I slipped and fell this morning

It's easy to forget that stuff gets slippery after it rains, especially after several months of dry weather. As I was gathering some ripe cherry and grape tomatoes from our garden, I lost my footing and fell (not very far, and on a not-too-unforgiving surface -packed down soil). I grabbed onto the side of the raised bed to break the fall, and ended up bruising my hand in the process, and I'll probably have one helluva bruise on my right flank -- neither a big deal. Luckily, I was only carrying a small, plastic bucket (not the big ceramic planter whose contents I had just dumped onto the compost pile), so nothing inanimate was damaged, either.

So I got back up, finished collecting ripe tomatoes, grabbed the ceramic planter, and started thinking about falling in more general terms. I fell, got hurt a little, got back up, and continued with what I was doing. (This wasn't an MS-related fall, by the way. I didn't fall because I got dizzy or lost my balance. I fell because the ground was slippery and I lost my footing; a healthy person might have done the same thing.)

And then I thought: but isn't that a metaphor for life (at least my life)? I fall (or screw up, or fail in some way or other), just as we all do from time to time. Sometimes, I get hurt; sometimes, I don't. But inevitably, regardless of how hurt I feel, I get up and continue on with my life, my 'tasks'. It may sound odd, but that realization turned an unpleasant event into something positive.

Yep. I screw up. Yep, sometimes screwing up causes pain. But I somehow manage to stand up, brush myself off, and move on (limping at times) with what needs to get done.

So here's the challenge: can I focus on getting up rather than falling?