Gary Miller ~ outdoortruths.org

I love the outdoors but you can be assured of the fact that sooner or later accidents will happen. Most of the time these are minor and not worth mentioning. On other occasions they are more climatic and the setbacks are longer. Not only do accidents happen during our outdoor activities but they also happen in our everyday lives. Again, most of the time, they are minor inconveniences that are soon forgotten about. How many of us fishermen can remember the day or days that we dropped a rod into the lake or when we stepped on one and broke it? These things happen to all of us. But it does seem there are seasons of accidents as well; those times that bad things just pile up. Just this past month, on one fishing trip, my son left the headlights on in my truck. You can imagine the rest of the story. One day we forgot to put the plug in the boat. Another day, a reel decided to “give up the ghost.” That was the same morning I dumped a quart of yogurt on the kitchen floor. Oh, and my truck decided to make some funny noise that took two weeks to figure out what was wrong and nearly four hundred dollars to fix.
Now some people bemoan these things. They cuss or fuss about how their plans were interrupted or about how if somebody would have been more careful or more responsible these things would never have happened. We’ll if that’s you, let me give you some good advice... Get over it! Quit acting like those things would never happen to you! They do and they will!
If you need some help in learning how to not let these things bother you, then I can give you some good places to start. First of all, think about some of your friends who are fighting cancer. Then think about some who have just buried a loved one who died entirely too soon and unexpected. Next, allow your mind to walk the halls of the veterans hospitals where young men and women are learning to use new mechanical limbs that replaced the ones that were blown off in Iraq or Afghanistan. Are you ashamed yet? Does it really matter that your son accidentally sat on your Oakley sunglasses?
I went to church Sunday morning. I spent a little extra time trying to get the wrinkles out of a shirt that I wanted to wear. I arrived, sat in a seat, and was greeted by my granddaughter who wanted me to hold her. I did (of course). We hugged, sung together, and just held one another for a few minutes. I sat her down and noticed my shirt... It was perfectly wrinkled. I was reminded again that sometimes things don’t always go as you planned. Most of time, they go better.