It's A Wonderful Life

There have been times in my life where woe is me has been something I've said more than once.  As I've gotten older, it has become even more so.  I put on a good front and seem to most people that I have it all together and that nothing really bothers me, but I'm really good at internalizing things and keeping quiet.  I've always been the quiet one.  Inside though, it's pretty much an out of control mess.

In recent months, our family has been going through a pretty severe and stressful financial situation.  Right now, there is little light at the end of our tunnel.  It's a constant weighing pressure.  The internalizing has led to a bit of depression and probably certainly to my lowered immune system causing me to be sick and miss work more than I have probably in my entire life.  I am currently recovering from a bought of pneumonia.  Stress will make you sick.  It has effected our entire family. Some of us cope with it better than others.  My husband is a man of very strong faith.  Faith is not something I'm very good at, I tend to let reality rule me pushing faith to the back of my mind.

But being out of work this last week has allowed me to really have a look at my friends and followers on Facebook.  Somehow, when one is in the woe is me, they think that their situation is worse than anything.  They concentrate on the woe and not on the wonderful.  Until they take a good hard look around at other people's lives.

Right now, a friend has lost a job that they loved and were very good at and a job that helped provide for a family that includes many special needs children.  Another friend is battling stage 4 cancer.  Another friend has a brain tumor.  Another friend is estranged from their children, living alone, and sick.  Another friend, has a child who suffered a traumatic brain injury and everyday is a struggle of a magnitude I could never imagine.  Another friend, is battling drug addiction.  Another friend, is mired in a black depression.  Another friend, just lost their grandfather.  Another friend, lost a child.  Another friend lost their marriage.  Another friend's husband died.  There are friends who are treated badly everyday because of their color, their sexual orientation, their beliefs.  Other friends have just disappeared it seems because they are homeless.  The list goes on and on and on and some of the things are absolutely heartbreaking.

And here is me.  Yes, my situation is not fun and yes, it is stressful, but it is not woe is me.  I have been married for almost 25 years to a man who loves me even with all my failings.  I have 3 grown sons who I think still love me and who without I wouldn't be making it through this situation right now.  These sons are all healthy, hardly been sick much their whole lives and are all good men.  Right now, I have a home filled with 25 years of stuff. Right now, the utilities are on.  Right now, I made myself a cup of coffee. My 25 year collection of Christmas decorations are up.  I am getting over pneumonia and outside of that I'm fairly healthy.  I have closets full of clothes.  I have a good job.  In 5 days I will finish my Bachelor's Degree that I finished in 9 semesters.  I have been accepted into the Master's Degree program.  I have a paid for vehicle to drive that runs.  I have a few really good friends.  I did not wake up dead this morning nor did any of my loved ones.

Woe is me is an easy place to fall into.  It's a very difficult place to get out of.  Some time spent looking around though can offer a new look at life.  I am thankful I got sick enough to have the time to look around and realize, it's a wonderful life.

Rambling

As I haven't posted here in a while I thought I might ramble on a bit about various things.  Bits and pieces of things that run through my mind as I go through life.

Most people truly, deep down, do not care about other people.  If those people do not directly affect them they do not care about them plain and simple.  I see it everyday working in a high school and it is definitely not just the kids.  Words like hopeless, worthless, rotten, criminal, stupid, bad, dumb, loser are used on a regular basis.  Yes, dealing with high school kids is difficult in many instances.  Yes, some of them bring what happens on themselves through bad choices.  But if you believe they are hopeless, worthless, bad, dumb, losers then they will believe it too.  We become what people say we are if they say it to us enough.  People are selfish, rude, uncaring, jaded, stressed, tired and they just don't want to deal with other people's problems. Most of them cannot even deal with their own problems.  The very same kid who heard all those words is homeless, with no parents, the only food they get is at school, very few clothes, and has suffered physical and mental abuse.  But they are just worthless right?  Why not find out a little more about them before the words come out?  And many of these people claim to be Christians.

Stop posting fake news all over the Internet likes it's true.  Take 2 seconds to check it through sites like Snopes.com before you hit share.  Why make yourself look ridiculous by posting false and very often inflammatory things?  No, an entire town in Texas wasn't shut down because 5 people have Ebola.  No, the "alleged" cure for Ebola does not only work on White people because of the melanin in Black people's skin.  No, a Wal-Mart gift card or free iPhone or free X-box is not real.  Come on, two seconds to find out if it's real.  Stop it.

We have become a mass of shallow asses.  When what a Kardashian is doing, or if Lindsay Lohan is wearing underwear, or the next episode of Duck Dynasty is more important than character, or kindness, or love, we have devolved into mindless, heartless media whores.  What do you look for first online, what do you watch on TV most, what is the main topic of conversation with others?  I sincerely doubt it is anything worthwhile.  How do you spend your free time?  Doing something for others who who can do nothing for you?  Not hardly.  We are consumed by what someone who is just famous for being famous is doing every moment of the day that we cannot see someone who needs our help, our kindness, our love right in front of us.  Shallow asses.

So, can you find 5 minutes to find someone who can do nothing for you who needs some kind of help be it financial help, daily needs help such as clothes or food or toothpaste or a coat, someone who just needs someone to talk to that might actually care, a homeless kid who needs food...and don't just throw money at them...do something.  Take 5 minutes out of being selfish, stop posting fake Internet crap, bypass the latest "reality or famous person news" and do something for someone else without expecting anything in return.  Find your local homeless teen organization and go take some soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorant.  Find your local women and children's shelter and take some things for both the moms and the kids.  You could change someone's life....even your own.

The Change

Just as the changing of the seasons, change comes to us all.  There is the change that comes without our control - growing older, outside forces, the infinite march of time.  There is the change that comes with our control - choices.  But change comes and we can either change with it or fight against it, this is also a choice.

For a few years now I've been going through THE CHANGE for women.  It has not been at all pleasant and there are days I wish my female parts would just fall out like so much dried leaves in fall but no such luck. The hormones rage, hot flashes, night sweats, still with PMS most months, sometimes weeks at a time, weepy one day, mad as hell the next at nothing and everything.  It is like riding a never ending roller coaster that offers nothing but stomach turning badness.

This is of course the normal course of things if you are a woman.  Every woman experiences it differently.  It starts at different times for every woman. It can go on for years and years or it can start and end in less than a year.  I know women who say they have had the hot flashes for 20 years.  TWENTY YEARS!  I am going on about my 4th year of this "process" and the thought of a possible 16 more is close to unbearable.  I pray I am not one of those women and I feel sorry for those who are.

This change brings with it not only physical changes, but hormonal and emotional changes as well.  My doctor has told me I still have quite a bit of estrogen going on so I keep a lot of the same "symptoms" as I had previously.  The good thing is I might not dry up and wrinkle as quickly as some others.  The bad thing I still have all the symptoms.

I decided not to take hormones firstly for the risk of breast cancer, which has a history in my family and secondly because of the headaches they give me.  I have tried all sorts of natural and home remedies.  Some have helped, some not so much.  In the end, I think it's just something you have to go through.  Yet another change.

Women seem to experience change more often than men and so it becomes part of their existence, but women can also be some of the biggest change fighters there are.  Women who don't change in their approach to relationships from how they were as teens to what they should be as women.  Women who don't change what they wear from when they were teens to what they are now as women.  Women who keep the cliques and petty gossip and backstabbing they had as high schoolers and keep going with it as women.  The women who have to have plastic surgery after plastic surgery in hopes of remaining the same as they were as teens.  The women who get stuck in a job or a relationship because they are just too afraid to change.

Change can be scary and change can be hard but change is the only way to grow.  All growth, physical, emotional, spiritual, results in change.  All choices result in change.  Not all change is good.  In the end, there is the change that comes regardless of you and the change that comes because of you.  Only you can decide how to confront it.

Stuck

Over the last few weeks I have talked to many people who are stuck.  They live their lives every day in the same way, never moving forward, and never happy.  Seemingly unable to remove themselves from whatever they are stuck in and constantly making everyone around them just as miserable as they have become.

I think there are several reasons why people who are stuck seem unable to remove themselves from the situations they are in.  Fear is probably the number one reason.  Depending on what they are stuck in the fear can manifest itself in many ways.  The fears are almost always either irrational or unjustifiable meaning they are fears created in their own minds but are truly nothing to be afraid of or they are fears that are just excuses and with sometimes even small effort can be overcome.  Some fears are real such as the fear of an abusive partner hurting them or their children if they try to leave, but even a fear as real and as great as this one can be overcome.  First though, a person must be willing to do whatever it takes to move forward.

Doubt is another reason people stay stuck.  They doubt themselves and their ability to be in a place outside of being stuck.  Similar to fear but doubt is a much more insidious creature.  It hovers always in the mind never allowing someone to truly see who they are and what they are capable of.

Comfort is one of the hardest things to overcome when stuck.  People who are stuck in jobs, relationships, etc. can become comfortable with the status quo.  They have an income, or a partner, or a place to live, food to eat, and if they try to move forward that comfort might be upset.  People do not like to be uncomfortable.  Or let me rephrase, people in 1st world countries do not like to be uncomfortable - they like their things far too much.

Misery loves company is another reason people remain stuck.  Some people who are miserable seek out others to make misery with or they just make others miserable.  It becomes who they are.  If they have to suffer so do you and so does everyone else.  They become unbearable work colleagues, or partners, or friends, or people in general.  Which of course makes them more miserable and they make more misery for others, a vicious circle that just keeps going around and around.

It is so much easier to complain than to do.  Doing requires effort.  Doing requires work.  Doing requires discomfort.  Doing requires discipline.  Doing requires movement.  Doing requires progress.  Doing is difficult and for some people they just cannot make themselves do what is required in order to stop living a stuck life.

Living stuck is a choice just like any other choice.  It does not matter where one is stuck or what the reason, the choice can be made to stop being stuck just as it was made to be stuck.  Depending on where one is stuck, the work to get out of the situation can be a fairly simple one or it can be a very difficult one.  Either way, the choice is there to be made every single moment of every single day.  Choose wisely.