Freeze Protection

It is cold here. Not arctic cold, or even Minnesota cold, but seriously cold for Southeast Louisiana. Temperatures below freezing are not normal in this geography, and our homes and our lives are not designed to cope well when it gets very cold. We don't winterize our swimming pools here, in fact, many people heat their pools and swim on the warmer winter days. To provide for these unusual cold snaps, most pool control systems have a freeze protection mode that automatically turns on the heater and the circulating pump if the temperature gets too cold. My pool is currently in freeze protection mode.

I am spending an anxious couple of days as I am relying on something I don't understand very well to protect an asset I have invested a lot of time and emotion in.

Unusual weather events always serve to remind me how very little control we have over our lives. We can do all the recommended things, eat right, get plenty of rest, study hard in school, get a good job, save money, follow the rules; and a blizzard, or a tornado, or a hurricane can wreck our carefully constructed lives in a matter of moments.

Which is why in addition to all those recommended things, we also have to live. We have to find and nurture love, and family and connection. We have to seek joyful experiences. We have to let grievances go, and sometimes people too.

Because all the control we really have is over the moment we are in, and how we are choosing to respond to it.

This weather event will pass, and hopefully without undue damage or heartache for anyone in the impacted area.

And I will take to heart this reminder that there is so much out of our control, and so it is very important to control what we can. And mostly, that is deciding how to respond to the things we can't control.