one place,' must surely be a wise variation of the same.
Why then did I find myself searching with growing angst for my bracelet.

I thought I would write a funny story about my missing bracelet, how I gazed solemnly into drawers and cupboards and pitchers on the mantel. How I eventually found it in my jewelry box of all places, the last place I thought to look.
But I had one of those moments of startling clarity.
Why was the jewelry box the last place I thought to look?
And why was the bracelet there then, just as it should have been?

The bracelet was in my jewelry box because I had tried at some point in the past, to change.
To change the default settings of my life.
Many of them were put in place in childhood and reinforced by example.
Some have made me very unhappy.
Change isn't easy and one of the reasons is the ease with which we hand over the reigns of our life.
We are aware that we are unhappy, that there is a problem, but we fail to see our role in it. We fail to see that it lies within our power to change ourselves.

I am not going to let life happen to me. I am going to grab life by the lapels and make IT happen.
P.S. Just don't grab your lapels while wearing gardening gloves. Don't ask.