Unknown Substance

I finished up a lab report this morning. A food nutrient analysis. Basically we took three vials of water then placed different solutions in each along with a known and an unknown substance. Our (as in the lab group I worked with) unknown substance was very clearly Italian dressing. Which made me hungry... not for salad but for an Italian hoagie. I have yet to go and get myself one. However, I have had salad since doing it. Just isn't quite an Italian hoagie.

Anyway, yeah, back to where I was going with this. Positive and negative thoughts. They plague us. Well... I should say the negative ones seem to. Thinking positive is usually good, unless you're just completely doing it with no sense of reality. Then it's just silly.

For this lab, we filled each vial with water. Just as our minds are filled every day with all sorts of stimulis. Once you wake up, you generally... for most of us... start thinking and doing. Sometimes we seem to do without thinking but I believe thinking and doing seem to be what our days consist of. Then... something comes along. We have to go to work and start thinking more in depth, start concentrating a bit more, for example. And this is what I will refer to as our known substance. These are the things we're expecting and we generally know the results. Then we have the unknown substance... the little surprises in our day that can lead us down a road of assuming and guessing and wanting to know. And at that point, whether we think positive or negative will give us either the rest or worry that we wish upon ourselves. In the experiment, the results are a surprise... to a degree... but they're actually very predictable. They'd be much more predictable if we really did know for sure what the substance is... what was going on behind the scenes.

Every couple days I have a situation occur that confuses me. I don't know what's going on but up until today I would assume a negative outcome to what I do not know. Instead of looking at it with common sense, fear takes the wheel. And I start skidding around, emotions all over the place, with no way to stop unless I hit something. But, I'm working on not hitting something. I'm working on taking the wheel back. Two days ago, I took a few deep breaths and allowed reason in. There was a completely rational and reasonable explanation that completely and totally made sense. It had occured to me but for some reason, I allowed myself to think negatively about it and assume I was being done wrong. I wasn't. The rational reason was the correct one.

Today, however, I repeated to myself that I don't actually know what's up. That there could be a million (well, that's an exaggeration) different reasons for what I keep noticing about the neighborhood. And today it worked... and then I was pleasantly surprised. And I was sent a chuckle via email that made me smile bigger than makes sense. Partially because of the source and partially because I finally handled this the right way. I didn't get upset or worked up about my imaginings, I settled myself into reality with a simple "I don't know." Those three words would clear up much confusion for most of us, if we were willing to admit them.

Just like the unknown substance... you may have a hunch but we never seem to really know for sure until it's poured out onto our salad.