The Whining Clown

A few years ago, I was photographing the St. Patrick’s Day parade activity for my job. I was having a blast. Participants were dressed in their o’finest green, smiling and feeling the Irish attitude. I came upon this group of three colorful clowns who were laughing and dancing. I snapped a couple of photos of them. As two of the clowns wandered off, the third came up to me and started whining about the other two. “I’m not really with them,” she said. “They are giving me a hard time and aren’t working with me.” To be honest, I tuned her out after her first sentence. I didn’t mean to, but one overwhelming thought flew into my brain and stopped all other traffic: “Dude. You’re a clown. Be a clown.”

I think about that clown on occasion ... mostly when I’m whining. I whine even though I KNOW this life-truth: People don’t want to listen to you whine. Recently, I heard myself whining to an industry peer over some little injustice heaved onto my fragile little ego. I heard my mouth flapping as I watched my poor friend physically recoil, drop eye contact and busy herself with some mundane task. Hmmm, I thought to myself,  Self: quityerbellyaching.

Basically, I think it comes down to this: everyone is carrying their own laundry basket full of crap. Theirs is heavy, too. They don’t need anyone else contributing to their load. What they DO need is someone to help lighten the load—bring them a smile, share a laugh or a little sunshine. I’ve decided I’m going to try and work on being that person.

It’s going to take some effort. I have to work at being happy. Sometimes I just don’t want to be cheery. Sometimes I want to whine about how unfair life is, how politics suck, how I’m always broke and so on. But I’ve realized that’s not working for me. I’m tired of taking two giant steps backward for every baby step forward. So I’m trying to shift my sails.

In the book, God Never Blinks: 50 Lessons for Life’s Little Detours, author Regina Brett sums it up best in Lesson #46: “No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up for life.” Just not feelin’ it on a certain day? Go on auto-pilot, if necessary. I know from experience that sometimes those days—the ones where I’m too discouraged to plan or too tired to battle for control—turn out to be the BEST days ever. God’s plan for me is always better than mine for myself. Really. Makes me wish I could just adopt a happy-go-lucky attitude every day where I would just go with the flow and believe it’s all going to be grand. Because that's what it's about ... believing.

So, that's my goal. First thing tomorrow I'm going to look myself in the bathroom mirror and say: “Dude. You’re a clown. Be a clown.”