Fifty Shades of Shades

I have a confession to make, and it’s not pretty.

I have a dysfunctional relationship with sunglasses.

Shades2

Actually, one could go as far as calling me the sunglass
sadist.

I break my sunglasses constantly.  And these aren’t little injuries.

They fall off the console in my car and get stepped on. They
get tossed in the bottom of my bag and crushed by my wallet or scratched by
keys. They get run over. They get eaten by my dogs.

I’ll put it to you this way. People who did something very
bad in a past life come back as a pair of my sunglasses.  

Last week, another pair met its maker when it had a rough
collision with a running shoe, sending me out to the store on the sunglass
search once again. 

As I glanced through the racks at the local department
store, I decided to try Aviators.

Halfway to the register, I opted to buy a spare
pair.

In the car on the way home, I questioned my decision to go
for the second pair.  It wasn’t a matter
of money.  They were actually quite
reasonable.

It was a matter of my anticipation of the worst case
scenario, meaning, one of those pairs would be broken within a week, and I
wanted to be prepared.

Some of you live prepared for the worst. You have your spare
sunglasses and water and flashlights and generators for emergencies.  You have your extra cash in the house and
your full tank of gas.

Some of you wing it.  Maybe
you wing it because you are not thinking ahead, or maybe you believe “life
happens,” and we have to roll with it.  Maybe
you’re an optimist, plain and simple.

I believe in being prepared,
but I also believe there is a line we can cross where our preparedness is no longer logical and we are reacting out of fear. 

Furthermore, as prepared as you are with your generators and waters and stockpile of canned foods, and not
letting your kids play in your front yard in anticipation that there is a child
abductor lurking at every corner, there really is no such thing as security.

Security is an illusion.

We can be prepared, but we will never be in control.  

There are problems that all of the money in the bank and all
of the canned ham in the world won’t solve. 

Before you buy into the next media frenzy or stockpile more
ham, or decide to hide in your house, maybe it’s time to ask yourself why you’re
stockpiling all that ham. 

Is all that ham really necessary?

Furthermore, before you buy into the next media frenzy and
stockpile more ham, maybe ask yourself what else you could do with all that
energy you expend on stockpiling ham or rehashing in your mind all of the
atrocities you see on cable network news channels.  

My guess is that energy might be better used elsewhere.

Not to change the subject, but any bets on how long my new
sunglasses will last?

(Editor’s note:  If
you felt that canned ham was being singled out in this article, it was. As a
lifelong vegetarian, I took this rant as an opportunity to give ham the
thrashing I felt it deserved. Fifty Shades of Ham, anyone?) 

 Namaste – or should I say…

Laters, Baby 

 

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Comments

Fifty Shades of Shades — 14 Comments

  1. I think we all need to balance being prepared and being controlled by fear. With my anxiety I can easily get overwhelmed with fear so I have to really try for balance. I imagine everyone’s balance is different. And I kinda like soapboxes sometimes. Can’t help myself :). I give the glasses 2 weeks to show some optimism haha

  2. Denise, I am all for balance AND preparedness and being concerned for our country and our kids. But the extreme behaviors are what concern me. Living here during Sandy, people were stockpiling food, gas, money – you couldn’t get anything and many of those shortages were caused by fear. I also believe in soapboxes but also believe in checking our intentions around them.
    2 weeks, huh? Isn’t that the day we’re meeting up? If I have on the above pair of sunglasses, you know they’ve made it! xo

  3. Love this. I’ve been thinking a lot about fear lately and getting stuck in my own head. Yes, there needs to be a balance but yes, those extreme behaviors are what concern me as well or that the fears just control every act/decision/movement/thought/etc. and you can’t get out of your own way. As for your sunglasses, I’ll give you a month 🙂

  4. Ok… can I say… you are glowing! Do you think the vegetarian diet might be the reason for your gorgeous skin?
    I love sunglasses. I tend to never break mine, but tire quickly.
    Will be waiting to hear how long it took to resort to the 2nd pair! 🙂

  5. I have a lot of learning to do in the “not reacting out of fear” department – but at the least, I need to know when to tune out society/the media – because so much of the buzz out there is over the top.
    A month? I’ll take a month!

  6. My problem is the opposite. My sunglasses break me. The last pair fell off my face as I was getting the kids out of the car at school. As I scrambled to catch them with both hands, I somehow gave myself a realistic looking slit wrist, the scar from which STILL hasn’t healed three months later. It totally looks like I went after myself in the bathtub.

  7. I also have a problem with keeping sunglasses for any amount of time, which is why I go for the cheap ones.
    I like to be prepared to a point. There’s only so much you can truly be prepared for. There’s nothing wrong with winging it every now and then. It makes us stronger!

  8. I think you can let fear hold you captive or you can use it to drive you forward. I’m doing my best to let it drive me forward. There is so much on the news that can make you want to stay in your home and never leave but a plane could also crash into your house. I say get out there and live it and always have a backup pair of sunglasses while doing so. 😉