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Mark & Molly
I couldn’t post this when I wrote it, so here it is now…Molly’s Note and My Grief
9/30/10 – Midnite
This is a time of year that is very emotionally charged for me. Mama’s birthday is 9/28 and ever since mama passed away, I can get fussy around this time. Now my foster son and daughter-in-law have decided to move 3000 miles away and it is a decision that they make on purpose – and because I feel grief about this decision, it makes me think of mama and then of course, I think of Travis. Travis, the father of all of these kids…
Grief is an odd emotion, I say that it is an emotion that “comes upon me”, it sweeps me into a vortex that I do not know is coming. Sometimes, around mama’s birthday, I will brace myself for the grief and it does not come, and then one day that is of no matter, the grief will come and wash me away. I cannot say when grief will come, or when it will go.
So it is, that this day I reflect on Molly’s note – as she tells me good bye – and I must feel my grief for a separation that is chosen. Because Mark & Molly purposefully wish to leave, my grief is shaded with anger. This reminds me of how I felt when Travis died, because it seemed so unnecessary for him to die so young, so quickly, so unexpectedly of his “one and only” heart attack. See, as much as I miss mama, I felt that her death was probably unavoidable, hence no anger accompanied my grief. Not so with Travis’ death, for him, I felt intense anger, anger that he did not take care of himself, anger that his family was not enough motivation for him to care for himself and finally, anger that he would dare abandon us!
Ack – I know – a separation is not death! It’s just that, when Rhea moved 842 miles away, I knew that she did it necessarily and so I was not angry. I am angry with Mark & Molly for unnecessarily leaving me. They are choosing to be away from me, choosing to allow me to miss their lives. Two weeks ago, I spent 3 wonderful days with my stepdaughter, who necessarily left me and got married. I proceeded to miss my stepdaughter’s children, proceeded to miss my stepdaughter’s evolution into a beautiful woman. I missed all of that and I grieve for that. Why must I grieve more? Why must I grieve for Mark & Molly?
So for those separations that I deem necessary, I am not angry – but always – the grief is there. But here, here is the other piece: I love them, all three of them, Mark, Molly and their beautiful daughter Lily. Who am I to selfishly hold my family to me? Who am I to with-hold a beautiful universe from them? What matter is my emotion to the actions of my kids? I do not think they dismiss me, but truly, can you drive your life based on the emotions of your parents, children or siblings? No, of course you cannot. You must “drive” your life based on your compass, based on your direction, based on who you are.
To Mark & Molly; I salute you! Good for you for being so brave! My grief will wax and wane, my anger will surely wane, but the emotion that will never change is my love. My love just stays there in my heart for you and it will be there in my heart when you return. In the meantime, I hope that I do not miss too much.
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Positivity
How you feel about yourself:*should never be about someone else.*should never be about how you look, or how you are dressed.*should never be about how much money you make, have, or put into the bank.*should never be about what hair stylist or jeweler you visit.Confidence must be ingrained into yourself.Do it in a way that does not falter because of life circumstances.This is a discipline, it is not an accident to be confident, it is not a maybe, it is. -
Planned Obsolescence
I found out about “planned obsolescence” about 30 years ago when I was doing insurance restoration work with my (then) husband. People who suffer from water damage in their home often have a rusted out water heater that just gives away one day. Now a good water heater has a glass tank, which (of course) never rusts. It seems that water heater companies quit making them with glass tanks because the water heater would then last forever. No way to sell new water heaters. So planned obsolescence is a way for a manufacturer to ruin it’s own product so that the customer will need to buy it again (i.e. water heater without a glass tank, therefor rusts).Now for my current suspicions about manufacturers and retailers. It has been known for decades now, by software developers everywhere, that the average human will only stare at a blank screen for 7 seconds. At the 7th second you need to produce something on the computer screen or your client will look away and start doing something else.
Now software engineers can do just about anything with programming, I imagine that at some point they will produce angels who dance on pin tips, so I do not question ability. That is why my current cell phone experience is suspect. Cell phone companies want you to re-sign a contract every 2 years. They force, lure, blackmail, promise anything to keep people on their calling plans. Every 2 years, they offer a latest gizmo phone and will discount the price of the phone if you will just sign another 2 year contract. I do not like the contracts. Every single time I have been in one, something has happened to make my life difficult( – oh well). This last time, I went ahead and signed the two year contract, because I needed the phones, the price and the service. It just happened that way. Ever since last December, my contract has been expired. How cool is that?
Well wait ’til you hear this… about six months ago my phone started this odd little delay after I dialed a phone number. As a matter of fact that delay is 11 seconds. How interesting is that? Normally a person would say, gee, my phone doesn’t work, I think I will go and get a new one. I am so annoyed I do not want to do that! I think that my phone company has a computer chip in my phone that says – delay phone calls by 11 seconds after 25 months of service.
Yep, I’m a conspiracy theorist. I think that mega-manufacturer’s will do anything for the almighty dollar, it’s the American way. I think that includes manufacturing objects that will quit working on a certain date. Thank goodness that right now at this point in time, I do not need the latest, greatest and fastest phone. In the meantime, I will find a phone and pay for it myself so that I do not need to sign another contract. I feel good, they didn’t “get” me this time, ha-ha!
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Loving Nature…And How it Can Be Lost
Out of love comes kindness. Love makes us interpret all things as good. When we love someone we see their actions as noble, elegant, or even if clumsy “they are trying”. Loving is a way of seeing people and optimism is a way of seeing life. Some people have a loving nature. Most mothers and fathers are instinctively loving towards their children. It is a good thing too, because humans really do need an unconditionally loving set of eyes to help them through life.When people are hurt, they often believe that their pain entitles them to anger (and it does) and they often believe that they can use that anger to attack other people with. This is not so, in the normal everyday-ness of life. It is extremely inappropriate to attack other people with your anger, no matter how bad your hurt is.
There are a couple of reasons for this, the number one reason is that when we are the most angry is often immediately after the event that caused us pain, if we lash out at this point we are highly likely to include misunderstandings into the experience. Often people get upset for no good reason except they did not hear something the way that it was meant.
The next reason why you should not lash out at someone else because of your pain, is because most often others are not the cause of your pain. In the rarest of circumstances can you blame your pain specifically on the object of your anger. Unless someone recklessly hit you with their fist or run over your friend with a car, very seldom does the anger truly match the situation.
And here is the other and final piece…like loving someone and being optimistic creates good behavior and blue skies, being angry creates a malicious criticism that may or may not be anchored in reality. What can happen is that a truly loving person ends up being, acting and living in an angry and bitter way.
How awful is that?
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Viciousness
Some people are just vicious. Visciousness is an over-riding behavior for them. In any situation they will turn to viciousness. If they are happy, they will viciously exclude everyone else. If they are sad they will viciously lash out at those who made them sad. No matter what, they have a default behavior of viciousness. I do not think that is sad, however what is sad is that normal and happy human beings do not “get it”. Normal human beings are cast into a state of disbelief of the viciousness and because of this, they fail to recognize it and they fail to make corrections. That is why so many women are brutalized and killed by their boyfriends/male partners/husbands each year. They fail to recognize, acknowledge and correct for viciousness.This viciousness is not to be confused with occasional viciousness, which is a whole different thing. Very good people may sometimes fall prey to very intense feelings and then act viciously. It is never excusable – by its nature viciousness is unforgivable. Yet, good people have been known to engage in vicious behavior. A vicious person is a whole different type of person – and that is where we get confused – we think that it is a mistake, a misinterpretation or an event that will not occur again. I think that good people, “regular” people should get better at recognizing the former (vicious person) from the latter (good person engaging in a once vicious act). We must get better at recognizing the difference and ALL of us must get better at this, otherwise, a whole lot of more harm is going to continue to happen to disbelieving and unsuspecting good people.
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I AM NOT SURE I UNDERSTAND THIS!
Why would any woman vote for a presidential candidate who says, they do not support birth control and want to “do away with Planned Parenthood”?Why would any woman in America support that? Forget about the fact that women are marginalized by paying them less and by not giving them access to health care. Forget about the fact that it is women and children who are the majority of those living in poverty. If you do not belong to one of these groups, then why wouldn’t you support your sister, mother, friend or daughter by supporting presidential candidates who want to take care of women’s health?
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Do Not Look to TV or Magazines to Learn About Life…
You will be very confused. First of all, we are not all that pretty. We are certainly not all of that pretty all of the time. Happy endings are for sometimes, not ALL of the time! There is so much about life that is mundane and you will certainly never understand that from a TV show. It is OKAY to be mundane, however if you believe in TV you will think that it is not okay to be mundane. You will also believe that you must be beautiful and perfectly toned. You will punish yourself for never being able to accomplish this mythical beauty. So you will have earned yourself a healthy dose of unhappiness if you believe in TV.Many movies are about justice and happiness. The world is not a just place. It takes humans to create justice. If you watch movies you may think that justice will occur. You will believe that if you go to court, some well meaning people will assure that no injustice will harm you. Of course, this is not true. In order to have justice, you must construct it. Justice occurs only when we make it happen.
We can, and often do, live in very small places that we call our world. I think that this is okay. I also think that it is important to understand that our world is small in comparison to “the” world. I think that we should have this knowledge as a base for our endeavors. By acknowledging our limited scope, we will be less judgmental about ourselves (it is okay if you are not pretty and in perfect physical health), and we will be less judgmental about others (yes Europeans are more likely to eat protein for breakfast).
Being open, being flexible, these are choices that will serve us because we will be able to see beyond ourselves. Intuitively, you would think that TV would help us with that…
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Some People
Will treat other people like there is no line that they cannot cross. I always want to tell people who do this that even if you cannot see the line, I promise you, the line is there! You think it is okay to ignore your friend’s feelings, don’t do it! You think it is okay to talk over people and ignore what they have to say, don’t do it! Your person will catch on, or – even more likely, your person knows that you are insensitive and/or lying and is consciously “letting it slide”. Eventually, you will be sorry that you are an insensitive clod. -
More Dangerous than Evil
More Dangerous than Evil is for the rest of us to be passive and go along with evil in order to preserve our own personal survival. This is the lesson of World War II and all of the practiced genocides which have occurred since then.Please don’t get me wrong, I do not dismiss the heroes. There are countless heroes. However, the current mortgage crisis shows us that there are many more people who are willing and able to be passive and even active for their own selfish gains or because they perceive an inability to survive excepting their current situation. Many people believe that if they do not stay quiet about their boss’s cheating – not only will they lose their current job, but they risk a life time of work as they become labeled a whistle blower. Let’s face it, people with integrity and willingness to speak out are in the very minor minority.
I know and understand the complete and abject panic one can feel when employed by a very bad person, there is a strong possibility that you will end up on the streets within a very small amount of time. More and more, people are forced to swallow their integrity so that they can feed their family.
How do you know when this passivity is ridiculously over the line? Well in the case of head Coach Joe Paterno and his friend Jerry Sandusky, how could you NOT know that the line was crossed? How can Joe Paterno have believed that his wealth and the institution of Pennsylvania State was more important than the health and welfare of human beings. Can we say Nazi?
Millions of people around the world sat idly by while the Nazis committed awful atrocities on human bodies and then committed millions of murders. As humans, didn’t we learn anything? What stories were people telling themselves to ignore the truth?
What stories did the staff at Penn State tell themselves? Courtesy of the internet and emails, we understand that Joe Paterno and his board cronies had decided that Penn State as a football icon was much more important than the children that Sandusky was raping. So why didn’t they fire him and get rid of him, why not? Why instead was he able to use the university as his cover to continue committing crimes? Why?