You Can't Rush It

It has come to my attention that life, while requiring a go get it attitude, causes those who choose to progress to develop one characteristic in particular. While life has demands that must be met, there is one aspect that is only learned through the various experiences and trials. This aspect or characteristic of life is called PATIENCE...
The type of patience I speak of is not the kind we use when we are in a rush and the other driver is slow. (I hate that). It is not the kind of patience we use when the fast food restaurant tells you to pull forward and they will bring it out. (Hate that as well) It's not even the kind of patience that we use when we are waiting on a response to an email, letter, or text. It's a different kind.
I'm talking about the kind of patience where you must wait for your time to come. That's different than the regular old patience at use in daily life. You see with those other types of patience, it's not too hard to use it because we know the slow driver will turn off. We know the poorly paid people at the restaurant will bring the fries eventually. We also know/hope that our attempts at communication will be met favorably. (You will either receive a response or not. Either way you get a answer). With the other more intense form of patience, the end results aren't always known or even foreshadowed.
When you start talking about waiting for your time to come, not only do you have to wait but you also have to be able to recognize it when you see it. This patience comes with secondary structures and caveats.... This is the kind of patience that must be used when dealing with unhealthy relatives and immature partners in relationships. It's a particular type of patience that only reveals itself to those who have been in circumstances that called for it. You don't have that patience if you are currently in a situation, only when you have been burned in the fire and can see it the rear view mirror of your life.
In my daily thinking time, I have wondered about the inner strength that I seem to possess. I wondered how I have been able to endure some of my own personal struggles without falling into the well of depression and decadence that so many fling themselves into. What I realized is that I owe appreciation and gratitude to all of those people, places, and things that have made solid attempts to wreck my life. Those are the things that allow me to shrug of the disappointments of today and tomorrow. (That along with managing expectations).
I said all of that to get to this point. Because the toll of that type of patience takes on the life of the user, one thing is certain. Those who possess it should be more cautious about having to use it. How do you know when you have to use it? You don't know. So the truth about it is, you can't rush it. You can't rush anything. Take your time when it comes to any event that may leave you having to display that type of patience. In your relationships, large purchases, life changing decisions, and spiritual walk,....don't rush it. I'm not telling anyone how to live, just how to live easy. Let it come to you in the process of going to get it......whatever "it" is.

We Don't Want To Know

    There are many questions that swirl in our minds..what do I do now?..who am I?..who are you?..what did you say??!!.. For most situations, especially the ones with readily available answers, we are conditioned to ask. We ask people questions when we already know the answer just to see if they will lie..and then we ask why did you lie!! Life is all about answers to questions because it fills our need for information, fulfillment, and directions. The problem comes when the question and the answer hit a little too close to home (pauses and shakes head).
       See when the question becomes why did this happen? or what was/is my role in the situation, answers are far and few between. Aside from blaming someone else or diverting the conversation, the truth about it is, we don't want to know. None of us really want to look at our situation, whether its financial, relationship, or anything personal, and say the answer to it is that I messed up big time. We see it time and time again. Walk with me here....the husband who cheats on his wife and then presents the argument that SHE is the one who won't forgive him.. the wife who leaves her husband, takes the child, and then says HE is not really around...What about this one..the prisoner who says THEY got me locked up and won't let me out. See the answer to all of these things is the same. If YOU are involved, then the bulk of the responsibility is YOURS!! We don't want to know that though. We would rather blame or beautify to diminish our own involvement when the answer looks at us in the mirror every day.
         Don't believe me? Check this out..We have created a whole market and business cycle solely dedicated to this. It's called counseling. Now instead of examining ourselves and making strides to do better in life, we would rather take one last shot at convincing someone that we can't see the problem or don't know what it is. So we pay people to tell us the basic things that we have chosen to be blind to. Counseling is not a scientific breakthrough, it's the outsourcing of our personal responsibility to better ourselves and the world around us. The next time you can't figure out what's going on or why everything seems to be happening to you..look in the mirror and you will see why.
       No one treats you bad, you let them. No one made you leave, you packed up. No one took your money, you allowed it to be taken. No one set you up, you made yourself available. The truth about it is our inner me is our worst enemy.

Do You Know Me?

         Ahhh..social media. It's the way we communicate now a days. We use it to catch up with old friends, look at pics of people we can't have, make new acquaintances, and yes, sadly, tell all of our business. For months now I have been baffled by all of the people, more ladies than men, who take offense to a twitter follower or facebook friend speaking to them or attempting to engage in conversation.
          Maybe it's the fault of your friend/follower..or maybe, just maybe, you have it screwed up in your mind. See the truth about it is, those people know you. Do they know your wants and desires or innermost secrets? Hell yeah because you create an image of who you are with every entry into one of the social sites. There may be some things held back. There may be characteristics that you push to the forefront, but all in all they know the you that has been presented.
        The problem here lies in the feeling of ownership. WTF? Yes the feeling of ownership that we attach to "our" facebook page or "our" tweets. Did we not learn anything from Anthony Weiner? I know, I know...who? The congressman that sent out nasty twitter pics. For some reason in his thought process, he thought that he was the owner of the pic, the transmission, and the destination. It's the same with us. I said us because sometimes I am talking to myself as well.. We don't own any of that!
       The right to privacy that so many of us assign to "our" social media apps is completely and utterly made up. The fact that you access and participate in it means you have just signed a waiver of expected privacy. What does that mean? You have NO privacy.. The funny thing is, that's what it's all about. These sights were created to bring down the barriers of communication, distance, difficulty in meeting, and sharing.
         At the root of it all it is an exercise in computer based society. That's why societal dynamics are present. Ever seen someone get mad on facebook and want to fight? Ever read someone's tweet when they try to put someone on blast? Ever read a threat of the dreaded unfriend button? Ever not been accepted as a friend? That's the same kind of stuff that happens in a normal third grade class. Somebody gets talked about then mad then they are not friends and finally it's a fight.
       At the end of the day, it comes down to a simple question...before you get mad and possesive..pose this hypothetical question to yourself. Does this person know me? If you post a lot or tweet a lot, that person probably knows more about you than you realize. All those times when you type out that frustration, or make a quick joke about the inappropriately dressed woman at the club, or tell the world about your happiness and sorrows, or even when you list out what you are having for dinner you are creating the person that your readers know. So when you ask, "Do you know me?", the truth about it is...they do

What Did You Expect??

I have come to the conclusion that events, actions, and situations are not the things that empower, change, or hurt us. While they may seem to overtake our normal, everyday lives..we tend to give these things more credit than they deserve. Whatever it is that may be or occur, it is not the power of those things that shapes our reaction, it is the ill preparedness we have undertaken leading up to "it".
   
    It really doesn't matter who gets sick or who passes (sheds tear lost some family recently) or what someone said/did or the impact of natural disaster, the truth about it is we should have known and been ready for it. Don't believe me? Hmmmph. Tell me in what category do the statistics tilt in your favor. I don't want to get into a lot of numbers because it doesn't take all that so follow my thinking if you will. Do you think that if you continue to drive that you won't have an accident? Did you believe that when your child was born that they would never get sick? How about when you joined that church, did you think that it was going to be drama free? Did you really think your marriage would last? Did you think that with all of your vitality that you wouldn't get older or sick? Did you think the authoritative forces in your life would live forever? When you bought that house did you honestly believe that it would never be challenged? I could ask those questions forever and the answers to them would probably be similar if not the same.
           
    In our quest to be happy most of us fail to prepare for the worst. Pessimistic...no. Realistic...no. Those are glass categories that actually mean nothing in the grand scheme of things. How about prepared. Yes. That is the category we should be trying to be cast in. Not prepared in the sense of a prenuptial agreement or insurance (home/health) but prepared mentally for everything to go in the direction away from what we want. For some uncanny reason when I actually find myself saying, "I knew that was going to happen..", it just seems to not be so bad. I have come to realize that in those times, even though whatever it is may be horrible, I have prepared myself by controlling my expectations. That does not mean that disappointment doesn't come-a-knocking, nor does it mean that I don't recognize disaster. What it does mean is that based on my expectations part of me has already prepared itself to come up with a contingency plan.
         
   Let me explain...for whatever happens, its only a problem, failure, or serious issue when placed in direct comparison to the ideal. If I go out right now and total my car (that would be TRAGIC!!!), I do know that at some point and time I will probably get into a horrible accident..(praying the one I was in was the only 1). But honestly, the odds of me never having another accident would make me bet against myself. Likewise the odds of maintaining or holding on to anything I admire, want, or need would have me placing the same bet. This is not an attempt to bring myself down or anything, just to say ok it's 11 eggs in this basket let me put at least one somewhere else.
 
   So the next time it rains in your life, or someone hurts you, or you are let down ask yourself this one question....what did you expect??