Attitude, Shmatitude

My father was always full of great life lessons like, “Hey, turn that light off,” and “That gun’s probably loaded,” and stuff like that.  One thing that has always stuck with me is, “If you’re going to do something, do the best you can do or don’t bitch about how it turns out.”

This comes up because I keep seeing this dumb adage about “Your reaction determines your outcome.”  Something like that.  It’s all over the social medias, and I personally think it’s patronizing and rude, along the lines of “I am #blessed because I have a Mercedes, and God hates you because you live in a shack in India.”  Let me explain:

Let’s say that you are just walking down the street, and all of a sudden, some fool in a Mercedes, updating her Facebook status about how she is #blessed, blows a stop sign, and smashes into you, breaking your hip.  Is the fact that you have a broken hip (your outcome) your fault because you didn’t jump out of the way (your reaction)?  Let’s take this one step further.  Let’s say that, you decide that you aren’t going to let this broken hip get you down.  You forgive the #blessed Mercedes driver, you follow your doctor’s orders, you go to physical therapy, and you do everything right.  Your reaction is PERFECT.  Your attitude is flawless.  You can’t even believe how lucky you are to have been hit, because it’s given you such a great opportunity to meet new people and understand how people with one leg live.  But, sadly, because you have inherited osteoporosis from your mother, your hip doesn’t heal.  How in the hell did your reaction, your attitude, or your fucking mindfulness have any effect on your outcome?   

Wait, let’s keep going.  Let’s say that you are like my mother when she had a broken leg, and you sat around and smoked all day, walked on your cast because crutches are for suckers, decided that physical therapy is less fun than watching soap operas and eating chocolate, and still healed like a fucking champion because, like my mom, you are made of Irishness and Brillo pads?  How did your reaction in any way affect your outcome?  How can your attitude of “Ah, fuck it,” work, when your attitude of “I’m going to beat this thing!” not work? 

On the other hand, let’s return to my father’s adage: if you’re going to do something, do the best you can do, or don’t bitch about the outcome.  My father was a firm believer that, sometimes you do things right, and it still doesn’t work out for you.  But at least you can look back and say, “Hey, sometimes shit happens, but at least I know I did everything I could do.”  But you know what?  Sometimes you get hit by a #blessed Mercedes driver, and you don’t heal well, despite what you’ve tried.  It doesn’t blame you for obviously not reacting correctly. For not having the right attitude.

Sometimes, however, you decide, “Fuck it, I’m out,” and instead of working hard, you phone it in.  Well, in that case, it might work out for you, or it might not.  You might heal, or you might end up in a nursing home.  Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don’t.  But if you don’t, you gotta live with the fact that you didn’t try to rock it out.  Your choice.  

I’m not saying that a winning attitude doesn’t help.  But for God’s sake, we can only control so much. We live in a vast universe with all kinds of people, including very bad ones and very good ones.  What can we do?  We can do the best we can do.  And, most of the time, our hard work reaps wonderful results.  We get the life we want.  But sometimes it doesn’t.  Sometimes Hitler happens, and no matter what you do, your world is torn apart. Sometimes, the best you can do is to do your best and survive.  Your reaction does not determine your outcome.  Your reaction determines your peace of mind.  Your outcome…well, that’s unknown.