Life is Like Assembling IKEA Furniture Without the Allen Wrench by Julianna Rowe

 LIFE IS LIKE ASSEMBLING IKEA FURNITURE WITHOUT THE ALLEN WRENCH

 by Julianna Rowe

I have decided life is a lot like assembling IKEA furniture without the Allen wrench. You have all the pieces or at least you think you do. There are seventeen screws that look exactly alike except apparently three of them are critically different. The directions have no actual words, just drawings of a cheerful little person who seems to know exactly what he is doing and I already don't like him.

Somewhere around Step Four, you discover that Piece B was supposed to be attached to Piece G before you screwed Piece C into something that now appears to be upside down. Welcome to life! We spend an enormous amount of time believing everybody else received better instructions. They didn't, some people are simply better at pretending they know where Piece G goes.  And life doesn't travel in a straight line either. Neither do the best conversations. They wander through groceries, children, money, pets, relationships, something somebody said twenty years ago, and occasionally whether there are aliens watching us screw up the planet. Then, somewhere between one completely unrelated subject and another, you accidentally discover a truth about yourself.

Those are my favorite conversations. Only certain people can make you laugh, cry and realize you need a breath mint all in the same paragraph. Those are your people. Keep them. Maybe we aren't supposed to have the whole thing figured out. Maybe most of us are walking around with half the instructions missing, one unidentified screw in our pocket and a bookshelf that leans slightly to the left. And maybe that's okay.

Mine may wobble a little, but it's still standing. Now if somebody could just find me the LIFE's Allen wrench.

The Happy News Lady 💛