We had a big storm here in the northwest last week. 60+ mile an hour winds, torrential rain, the whole nine yards. Trees and branches fell everywhere and at about 10 pm on Thursday night, there was a loud pop, the sky turned green and all our power went out. And stayed out, through the morning and into the early afternoon. It was cold, we had no phone service, and the hot water in the water heater was quickly cooling. When I called the electrical company, I miraculously got hold of a real person. He said they didn't know when the power would be restored, that this was the worst outage we'd had in a decade. And he then said something, that has really stuck with me. He said, "that's nature. You can't predict it and you often can't control it. You just have to do your best to deal with what happens." Well of course he's right, and in this case, though frustrating and inconvenient, the situation was resolved within a few hours. The impact of nature, this time, was over.
I keep thinking about what the man at the electric company said about nature, in relation to diabetes. Something failed within me (nature), and I have to deal with what happened, as best I can. Nature isn't negotiable. It just is. Over time, we can figure out how to modify nature or fix it or support it, but in the end, it will do what it will do. Life is limited, good stuff happens and bad stuff happens and it isn't about fairness. It just is. I don't know why but thinking about diabetes as nature somehow helps me. It makes me feel less responsible or to blame. I know I didn't "do anything to bring this on" (though how many times have I been asked if I ate a lot of sugar as a kid?), and yet somewhere deep inside, I feel like maybe I could have done something to prevent it. This isn't logic talking here, I know. Just a feeling. And when I think that actually, me getting diabetes is just the randomness of nature, I also remember that it could be worse too. Half full, half empty. No electricity in our house, the lights on one block away. Because it's random, I just have to do the best I can with what I've got.
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