Etta sings of impossible choices

Still gasping in Pasadena, the heat, the thing, that wouldn't leave.  Etta James with the chilliest blues was the morning jukebox song.  Meaning of this?  At first, I just listened.  The original recorded version - the shortest - seemed the best choice for clarity of sound and its massive lack of ambiguity. 

We all receive great sacks full of what is unrequested and unwanted, bad surprises and situations harder than we ever dreamed we could handle.  Wiser minds than my own discovered, promise,  that each circumstance brings a gift that is greater than its burden.  It is a lesson, in my case, of slow dawning.  We are called again and again to bear what could be called unbearable.  We are not asked if it is convenient or if it fits into our life or our plan.  It arrives, no return address, and redefines inconvenient, the bomb that blows everything apart.

Over time my gratitude list has as a constant the fact that I'm still here.  Many are not and I don't take for granted or trivialize the fact of resilience.  Though I no longer choose to go back to the sites where, for a time, hope disappeared, when I hear Etta James sing of making what seems her better choice, I get it.  How do I unknow, unsee, unexperience THIS?  I don't know how we do it, just that we do.  And I say, "Thank you."