Giving up the self to find the selfish

As far as seeing people I love goes, it was a day full of joy. Josh and I woke up with my aunt and uncle in New Hampshire (and give them a batch of New England September Soup), and we got to swing by Brandeis to take James out to lunch, and we got to drop a batch of soup to one of my nearest and dearest (from my growing-up road) who is recovering from back surgery. This was a jackpot triumvirate (I know that's not really the right word, but I'm using it) and I felt incredibly lucky to be able to pull off seeing them all.

Then we hit the traffic. What is usually a 3-hour drive turned into 6, by the time we pulled off to feed me, and by the time we got home, I was on the border of comatose, only not really, since I was driving. (To be honest, today, the day I am writing, I am practically comatose.)

But I've learned a few things about myself this year, and I practiced one of them to great effect. Sometimes I have a hard time making decisions and I get fixated on trying to make it the BEST it can be, but I don't really know how to make it the best, and I start to try to make it the best for everyone, and also for me, and I get caught in a spin, a spin, a spin, and it's starting to get stressful, and and and and and and .... I have learned that if I can step back and ask if someone else can make the decision, things can go much, much better. It happened around eating dinner. We were somewhere in Connecticut. Actually, we were near Fairfield Connecticut. We didn't know what there was to eat in Fairfield, but we had cell phones, and Google, and apps, and normally I would have taken charge of this one, because what we eat tends to matter more to me than to Josh. But I was driving, and I didn't even want to start the cycle of stress, so he totally took it over and found a place and guided us there, and it worked out perfectly.

So as joyful as the day started out, seeing all my wonderful New England people, I'd say that the selfish joy came when I gave up the self, and asked the other (Josh) to take over for a bit.