Drama Queen
Scenario: Your fasting on a very hot Sunday morning and all of the sudden your son says, “Mom, I smell something burning.” You go to investigate, letting your nose lead you around and you discover your furnace has a small fire. You call 911, the fire trucks come and shut your gas and electricity off. Now you have to wait to have it serviced in order for your air conditioning to work again.
We are now on the third day of 88 degrees in the house and the air won’t be up and running until Friday.
Years ago I could have had a field day with this story–drama, exaggeration, build up, complaining. “What do you mean you can’t work on a Sunday to come fix my furnace? We are fasting. It feels like 100 degrees. Can you believe this? A fire on Tisha B’av, how apropo, maybe it’s a sign. It’s so hot and now I have to do laundry, up and down, up and down, only 6 loads to go.”
The gift of understanding how my mind works is that this week when some of those thoughts passed through my brain, I didn’t take them so seriously. I have no interest in drama today. I know clearly that my drama thinking creates my drama feeling. Are there times I want to indulge? Maybe, but at least then I’m choosing to indulge rather than doing it by habit.
Interestingly enough, I felt no drama about this. True, its inconvenient, but not drama. What a gift. I see so many people make drama out of nothing. And yet others make nothing out of drama.
Is it possible that I am creating the upset, stress, overwhelm, resentment, self indignation, etc. with my drama thinking rather than the actual circumstances being the cause of my discomfort? There is no right or wrong way to react, but it is something to get curious about.
