"Sometimes you've got to embrace the suck..."

 "and move the f*** on."

I just finished watching a movie called "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot". Very interesting movie. I encourage anyone to see it. The basic premise is a woman reporter in New York shakes up her life by going to Kabul to report on the war in Afghanistan.

When she is just beginning her time in Afghanistan she meets and interviews a young Marine Lance Corporal. And they soon become friends. And she uses a quote he gave her about not loading his rifle because he does not need to.

 And then he disappears from the story.

Several years later she is in a situation and she is told that after she used his interview in a story he got sent to Kandahar. And that an IED had taken off both of his legs. She is devastated by this as she feels responsible for his being transferred into danger.

After she gets the situation she is handling resolved she goes back to the "real world" after years in the Afghanistan. And she finds out where the former Marine Lance Corporal lives and goes to see him.

While they are sitting and reminiscing about the Stan, as they call it, they both admit to missing it. The former Marine says he tried to go back. And is really offended that "The Army wouldn't even take me. The Army". And he is laughing.

And then, the reporter says, I came here so you could say whatever you want to say to me. And the guy does not understand. So she explains, he would not have been sent to Kandahar if she had not broadcast his quote about not loading his rifle.

And he proceeds to chew her out. Tells her that she is taking on responsibilities that are not hers to take. That more than likely he would have been sent to Kandahar whether she reported that or not because people were being sent there. Don't make it mean any more than it does.

And he went on to explain about how life unfolded the way it does and trying to be powerful by being responsible for things that you should not be just does not work. He talked about the person who set the IED, and the one who remote detonated it, how if Bin Laden's parents had not divorced they probably would not be there, how Brezhnev destroyed a functional country by invading in 1979, and the British Empire's role in history.

None of that was her responsibility.

And then, he delivered the title line, "Sometimes you've got to embrace the suck and move the f*** on".

And she seemed to get it. And then his wife and child came out and they acted as husband and wife, and they invited her to dinner. And she stayed and had dinner. And, she seemed to find peace for the first time in a long while.

So why am I talking about this? Because that whole sequence really resonates with me.

When I was young I learned how to be responsible for everyone else and never took responsibility for my life at all.

I had to learn to reverse that. I had to learn to be responsible for my life instead of blaming everyone else, and not for your life. To let you be you and responsible for your life.

Was not easy at times. Changing a lifetimes worth of habits never is.

And, sometimes, I just had to embrace the suck (Of Life and my Feelings) and move the f*** on.

Because life is going to continue to unfold no matter what I do to stop and change it. It can be wonderful and it can suck. Mostly it is somewhere in between.

And when I accept it, embrace it, exactly as it is and is not, and be responsible for MY actions, attitudes, and behaviors, and NOT YOURS, then my life is much more manageable.

So what do you need to embrace today that you are not? What are you not accepting.

Embrace and accept these things. Make your life much more manageable.

You will be uncomfortable at times.

And you will not regret it.