I’m Not Giving Up My Beer and You Can’t Make Me!


    I love bars. Some of my favorite times have been in bars. I loved having a Singapore Sling in the Raffles Hotel in Singapore. It was like visiting a piece of history. I experienced the same thing the time I had a gin and tonic in the bar at The Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong. Those were places I read about in books and I was there. Then there was a bar full of the biggest men I have ever seen in my life in Edinburgh who made me laugh my ass off. I miss Fuzzy’s, a great dive bar in Atlanta where Francine Reed used to sing once in a while.  Check out her singing Wild Women Don’t Get the Blues. It does a soul good. I grade papers at the pub around the corner from me and I go to a bluegrass jam at the Redlight where everyone knows my name and is happy to see me.  Bars are good places for me.
    I’ll admit that once or twice I ended up dancing in the streets after being in a bar down in Little Five Points but it involved a drummer and tequila so it doesn’t count. (I said drummers make me stupid and tequila doesn’t help.) But, back to bars. I like the atmosphere of a good bar and sitting at bars and talking to strangers.  There’s something about a good bar that just works for me. Fortunately, I’ve never been much of a drinker, tequila and drummers not withstanding.
     I used to drink a glass of wine with dinner once in a while but discovered that I couldn’t tolerate it very well. I was fine with that. My weekly Pimms in the summer time has become a monthly watered down version of the same drink. My moderate alcohol consumption has come down to a beer, maybe two a week and now that’s become a problem.  A little more than a half a beer and it goes to my head.  I’m bummed.   
     My body has its own wisdom, wisdom that in this case I am resisting.  I can ignore the wisdom of my body and keep on doing what I want and suffer the consequences as a matter of choice. My resistance is a little more difficult to ignore unless I want to create more problems for myself. And I don’t. I am not a brain dead moron, ya’ll. I got some sense.
   Resistance is telling the universe, “I don’t wanna!” It’s the kid with her arms crossed yelling, “I’m not going to and you can’t make me!”  That would be me. “I’m not giving up beer and you can’t make me!” It sounds a little absurd when I say that out loud.
      My friend, Bob, told me that resistance is like paddling upstream instead of using the current and eddies to help to you get where you want to go. I knew that.  I also know that resistance creates negativity. Think about it.  
   Resistance sets you up to complain about what is happening and why it should be different. If you are the least bit like me you’re sitting there, saying, “Yeah and the problem with that would be?”  The first step in eliminating negativity is to stop complaining.  If you stop complaining the chances are pretty good that you stop resisting what’s happening and get out of the way of your own good so the universe can help you.
My spirit is constantly trying to help me, sometimes with warnings, “Danger Will Robinson!”   Only instead of saying thank you very much and heeding the warning I do what I want and then getting mad about the consequences.  I’m guessing you do the same thing some times.
     Our lives and bodies are always in a state of transformation. Resistance creates obstacles to that, it doesn’t change anything. Resistance creates conflict and chaos. You know that whole, “What you resist persists” thing? Resistance adds mental and emotional energy to what you don’t want. The bottom line is that resistance makes the situation worse. On the other side of resistance, non resistance, you find harmony. I’ll take harmony over chaos any day. Harmony and half a beer once in a while.
  

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