There's a pebble in my shoe

Yesterday morning my husband, Mike and I took our dogs out for their daily walk. As we headed back towards our house he said, “God... there’s a pebble in my shoe again.” I laughed and said that sounds like a metaphor for life.

When we arrived home I couldn’t stop thinking about how much this simple little statement accurately summed up any and all situations where things feel less than comfortable. Life, relationships, work... pretty much anything

that at times you can tolerate and then sometimes can’t. They could all be described as the pebble in your own shoe.

Think about it.

Occasionally you might put on your shoes and there’s a little pebble or some other little object in your shoe (for me its bird seed), you might not have noticed at first but it's there. Maybe it’s somewhere hidden in the toe area, the heel, perhaps off to the side, or maybe you just have really high arches and it’s found the sweet spot between there and the cushion. You might not even acquire the hitchhiker until sometime during your walk.

Wherever it is you just don’t notice it but its there just waiting for when you least expect it. So you head out on your walk or run, happy as can be and then suddenly, maybe 10 or 20 min in, just when you’re committed to your movement, THERE IT IS. Sneaky! You think, where the hell did that come from? OUCH!

Depending on your footwear or where you are you might not be in a position to remove your shoe to remove said pebble, you might just squiggle your foot around just enough to move it into a less painful spot, a more tolerable spot if you will.

UNTIL... it happens again

This game of noticing, unnoticing or purposefully ignoring might continue until some spot on your foot is either numb from the pressure or slightly burning with pain. Either way you’re most likely going to feel that phantom pebble for the rest of the day and it might suck just as much as it did while you were on your walk.

Maybe you’re not seeing the parallel’s so bear with me here.

Remember this can literally be used as a metaphor for everything but I’m going to stick with life in general for now!

Let’s say life has been a bit rough lately. It may not have started out that way but one day, one thing or many things went wrong and slowly things fell to shit as they sometimes do.

Pebble found.

Then things take a slight upturn, you feel blissfully optimistic, things are tolerable and everything feels better, we are for sure on the upswing.

Pebble is hiding AGAIN.

That lasts for maybe a day or two and suddenly we are back in weeds, hating everything and feeling fed up.

RETURN OF THE PEBBLE who is pretty much laughing at you.

It really is.

This time you just sort of give in to whatever is happening, feeling a bit defeated and/or maybe even think, eventually this will get better. Depends on you and your situation. Things can't get worse right? RIGHT!? You just give in to having the pebble in your shoe. You can’t get rid of it or move it so you just get used to whatever the feeling is or it gets worse.

I’m guessing you see my point now!

I once affectionately referred to such periods in my life as my black cloud days but I think, pebble in my shoe days are far more accurate descriptions and at least it will make me laugh on the worst of days.

Pebbles in our shoes aren’t escapable, it’s either there before you put your shoe on or somehow magically appears on your journey it’s your choice to remove it or deal with it until you can remove it!

So dear readers, how many of you have had situations in your life that can be summed up as simply and comically as just a, pebble in your shoe?

P.s.

(I try not to make a habit of making statements like "things can't get much worse" because you can and will tempt the universe to show you what else it does have and I'm all set. Lesson learned. I hear you Universe, go easy on me)