“….common group but it’ll do. Save yourself, serve yourself. World serves its own needs, listen to your heart bleed. Tell me with the Rapture and the reverent in the right, right.
You vitriolic, patriotic, slam fight, bright light. Feeling pretty psyched. It’s the end of the world as we know it. It’s the end of the world as we know it. It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine…”
Okay, I dunno how many The Walking Dead fans we’ve got in the room right now (See? The end of the world as we know it? The Walking Dead? Perfect, right?!) but HOLY BALLS CAN WE TALK ABOUT THE VALENTINE’S DAY EPISODE FOR A SECOND?!!! For y’all who haven’t seen it yet, I’m not gonna give any details but WOW. Let’s just say there were entire families wiped out (Come on, though. We all saw that comin’. Sam was SO not gonna make it in the “real world”.), multiple major characters nearly met their Waterloo. Oh, and it both started with and ended with fire. Giant, flaming balls of fire.
Seriously, I could sit and dissect each scene for hours. HOURS. I mean, my involvement in the show now goes way beyond the hotness of Daryl and Rick. (FYI, my crush on Rick is recent. Didn’t think he was hot AT ALL until the shaving scene!).
The insanity of this episode got me thinkin’ about life in general though. Essentially, it’s one enormous goat rodeo made up of smaller, equally destructive goat rodeos. “Life. It’s the ultimate sin. A game with no rules that we’re expected to win.” (Just some Kid Rock wisdom for ya’.) I mean, not to be a downer, but life is NOT easy. It’s a chaotic, muddled mess full of complications and curve balls.
Essentially, life’s a hot mess. Or more accurately put, something that rhymes with writ worm.
A client and dear friend of mine and I were talking about said messiness of life just this past week. About how you have to acknowledge its messiness instead of living in denial about it. About how we need to stop being surprised when things don’t go ‘according to plan’. How we need to learn to ride the waves of life’s craziness instead of trying to swim against them. I mean, the waves aren’t gonna completely stop. I mean, do the ocean’s waves ever COMPLETELY calm? Heck no! Are there seasons of calm? Absolutely, but assuming that calm is the norm? Well, that’s just…stupid. Not to mention dangerous as all get out.
In a nutshell, my friend and I concluded that once you stop denying that life is, indeed, a…well, a writ worm, it gets easier.
Said another day, once you realize that it’s a freakin’ miracle that ANYTHING ever goes right instead of just expecting things to automatically fall into place, your whole life changes. You start working within the confines of reality instead of continually trying to fight against it, to swim upstream.
(I feel the need to tell you that I’m trying to stop cussing. Hot mess, goat rodeo, writ worm- play along, okay?)
Kinda like what finally happened in Alexandria on Sunday’s mid season premier of The Walking Dead. The people of Alexandria had been living behind those walls since pretty much the beginning. They’d been sheltered from and, in my opinion, in denial about what real life looked like. They were still trying operate like the world was pre-zombie apocalypse. During this episode though, a switch was flipped. Rick, in a moment of supreme hotness, grabs his ax and rolls out of the infirmary (I won’t tell you why he was there just in case you haven’t seen the episode!) and starts to take on the zombie herd that’s overtaken Alexandria. ALONE. ON HIS OWN. Fueled by rage, fear and perhaps the fact that he gave zero effs in that moment, he stepped into the fray. Pretty soon, others joined in. Of course the characters that you’d expect jumped in first but eventually, the everyday citizens were out fighting along side him. Father Gabriel, in a moment of absolute clarity (FINALLY, right?!) essentially told them to go out and fight for their lives instead of hiding in the church praying for someone else to save them. Again, I’m not gonna go into all the details but by the end of the episode, Rick’s actually hopeful. He can see a future in Alexandria. He no longer feels like it’s an ‘us against them’ situation between his group and the Alexandrians. The Alexandrians have finally pulled their heads outta their…um, outta the sand and are in touch with reality. They’re willing to look at the world in its current, ugly state. They’re willing to participate in it. And Rick can work with that. He sees that unity, that progress, is possible. That hope is possible.
We’ve gotta do the same thing. We’ve gotta get our heads out of the sand and stop thinking life is going to be easy. That there’s going to be a time when the world is consistently organized and orderly. When ‘running smoothly’ is the status quo. Failing to do so, living in that denial, will only lead to frustration and discontent.
Hiding in a corner of denial? You’re straight up zombie food. Jumping into the fray of reality? Now you stand a chance.
