PEr Chronicles: You'll get through this

Queen Camilla is the title set against “King Charles” on the invitation to the coronation. From hate-figure to royalty! Queen Camilla had a tumultuous journey before she is able to settle down with King Charles III. What you may not remember is how much people hated Camilla, with all their ire on behalf of Diana.

The future queen’s pit came in the form of media vilification. Maybe yours came in the form of a diagnosis, or a traumatic injury. Or you were thrown in an unemployment line and forgotten. Will this gray sky ever brighten? ?

Camilla would be the first to tell you that life at the bottom of the pit stinks. The bottom. We pass much of life – if not most of life – at mid altitude. Occasionally we summit a peak: our wedding, a promotion, the birth of a child. But most of life is lived at midlevel. Mondayish obligations of expense reports, and recipes.

But on occasion, the world bottoms out. The housing market crashes, the test results come back positive, and before we know it, we discover what the bottom looks like.

Don’t see your struggle as an interruption to life but as a preparation for life. No one said the road would be easy or painless. This trouble that you’re in isn’t punishment; it’s training.

You’ll get through this. It won’t be painless. It won’t be quick.

Can’t say that I like it. Life in slo-mo. We don’t like to wait. We are the giddyup generation. We weave through traffic, looking for the faster lane. We drum our fingers while the song downloads or the microwave heats our coffee. “Come on, come on.” We want six packs in ten minutes. We don’t like to wait. Not on the doctor, the traffic or the pizza.

Take a moment and look around you. The young couple waiting to get pregnant. The fellow with the resumes, waiting on work. The elderly widow with the cane, waiting a year for one tearless day.?We are in the land of waiting.

Waiting is easier read than done. It doesn’t come easily for me. I’ve been in a hurry my whole life. I have realized this: time heals all, but not on our schedule.

Random things trigger bad memories – memories of an ex or a lost one, memories of a tragic experience, memories of a missed opportunity. All you can do in those moments is remind yourself that pain can only exist when you’re in the past. The past doesn’t exist anymore, and that pain is as real as you allow it to be. You can combat that by focusing on the only thing you have – the present.

Don’t hold me to the precise details of this childhood memory. But I remember the bounce-back clown. He was pear-shaped, narrower at the top than the bottom. He didn’t do anything except this: bounce back. Knock him down; he popped right up. I did my best to level the clown. One punch after the other, each more vicious than the prior hit. He couldn’t duck or defend himself. Yet there was something about him, or within him, that kept him on his feet.

We’ll do well to learn his secret. Life comes at us with a fury of flying fists – right hook of rejection, sucker punch of loss. Enemies hit below the belt. Calamities cause us to stagger.

Some people once knocked down never get up. They stay on the mat – beaten, bitter, broken. Others, however, have more bounce back than Bozo.

Who knows? Your rebound may happen today.