What's on Your Menu?

When I go out to a restaurant to eat, I usually order something healthy and reasonably priced, and I almost always get what I ask for. Occasionally, of course, the restaurant is out of my selection or the dish that I ordered tastes nothing like its description  (some gnocchi I had at an Italian restaurant last week, for instance, tasted a lot more like a mixture of sand and clay than delicate potato dumplings with delicious pesto sauce). But for the most part, if you order the tofu with three kinds of mushrooms or the sautéed escarole that’s exactly what you’re going to get. The waiter is not going to come out carrying a huge slab of red meat (especially if you’re a vegetarian) and expect you to eat it.

            Not so with life, I’ve noticed. In fact, many of the dishes I’ve ordered off the menu of life have not appeared on my plate, or, if they have, they’ve tasted like something else. And waiters keep turning up with things I’ve never ordered. If I were in a restaurant I might send these things back, but out here in the world that’s not always possible.        

            The cabin on the lake and the beach house I expected to own by now, for instance, haven’t showed up yet. I ordered a boy and a girl and got three boys.  I fully intended to have a bestseller published by now, but that hasn’t happened. And the list goes on.

 The menu of life has a mind of its own. It gives you teaching gigs when you least want to be teaching. It gives you quirky friends you never could have conjured up in your wildest dreams. It gives you boys when you wanted girls, or girls when you wanted boys--kids you would not trade for anything.        

            Yes, I know that the “Law of Attraction” says you can basically manifest anything you can imagine, right down to the details, and I do believe that.  But I also believe that the menu of life is so vast and so unfathomable (kinda like the menu at my favorite Greek diner) that sometimes the Cosmic Chefs just serve you whatever they please.  

           And when that happens, I’ve found, it just may be best to dig right in (though it may be wise to ask for a little black pepper or parmesan cheese!).