We Do Drama--Choosing to live Drama free

What makes for good TV does not make for a good life.

Living a drama free life generally begins with us. I know what you’re thinking. “Easy for you to say. You don’t know the garbage I put up with every day.”

You’re right. I don’t. I just know the garbage I put up with. And most of our garbage isn’t that different from the next person’s. I’ll bet someone you know and love is battling a terminal illness. Someone lies to get what she wants. Someone else isn’t a good parent. Someone just lost his job. Or should lose his job because he’s a terrible employee you can’t depend on. Someone in the family steals from your house every time they know you're out of town. Someone doesn’t respect his parents and takes advantage of their devotion to him. Someone is cheating on her husband. Someone else is cheating on their taxes. Someone is deep in debt and facing bankruptcy, foreclosure, the end of a relationship, or just embarrassment.

The other day a friend told me if everyone put their problems on the table to exchange with someone else, they would end up taking their own problems back.

At first glance it doesn’t seem likely. I would love the opportunity to exchange my problems with someone else. I don’t want them back. But after considering for a moment the potential problems of another…well, I guess I’m better off with what I have.

All this brings us back to my first assertion that our drama begins and ends with us. How is it possible when so much that goes on in our lives is outside our control? Few of us would choose to have our spouse cheat on us. We never asked for a loved one—or ourselves—to get cancer. Or for our adult child to lie to us to get what they want.

We can’t help most of the stuff that happens. However, we can help the way we react to it. I don’t want drama in my life. I hate it. I don’t like the affects of stress on my health, my complexion, my sleep patterns. I want to finish each day knowing I did the best I could with the last twenty-four hours and pray for God’s grace to help me handle what the next twenty-four will bring.

I don’t want to toss and turn and worry about who said what, and why did she say that, and how can I get through to so-and-so who is throwing his life away and why don’t people listen when the solution is so obvious.

There are others, though, who seem to relish the drama life brings. They get into fights and post pictures of the damage on social media. They broadcast family squabbles and then wonder why the other person isn’t rushing to them to make amends. They pick and pick at a scab and never figure out why it won’t heal.

For me, the key to living a drama free life is to not dive into a mess that often isn’t my mess. We can’t control so much of what goes on around us. But we can control the way we react to it. Much of the drama in our lives is drama we had no business picking up. We let ourselves be pulled into situations that are either none of our business or we can’t change anyway. Or the person really doesn’t want help; they just want someone to commiserate with their anger or indignation.

Keeping out of the fray is tough, especially when it involves someone we love who is being taken advantage of or going down a wrong path. Much of the time, the drama does directly affect us. We can choose to let it consume us and ruin our day or accept the way things are and deal with it in a rational, adult, drama-free manner.