Life IS experience!

    I believe we all come to this earth with a purpose, a mission, if you will. Of course, to understand where I'm coming from, you have to believe in an existence before and after this earthly life. Bringing that into the conversation one might see everything as choices we make. Before we came, what if we chose to live through certain difficulties to learn particular attributes. We may have chosen to come to a specific family that would provide these difficulties. Or we might have chosen to come to a particular era so that we would have to live through famine, war or other atrocities. Maybe we came to the perfect family where everything went "according to plan" so that we could learn more subtle things like sympathy for others, or even, having much we could learn to give much. There are endless possible ideas here of course.

    With all of this, we still have the ability to choose what we learn. The book by Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning contains his observances of watching others deal with the ravages of a concentration camp. Of course, this is all while he is living in this hell himself. He noticed that the people who shared what they had, fared better emotionally. Not everyone can stay chipper through this kind of difficulty but even when faced with one small crust of bread every few days, some would share it with others who needed it more. Of course, they all "needed" it so I'm not sure that was the "right" way to phrase it but these people did better overall. 

    By the end of the containment, when they were rescued by friendly soldiers, these people were able to make a new life. Most of the others were not. Many killed themselves because they couldn't live with the nightmares of what, to them, was nothing but intolerable experiences. Positive actions created possibilities and in turn gave some hope but they had to create that hope for themselves in a situation that was impossible to most views.
    If we look at innocents who are acted upon then we have to ask, "What about their choices?" If we totally ignore the idea of them making choices before this earthly life, we could wonder, what if they had the opportunity for forgiveness at the highest level. Putting it in my opinion, I do believe that there is nothing more wrong than hurting an innocent, and by innocent I mean children. I really don't feel I have all the answers, nor do I believe I have all the answers but I do believe that there is a higher plan than we can understand at this time. 

    I would like to know the answers someday. I keep searching for them and maybe I will discover some of them. Until then I choose to believe that there is hope for each one of us no matter what we choose to think, believe or do. By hope I mean a positive outcome....whatever that means for us as individuals.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes(started Aug 2013)

I was going to name this one, "The poison in my life" but I like the song better! :)  It has a more positive quality to it and that is where I am trying to be!

    When I was 2, my mother left my dad and moved to Hawaii. According to her, we had a two room hut and lived just off a ditch. I don't remember much about that time in my life but it has been a source of some problems that I have only recently been introduced to.
    I don't believe we have to know all the things that affected us to be able to let them go but this one was a turning point for me. There were lots of things that happened during that time but one big one was a boyfriend of my mom who (according to my mom) loved me more than he loved her so she couldn't marry him. 

    Now, I had no reason to disbelieve my mom's story until recently. My journey to clean up my disproportionate thinking has brought me to some realizations of some things I was taught by my mother. I've worked past the physical abuse, slogged through some of the mental abuse and learned to love myself just as I am (despite the fact my mom believed I was a punishment from something horrible she did in a past life). 

    Though I always knew she had self esteem issues, I never really understood how that was forced on me until I started looking at the some of my mom's parenting practices that I was led to believe were loving. The song, "You and Me Against the World" by Helen Reddy was "our song." As a 2 year old that is a lot of responsibility! I wasn't old enough to be in the equation. I should have been being taken care of instead of relied on. It was painted as a place of honor. I've decided it was not an honor I no longer want to keep up with it.

    She spent many hours trying to be a better mother to me than she had for herself....at least in her eyes. (I didn't see my grandmother as just an old person trying to get into heaven.) Much of what my mother did, she said would better my life. Too much of it was how she wanted things for herself (things she felt were missing in her childhood) but she left out so many of the things I needed to actually feel the love she said she was showing me. 

    Oh, I knew she loved me, in her own way. Now that my kids are grown, I look back and wonder how many times that my sacrificed needs to give them what they said they wanted, were really understood by them? Or was I just passing buck. My kids are all different than me and not one of them gets me, like I felt like I got my Grammie.
    One thing is certain, my kids all knew they were loved....or at least...they say they always knew I loved them. It was the same thing I told my mother when asked that question.

Being responsible for.....

    It's funny how many stories I hear about some amazing choice some person made only to realize that if that person had failed they would have been considered an idiot for even attempting...whatever they happened to succeed in doing. Then, I hear about someone doing something and all the "judges" out there who wonder why that person even attempted trying to do something so incredibly stupid! If they had succeeded......it would have been courageous, amazing or daring. 

    Who is responsible when someone does something....and fails? At what point do we get to make our own stupid choices? Whose life am I living anyway? Where do the lines of our dumb choices not being allowed to affect others need to be drawn legally? At what level do we become incapable and need to be forced to do the right thing?
    Don't get me wrong. I think there should definitely be laws, but at what level do laws become needful and don't actually cross boundaries of our freedom to choose for ourselves? I personally have lots of opinions on this and I won't list them but suffice it to say, we grow throughout our lives changing our ideas of what is disturbing to others when it comes to our actions. 

    Some laws are truly intrusive and others are for the betterment of the people as a whole. I do believe this. I, however, feel that once we are considered an adult, we should be allowed to make those decisions for ourselves.
    Of course, one can make the argument that if we aren't taught what being responsible means as we grow into said adulthood, then we can't very well make those decisions AS an adult now can we? Hence we have many laws making sure we wear seat belts, helmets and don't mow our yards before 8am(at least in suburbia). All our choices affect others. From the very act of breathing, we are affecting other people.
    Parenting has to be the most prominent in this area. What other job affects others more than parenting a child? Your choices affect that child and from there the effect continues exponentially. For good or ill, we will always(childless or not) affect others. 

    It's about time we realize how much, even in the simplest of actions, we affect those around us. Not to stress us out but to recognize, and be responsible for our part in the good(or bad) of everything that happens around us throughout our lives!

With Fear and Trembling!

 What is it that keeps us from moving forward in our dreams? We listen to stories of amazing people who overcome great odds to achieve a goal, accomplish a task or save a puppy. (usually something innocent.) Then there are the rest of us who start and stop so many times it makes our head spin...and spin and spin. 

    "Find your passion and your goals will be met!" is the new/latest mantra. (ok, not a new concept but new words.) How on earth does one find one's passion (when we aren't allowed to be passionate)? There is a whole world out there and I feel that by the time I get out there, I'm going to be so old and decrepit I won't even be able to see....or walk.

    Ok, now I'm just being negative. :( Such an easy place to be...but not really. Negativity sucks the life from you and leaves you as an empty shell. Maybe I can't write. Maybe I can't sing, but I love to do it anyway. I really don't like writing but I do like to discuss things with others.
    So many things have changed for me in the last year that I find myself unable to really paraphrase it all.  I've "discovered" myself and found I love and hate myself(maybe I should have a one on one with Smeagol(I love spelling correcting software!)).  I feel I really do have good points to discuss that I was not aware of(I mean how could there have been any good in me if I was a punishment for my mom from one of her past lives as she would often say to me?) 

    I am a great listener(or so I was told before I had kids) and I do get things done. I'm a doer, a finisher and I am learning to love the process as well(not easy as most of those in my life are resisting, complaining and pointing out what's wrong with what and how I'm doing).  

    It's like contrast has got to become a friend or by the end you are so angry it's not worth having done it, whatever you're doing(that's assuming you don't get so frustrated you quit part way through). Now that my kids are almost all grown(my dh will never grow up) and gone (one left with a desire to never need me again...unless he wants something), I find it hard to transition to rocking chair on the porch. 

    Almost 16 years of homeschooling 5 kids will take it's toll! Having been so busy(that was my favourite part!!!) and moving to a time in my life where I'm "bored"(just like I told my kids they should NEVER be) makes me wonder if I'm really through. 

    Looking for my passion and missing the mark...so far. ;) It's out there....or rather, in me somewhere and I plan on finding it sooner than later. Preferably before I'm too old to not enjoy it, whatever IT is. It will be GREAT!!!

Addiction vs stupidity

So, the longer I live with aches and pains as part of life, the more I think it's normal.  For years, as far back as Adam and Eve, people have lived with adversity. I often wonder if Adam and Eve had any aches and pains....other than working the fields and BIRTH!  I mean their bodies were not born but created by a heavenly parent.  I suspect their bodies were perfect in make unlike today where we have all sorts of maladies.  But I digress......

Aches and pains have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember.  There have been lots of ideas for "solutions" to these present day maladies but how does one depict the good solutions from the crazy?  Besides deciding one makes sense over another, there are feelings that can keep us motivated when it seems like a "solution" isn't working.  Sometimes even this is just a waste of time but we think we are moving forward in our quest for relief so everything seems to work out ok.

Now let's look at the other side.  The, what makes our pain worse, side.  Again we see lots of suggestions but which ones are real?  Sometimes it's easy to decide when something makes us feel worse because we are doubled over in pain and there is no doubt where it came from.  Other times we think back to try to remember which foods we ate recently, what activities could have contributed or which choices we have been told would cause such mind numbing suffering.  Sometimes we even know the culprit but continue to doubt because it's easier than admitting we can't eat chocolate anymore. These are the times we can ask the question, "Does this "need" for this item/activity come from an addiction or is it just my stupidity(pride)?"

Against oneself or comfortable in our own skin

    When learning about oneself, it can be hard not to take what other's have said and use that against ourself!

    I have been, again, traversing an educational "course" that depicts aspects about actions, facial features and thinking processes. The next stage is energy levels. This, I'm interested in because for years I have been told who I am and I find I either fight it or acclimate to what I'm told. (I fight it a lot!) 

    My mother liked to tell me I was stubborn and selfish. As an adult I have not met too many people as selfish as my mother....and yet she had a "seemingly" unselfish side too....as long as she made clear all that she had done and sacrificed (especially the sacrifices) to do whatever she had accomplished "for you." (I digress.)

    It's funny to me that I was doing fine until the part where this course claimed what came next would be fun. This I struggled with and it took a week for me to get through one 20 min. session. I had to go back multiple times as well.  (though luckily not a week each time) I am the dynamic type. The one everyone thinks is too pushy or assertive.  Amazingly, I seem to be the only one who gets things done in my immediate family. I wonder why.

    See, the "course" I'm following recognizes our traits and focuses them as strengths instead of detailing how the "downsides" need to be "fixed." It does acknowledge that some traits are difficult for some people but interestingly that tends to be due to how their own traits function. (Funny that!) 

    For instance, a person who tends to be calm, cool and relaxed can find someone like me maddeningly boorish! I had decided that calm, cool and relaxed people were boring, lazy and undependable. They seem to never get things done. At least, I used to feel that way.  : } 

    It seems to always come down to perspective. How we view someone determines whether we get along with that person or not. That would include our perceptions about ourselves.  If we think of ourselves as boorish or lazy then we tend to dislike ourselves because those negative words don't take into account the benefits those traits can be, nor does it recognize more positive ways to describe them.  If we see ourselves as assertive or relaxed then we may be more comfortable in our own skin, assuming you don't see either of these words as negative.  Definitions of words mean different things to different people.  

    If we change our views, maybe we can see the positives someone can be in particular situations. Even if we don't want to be around that person, maybe we can still choose to view them differently which will change our perspective of them.

Our future?

    Where are we headed? What is it that we see? Where are the dreams this country was built upon? When are we going to recognize our worth, our responsibilities, our rights, our freedoms?

    There is an empty hole being created where our once great ideals used to exist. We are no longer standing for something. We are being led to the slaughter and going willingly. We are being told to destroy our rights, our freedoms and our standards and replace them with ideals that are making us weaker and more vulnerable. And the scariest thing about it all is that we are enthusiastically following along.