FLIES AND INTERRUPTIONS

They come at you with determination.  There you are, on your path, doing what needs to be done, taking care of business and doing your thing, and the slice that drops just before your next step—like a guillotine blade—stops everything.  Oh, maybe part of your road is still in tact, but make no mistake, a sudden sliver in your world just cut off your next move.

Interruptions!  They are incessant!  There you are traveling along at a smooth rate, whether it’s on your bicycle, in your car, jogging, skating, walking, or riding your horse—the Interruption doesn’t care what your mode of transportation is—when inserted into your space comes the most unrelated piece of information, forcing you to come to an abrupt halt, as if that’s what you’d planned all along.

Or maybe it’s a common Interruption that most of us know, like confidently placing your key in the keyhole to start your car—and nothing happens!  For a moment, you know you’re hallucinating!  So, you take a deep breath—to make sure you’re really paying attention—and WHAT?  It happens again.
And there you are, sitting in your car going nowhere.

Or how about when you’re in a movie theatre and a small group walks in late, bumping into things, mumbling and laughing, and you’re perfectly settled into your chosen seat, but you can’t hear or see the show.  Of course, in time the group gets settled, and as you prepare to own some leisure, you realize there’s a really tall guy in their party, and he picked the chair directly in front of yours, and you can’t see anything without leaning your head to the left or the right, creating a nice little kink in your vertebrae.

Oh!  Here’s one of my favorites!  How about when you have a marvelous day planned outdoors, because the weather has been non-stop perfect for months, and it rains the minute your day arrives!

Or you took the back roads home, something you’ve done many times, and a barrier pops up before you saying “Detour”—and you end up on the road you were trying to avoid in the first place.

Or how about having a conversation with someone, and as soon as you get involved with either listening or speaking, a third person comes into the room blurting at the top of their lungs, “I NEED SOME ATTENTION!”  (O.K.  Maybe those weren’t their exact words, but as obvious as their entrance was, they may as well have been.)  And your Connected Moment in the story is immediately destroyed, not to return any time soon, if at all.   

Annoying, persistent, obnoxious, little flies, those Interruptions are.  They can invade the nicest plate of food, ruin your appetite, poke at you, day-in-and-day-out, and meanwhile cloud your vision.  Those are the flies. 

Now let’s talk about the interruptions.

Imagine coming home to find a loved one murdered, bloodied, destroyed, and God knows what else.  Now there’s and Interruption for ya.

Or going to the elementary school to pick up your child, but she’s not there.  She’s missing.  And always will be.  Then to add salt to the horrendous wound, some of these overwhelmed people never find the body, or the offender.

Or how about being crippled in a car accident—that wasn’t your fault.

Or what if you had been a survivor of Katrina’s wrath?  Remember the stories?  Wretched smelling corpses floating in putrid water where your neighborhood used to be.  And those rotten corpses?  Friends, neighbors, relatives.

O.K.  I feel I’ve made my point.  These people know the real meaning of Interruptions: because of their catastrophes, their lives are changed forever, and seldom do these burdened ones ever feel better.
For them, the Interruption was more like a bomb hitting, not a fly annoying.

So people!  Get a grip!  Stop complaining!  It’s a stupid fly, for God’s sake.  Swat it and get on with it!