Stumbling Over Ant Hills

I’m sure I’m not the only person who feels as I do, but given my “I’d live in a cave if I could” personality, I don’t stumble across many people period, let alone people who are much like me.  So maybe this is more common than I think, but I suspect most people are not quite so susceptible to ant hill stumbling as I am.

I have decided that when I stumble over the littlest of ant or mole hills that there must be something I am supposed to see from ground level.
I can’t imagine any other reason I would have been given the ability to be instantly befuddled, stopped in my tracks and stymied from moving on by the smallest of impediments unless there was some “reason” for it.  I’m not a person who believes in predestination or cosmic micro-management.  I have however learned that I am far more aware or and in charge of what I do than I once thought.  I firmly believe that we shape our lives beyond the conscious, top-level layers of our actions.
But I also know that over-thinking can result in less than optimal results.
I know that visualization works, but I do not know how it works.  Practice?  Yes, probably.  Self-guidance?  Definitely.  Shaping possibilities?  Maybe even more so than simply giving ourselves permission to see obscure, less than likely opportunities and paths can explain.
So rather than beating up myself for “tripping over ant-hills” I have come to realize that these situations actually give me a chance to see a part of the past that shaped me but which I have no conscious memory.  Deconstructing the stumble allows me to discern the shapes of the missing pieces.
Having to put my beloved dog down seems to have kicked my butt  to get out of a long-standing stumble.  Big decisions, like life and death decisions make smaller decisions, like what to toss and what to keep, where to set up a craft center, and similar level decisions much, much easier.
I don’t want to make an awareness of death a motivating factor in my life.  I grieve and then let it go away so I can enjoy life again as fully as possible.  But I am going to try to stumble over fewer ant hills after this period of grieving for my Daisy Doodle the bestest doggie in the whole world, although, as I said, sometimes a stumble allows for a completely different perspective to be gained from the new vantage point.