Because He Knows I Love Him

During the month of October in 2016, my dear beloved Mason (I also have the usually a pleasure of residing with Bastion, his black tabby brother), went through a rather terrifying series of events resulting from an error in medication that essentially poisoned him and nearly killed him. (So far, he’s still with us!)

There have been many new experiences and some new thoughts through all this.  I had a few realizations, and at least a few I would like to share, from when Mason was staying at the kitty hospital:

When he passes from me, when my heart breaks, tomorrow or years from now, it doesn’t matter, I will be at some base level okay with it.  Because he knows that I love him.  I may get angry or frustrated and I’m not always a great companion but I love him and them, so completely.

It is always in my heart and sometimes I wonder if they do know it’s always there, if he wonders why I torture him so with this vet.  And then I truly see him, just as he is.  He knows I love him.  And that I take his love into me, deeply and completely.

And he forgives me when I fail to take his offering of love in the moment, preferring to do whatever it is before my eyes.

And I forgive him and them for when they want nothing to do with me.

None of us are perfect, but we love, deeply, wholly, completely.  And so I fear, and one day I will grieve, and I will still know myself blessed and without regret, because he knows I love him, just as deeply as I know he loves me.  (And I hope he forgives me the vet trip [naturally he does, all turns out fine].  I miss him and I want to hold him.  And hopefully get to bask in his love again {please forgive me for the indignities!}).  He lives, we continue, we love and will love.  I could really use a period of easy, calm day-to-day normalness though.

I am oddly proud of how I have handled it all.  I stayed with the moment, all the moments.  I have stayed with my feelings.  I did not anticipate the potential depth of problems (much), iotw I didn’t pre-worry about what might happen; I stayed with what was actually happening.  I was present, fully and completely, for him (and his brother).  I did what I needed to do to look after them first, our home second, me third (with the total exception to the above for the necessary basics to keep me going:  work, food, sleep).  And I stayed connected to them both, as much as possible, in each moment as they came.

Tonight precursors the future.  It is myself and one brother cat.  The other isn’t here.  One day this will happen.  Unless by some bizarre circumstance both of them go at the same time, there will be a day when this is the reality.  One cat.  Brother gone.  Just two of us (plus snakes shhhh).  We will go from 3 to 2.  (And then 1 but shhhh on that too, we really needn’t talk of it now, eh?).  My heart will break.  But only because it has been so completely filled.

Self Care

I recently read a great article on self care.  As we discussed it briefly on FB, I summed up a friend’s commentary as “self care is setting yourself up for future success”.

Self care can be bunny slippers, hot baths, pedicures and long walks.

Yet more often these days I see self care as taking a nap when I realize I’m getting too tired.  Forcing myself to take care of at least one practical thing per day.  Eating healthy food as much as my energy levels can manage.  Trying to keep my place organized and cleaned as I can so that when I want to do something I don’t need to clean or find things in order to do it.

The more prepared I am.  The more organized things are.  The easier everything else gets.

I am told that I am efficient.

I am not efficient (well, I am, but that’s not how I define it).  I’m not, I’m lazy.  I want to make the least amount of effort possible to make things happen because (sometimes) I’m lazy or (sometimes) I’m just too tired to be able to do more than the bare minimum.

Self care ties into efficiency.  It says that since a lack of energy is typically part of the need for self care, the more efficient we can be, the less energy we will need.  Then the better we will feel.

Fear and helplessness and anxiety and depression are also often behind the need for self care.  If our lives, at a basic level, are being managed, then we will feel better.

This is not fun.  It is not easy.  It is not the joy of avoiding life in order to look after ourselves.  It is recognizing that dealing with life is a necessary part of looking after ourselves.

Adulting is often self care.

We do not need to do this to the point of making ourselves crazy again.  But making the effort to see ourselves fed?  Rested?  Rent and utilities paid?  That means something less to worry about later.

That’s a nice way to look at it sometimes.  To go, if I do this now, how much easier will it make life later?  Matched by, if we’re too tired in the moment to handle things, can this thing wait until later until I have the energy to handle it?

Self care is about taking care of what’s necessary and recognizing that part of what is necessary is that we feel rested and healthy at the end of it.  Which is why I say it is setting us up for future success.  It’s easy to fall down the rabbit hole.  But with some good choices when we can, we can set ourselves up for the best future we are capable of making for ourselves:  tonight, tomorrow, and onwards.

~Violet
The Abysmal Witch

Chinook at rest

I am a delicate flower

Delicate Flower

I am raw.
My edges bruise at the faintest touch
Like a peach balanced at the edge of over ripe
Each difficulty
Each push back
Each slight murmur of error
And I am burnt with shame
Enfolded in fear
Lost in doubt
With just a soupçon of rage underlying it all

I seek bold
Fearless
UNSTOPPABLE (I’m looking at you t-rex)

These states run from me
Faster than I can chase
Or even see
And I am touched
By disquiet, disturbance, distrust
Failure looms not (not truly, not in this moment)
Yet is is my sword of Damocles
I am cursed by its weight
“I’m not touching you”
It says like an eight year old in the throes of being eight
And as unignorable
I can think of nothing else
I consider tossing away my Work
Easier to do that than live with fear
Easier to do nothing than be bound
By anxiety never-ending

I am a delicate flower
Without the luxury of living safe

I am a delicate flower and I am afraid.

 

I know

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I know that Venus is retrograde.  She tugs on my emotions, upon the depths of my heart within my soul and spirit.  The depths of old pains are risen up to the surface to demand their place in the moment, this moment, regardless of my wants or desires.

I know that I have had recent loss.  I miss my baby-girl (cat), eighteen and a half years was not enough and though she slept all day and I wouldn’t see her for hours, she was there, always present now gone.  Loss is in me, clear and supple in its freshness.

I know that August is an historically difficult month for me, for reasons even I don’t understand.  Depression caws and calls and laughs bitter jokes at my expense, irrespective of what I think or what I do.

I know my fears about the success of my new career.  Doubts abound, failure seemingly a looming danger growing with each week.

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Knowing changes nothing on fear, knowing only allows a modicum of delusion, a dollop of superficial control over the emotion itself.  It is dancing ants across the nape of my neck, cavorting in style over my not-yet-dead-corpse.

Knowing changes nothing.  I sit and feel.  Pain, sorrow, loss, fear, ragged shards pushing out from my core and piercing me, inside to out.  I am jagged and fraught with danger even to myself, especially to myself.

Knowing the reasons for the feelings gives an entryway to deeper feeling, not less.

Knowing conveys an illusion of management.

Feelings will not be managed.  They will not be kept or contained or bartered with no matter what parts of my soul I offer in return.

What wouldn’t we give to not feel pain?

I am submerged in the river of it and I would willingly drown if I knew that was the end of it.

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But it isn’t.  For the next minute continues and into the next.  With all the attendant agonies crowding in for attention.  Hungry children in a household without enough food.  There is not enough of me left to feed them all and still be me at the end.  Yet to ignore them, to deny them, to reject from them nourishment, is that truly better?  They are, after all, me.

So I sit.

I hurt.

I fear.

I feel.

Hoping that the feeling will pass as a storm on the lake, leaving stillness, quiet, cleansing in its wake.  Hoping the storm will pass and I remain recognizable after.  Hoping the storm will pass.

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~The Abysmal Witch

Reflections in Snot

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This is my baby-girl.  Chinook (for the wind, not the salmon).  She was born February 2, 1997 and died August 2, 2015.  That’s right, two days ago was her last day.  The picture above was about 2 hours before her last breath.  Those are the facts, the statements, the plainness of it.  I am heart-broken as I knew I would be.  And I have had a number of random thoughts in these last 48 hours.

We shall call these thoughts, Reflections in Snot, and here is why.

Reflections in snot.  As I lay on my side on the balcony facing her on Sunday, when she was barely able to focus on anything, including me, when the purrs were gone though I know she still appreciated the touch, snot poured out of my nose.  Perhaps someday I will try and draw what I saw.  This rope of clear mucous dropping from seemingly midair (since we don’t really see our nose unless we focus on it) down to the grey floor of the balcony, making a thick, viscous, irregular puddle.  That puddle reflected the railing and the jasmine, lines and patterns broken up and shifted into incomprehension.  Chinook on the other side, my fingers touching her paw, sliding from her nose, down her back to her tail.  She was done.

Reflection in snot.  The time itself was surreal.  I have been in a sense waiting for 3 years for this day to come.  She’s been getting older and older, as we all do.  Slowing down.  Sleeping ridiculously.  In the past week she’d been particularly slower.  On the day of, I’d gone for a walk in nature, gathered my spirit and soul into calm balance, and thus prepared to do all that needed to be done, not allowing myself yet to recognize why this calming and centring was important, but doing it and knowing it was all the same.  But none of this actually prepared me for the moment.

There is no preparing for the loss of a loved one.

There is no getting ready.

There is getting everything around ready.  I knew what I would do with her body afterwards.  I knew the costs of cremation and what I was going to do with that.  I took aspirin before the crying headache really started.  Had a quick shower as I was filthy after my nature walk.  Forgot to eat.  One should never forget to eat before heading into intense emotional turmoil.  Note to self, remember for next intense emotional incident.

I had thought it through for years, knew her time was coming, reconciled myself to life afterwards.  Or so I thought.

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How will I get through life without this beautiful girl cuddled in my lap?

Reflections in snot.  For more than 18 years she was my companion, in the fullness of the term.  Was she my familiar?  I don’t know.  I’ve never really thought about it.  She didn’t help me in my direct magick, but she supported me through life in ways that I don’t even understand yet, that I won’t understand until I hit all the places where she is no longer there for me.  She was an emotional bastion (heh) and touchstone of peace and love.

Reflections in snot.  For more than 18 years she slept with me every night.  Except for that one night when she was young and got outside onto the ground floor (she did that twice to me over her lifetime!  but only once when I was asleep) and those few months when she let the boys (my other cats) take over the bed.  If I had nothing else positive to say about my relationship with my ex-fiance, the fact that he brought her back to sleeping in bed with me would make it all worthwhile.

Reflections in snot.  She was there every night.  Curled up at my side.  She would crawl into bed before me, giving me a glare if I took too long.  And once I was settled she would move up the bed so that she could lie with her head on my hand or arm. We would stay that way for at least half an hour as I meditated.  Sure it was awkward, but it made her happy and there were so many times during the day when I couldn’t just cuddle her as she wanted, so at night, in bed, I was all hers.

When I was ready to sleep, I would gently shift out from under her.  When I was ready to roll over to the other side, I would give her a kiss on the forehead or paw before doing so.

Reflections in snot.  Routines and patterns are the gems and cornerstones of relationships, where we blend into each other, fall towards each other instead of away.  We had many such routines.  Once everyone was settled on the bed, she would get up, eat and do other bodily function things, and then climb back into bed and into her spot.  Whereupon, if I did not pet her at least three times, strongly, I would get the meows of reminder.  At which point I would roll over and pet her strongly three times at least.  Then roll back and fall asleep.  Sometimes there was grumbling and muttering, but I’d always do it, otherwise, more meowing.

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She had the most amazing belly, all white and fluffy and silky soft.  She would lay splayed out as I stroked her from neck to navel, completely relaxed into me. Until she saw one of the boys.  Sigh.

Reflections in snot.  The amazing friend who drove me to the emergency vet (because of course this is happening on the sunday evening of a long weekend) suggested that as a good album name (the reflection in snot) for some kind of musical group.  I don’t remember the type.  My brain was more than a little addled.  I should probably have eaten.  My friend brought me food while I stayed with Chinook  and the vet did the final injection.  She was so far gone by then that it was hard to tell the difference.  And while the last hours had all been driving us to this point, funnelling us down into the pure inescapable reality of this moment, it still couldn’t be real.

Reflections in snot.  Whether I rejected the reality of it or not doesn’t seem to matter.  She is not curled up at the foot of the bed.  She is not stretched out on the balcony.  She is not here.  She will never be here again.  I can cry and whimper and weep as much as I want about it but the reality doesn’t change.  Because no matter how hard or long I look for her, I will never find her again.  She is not lost.  She is gone.  And I remain.

Reflections in snot.  I wondered briefly about waiting for her to die naturally.  There was no question this was it.  Absolutely none.  Would it be kinder to let her pass on her own?  I asked her.  She was just done and ready to go.  Only the stubborn activity of her heart and her lungs kept her going.  And that was my answer.

I wondered afterwards, knowing that this was the gentlest, kindest thing I could do for her, to release her from the final pains, why we can’t find it in us to allow it for human beings.  I know euthanasia is complicated and there’s no simple answer.  But right now there is no answer.  We are more generous and kind to our pets than to our fellow humans.  Then again, this is no surprise.

Reflections in snot.  All of the world out of order, lines twisted, angles shot to hell.  I am so afraid of losing the sound of her meows.  Did I really never capture that on video?  Why the hell not?  Oh, right, because it was fast and fleeting and in moments when there was no camera ready.  I have to rely on my memory to hold her and my memory is horrible and so I know that she will inevitably fade out of my memory, her sweet sounds, her obnoxious cries, her downloads to her alien overlords.  Gods, please, don’t let her fade from my memory, please don’t let me lose her again.  Yet time, time is cruel, says Saturn, and to hold on too tightly will only change the memory from reality to a created something that isn’t her anyway.  I will never hear her voice again.  How is that even possible?

Reflections in snot.  Have you seen the article about cat language?  That they don’t speak to each other and vocalize just for our benefit?  In essence, creating an individual language that is just between us and our cats?  My boys have a couple of her “words” but an entire language died Sunday.  Hers and mine.  I am the sole possessor now and I’m afraid I never did speak it very well.  Wrong type of vocal chords.

Reflections in snot.  She will never be again.  What we had together will never be again.  Blatantly obvious right now as she was a cuddler and neither of the boys is.  Maybe that will change a bit over the next couple of months but I doubt it.  She would snuggle into my arms like a baby on her back and want nothing more than for me to rub her belly.  Gone.  How can she be gone?  Just like that.  One second to the next.  With barely a sigh.  It’s not real.  And yet, there is nothing more real than her being gone.  This is reality now.  Now being all we have, from one second to the next.  What was is gone.  What is is different.  Reconciling myself to that truth, that is the impossible part.  Yet it will happen, whether I will it or not, for I continue.

Reflections in snot.  The house is quiet. So much quieter.  How did she have so much presence?  She slept 23 hours a day.  But it is silent now in here.  The streets make noise, the boys act as they always have, but there is no more snoring from the corner.  There is no more obnoxious crying while I’m teaching “Don’t worry, she’s not dying,” I have said to so many clients over the past year while teaching from home.  Except Sunday she did.  The silence echoes and rings.  I embrace the silence in a new way, listening for her and feeling heartbroken when nothing comes back.

Reflections in snot.  My bed is empty when I crawl into it.  I have never been married, have only lived with someone for less than a year.  But I have had a bed companion for nearly 19 years.  19 years!  Longer than many marriages, I’d bet.  Every night (minus those exceptions mentioned above), cuddled up to each other, or not.  Loving each other, or sometimes angry.  Then love again.  She has been the constant companion of my adult life.  I told her it was okay, that I was going to be okay, that she could go when she wanted, when she was ready.  And I know that it is true, and I will be okay, and I will continue, because it is what you do.

Reflections in snot.  I covered my tv with a cloth yesterday.  I have always been frustrated with the ease with which I avoid life and what I think I want to do by drowning myself in movies and the internet.  Unfortunately, there is work to be done on this computer so putting a cloth over it doesn’t work.  But I have put the cloth over the tv, because if I really want to watch it, I can.  But in the meantime, there are other things to do.  There were times I rejected her attention because I was too caught up in myself, my frustrations, wanting to be comfortable while I watched another youtube video.  For her, for me, I want to put an end to that.  Though I suspect that may fade with the same regret as memories of her.  Dammit.

Reflections in snot.  Grief is so very personal, as all pain is.  Our joys take us outward but our pains draw us in.  I have witnessed many people experience loss just like this or worse in the past year but it didn’t feel like this.  I was on the outside.  And no one will feel this loss as I do, for everyone else is on the outside.  We can never fully experience another’s grief.  We can let ourselves fully experience our own.  But it’s hard.  Hard to sit with emptiness with sharp edges, the perfect completing puzzle piece of my heart taken out and gone.  She is now memory and the memory of love and that will have to be enough.

Reflections in snot.  There has been a magical turning for me in the past week and a half.  A new commitment, a deeper sacrifice and pledge of all that I am to what the Gods ask of me.  I had wondered, now that I had put myself so fully into Their hands, if that would change something for her.  The transition ends this coming Friday.  It’s hard not to find it related.  She’s been growing slower for so long that I honestly believed it could be years more before she actually died.  Had said that but a week before.  Yet here we are.  Heartbroken.  Lying on the balcony making a puddle of snot and enjoying the last sunbeams.

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I’m glad you got so much sunbathing in these past months, baby-girl. I remember the first time you found a sunbeam.  You looked like you had found nirvana.  I hope you are held in such warmth, love and joy now.  I will miss you beyond words, beyond stories, beyond the stretched and aching breadth of my heart and my soul.  I am so grateful to have had you in my life.  I know that I will continue without you.  But I wish you were here, just the same.  Curling up with me, purring as I rub your belly, grooming me until I literally cannot stand it anymore and make you stop (though you always tried to get at least one more lick in).  You were love.  You will always be my love.

Saturn.

 

 

 

Facebook Doxxed Me…And I Let Them Do It

Because, well, blackmail of my history, my pages, my connections, my friends.

“Doxing (from dox, abbreviation of documents), or doxxing, is the Internet-based practice of researching and broadcasting personally identifiable information about an individual.”

Over a week and a half ago, Facebook contacted me as it had come to their attention that “Saturn Darkhope” was perhaps not my legal name. Oh, sorry, “authentic” name, and that I should supply documentation to prove that it is my name in order to keep access to my account.

What followed was a dance, and a better one that has happened to other pagans who were locked out without warning (I was not summarily locked out, I had a week to supply documentation and opportunity to supply additional documentation when the first wasn’t accepted).

But in the end, I lost because while Saturn is my authentic name in realistic terms, because I don’t use it for mundane things like bus passes, phone bills or credit cards, I could not “prove” it was an “authentic” name to Facebook.

So I had a choice. Let over 5 years of history, my Abysmal Witch page, my various local groups and events and personal connections built up over all this time go down the drain…or let Facebook dox me.

Let Facebook tell all of these people my legal name. Let Facebook “out” me by telling everyone on facebook information that I had kept private for all of this time.

I have agreed to this road now, yes. But not without hurt, not without anger and not without a healthy dose of concern for whether this will make it far too easy for someone who finds me unacceptable and worthy of online harassment because I’m a witch and public about it, to find me.

I feel exposed, violated, and oddly grieving for my Saturn side*. We got royally screwed today.  Seeing it coming did not, apparently, make it any better.

You could say it was a choice. And that’s fair. It was a choice. I have chosen to let Facebook dox me rather than lose connection with a lot of wonderful people. But it doesn’t mean I’m happy about it.

If you want to find me on Facebook, you can like my page: The Abysmal Witch. You won’t find me, though, as Saturn Darkhope no longer exists on Facebook. There may come a day when I tell you how to find that legal version of me, when I feel safe enough to do so. This is not this day.

And the amusing kicker to it all? I already had a Facebook profile with my legal name for all the parts of my life that do apply to that name. So now there’s two of me on Facebook. How fucked up is that?

Saturn,
the Abysmal Witch

*While I am still me, still Saturn, regardless of the name in use, there was a joy and a power and a connection in using my spiritual name on a daily basis to interact with other spiritual people.  I already feel that loss.  I love my other name, it’s a good name, but it isn’t Saturn, it isn’t this side of me.

Question: Worth Recording the Bad?

If you’re around the internet much, you’ve probably seen the meme floating around of writing down the good things as they happen to you, putting them in a jar and then at the end of the year, pulling out the jar and reading about all the wonderful things that happened.

I think this a lovely idea and have written down a few things for this year (in case I decide to really do it, I want to be prepared, and if I decide not to keep going, well, it just cost me a few scrps of paper, some pleasantly-focussed contemplation and a few seconds of time).

It suddenly occurred to me this morning, and I will grant you that it may well be my cold-infested mind and body doing the thinking today rather than the normal almost-logical one, to wonder what would happen if I recorded the things that piss me off?  That anger me, make me snarl and growl and hate myself or someone else?

To be clear, I’m not talking about looking for every little annoying thing possible to record.  This would be for the things that I’m already not letting instantly go of.

Would I be amplifying the negative feelings?

Is that even possible if I’m already dwelling on them for periods of time?

Or would it take them outside of me?  Help me to let go more?

If I did both at once, would one jar outstrip the other?  Would I make conscious choices to focus on the positive?

What do you think?  Is this an experiment worth trying?

Accept the Spoons and Move On

Tonight I was forced to question my grasp on reality.

My sanity was suddenly all it was cracked up to be.

I was putting away the dishes and found a wooden spoon in the cutlery section.

This doesn’t seem particularly odd.

Except.

I only own two wooden spoons.  And what I held in my hands wasn’t one of them.

“Love,” calls I.  “Did you use a wooden spoon?”

“Yes,” says my love.

“Where did you get the spoon?” asks I.

“From the cutlery drawer,” he says, “right beside the other ones.”

OTHER ONES?!?

I looked in the drawer.

Yes, two more spoons squatted insight.

Understand that I exaggerate not at all when I say that I had never seen them before in my life.

“Love, did you buy new spoons?”

Hope fizzled predictably with his “Nah, those have been there since I moved in.”

No fucking way.

There was a disagreement for the next several minutes.

My two indefutable  points:

  1. why were we in Ikea looking for more wooden spoons if there were 4 already in the drawer (and not just the one we actually had)?
  2. we’d cleaned out the drawer together a couple of months ago and there were no such spoons in it then.

So we came to the agreement that the spoons had appeared somewhere along the way and that neither of us knew where from.

Meanwhile, I’d contacted potential suspects–friends, who could have somehow left wooden spoons in the drawer.  No go.  Thankfully they understand this whole process and don’t consider this my final push over the edge.

But, no, they weren’t the source of the spoons.

There is no known source for them.

It haunted me.

And then my covenmate reminded me that weirdness is just part of our lives.

The lesson of the day became clear:  sometimes you just need to accept the spoons and move on.

Squeaky Wheels and Super Sweeters

On my lunch break I have a couple of things I like to do to help me relax and rejuvenate.

I eat.

I really can’t stress enough how important that one is, but if you haven’t yet learned that food fuels the body and mind and therefore soul, well, you’ve got more to work on than I can probably help with.

I frequently go for a walk.

Ahhhh, fresh air.  Today I am skipping the walk so as to bring you a small rant.  That and my body needs a break from yesterday (pilates class and a trip down to, and UP from, Wreck Beach = 474 stairs of interesting nature).  But normally I like to get out for a half an hour of good walking.  Well, okay, largely because it’s summer and the days are good for that.  I’ve done a lot of visits to the Rose Garden as well.  Ah, July, when they are all in bloom and the smell wafts thither and fro, mmmmm.

I read Regretsy.

It soothes my snarky soul.

I read Not Always Right.

And thus begins my little rant. On Not Always Right people share work stories that highlight the remarkable…encounters they have with their clientele.  Okay, people are stupid.  And many of the stories highlight that people are stupid.  But it’s not the stupid that’s gotten to me.

No, what’s making me grit my teeth is the repetitive examples of people who lie or yell or often lie and yell at the employee to get their own way.  Such as lying that the employee got a hair in their sandwich (when it was their daughter’s hair) so as to get a refund & a free bagel.  They’ll lie about who served them, what they were served, the state something was in, etc, etc.  People are lying so that they can gain something for nothing.  People are yelling and screaming at employees to again get something for essentially nothing.  In some of the stories it is even acknowledged by the perpetrator that they’re doing it because that’s how you get something for free.

This froths my ire.

What happened to the land of personal integrity?  Of behaving as a decent human being?

When did it become so engrained into society that instead of curbing such behaviour we have somehow engendered its propagation.  I see many notices of being positive of being friendly and kind pushed around on facebook.  I think that these are lovely if not always realistic (because somedays you’re going to get mad and is it really wrong to get that way?)

As I type this the thought occurs to me that this push to always be nice is simply the other side of the coin of the push to always be an asshole in order to get ahead.  I’m not saying it’s wrong to be nice or right to be mean, not at all.  But what about the folks on Regretsy who talk a mean line but who are frequently very generous, supportive and kind?  What about the sweet people who can’t be bothered to actual help someone else?

The point is, we are neither always kind nor always cruel, not in our humanism.  We are both, a swirling mix of chocolate and vanilla into a marble cake (ohhhhh, cake) of positive and negative experiences and expressions.

And at the core of both of these is an inherent selfishness, isn’t there?  The squeaky wheel is out to get whatever they can by whatever means (typically negative) they can.  If I yell enough, someone will give me something to shut me up.  Many people I think learn this in childhood from their parents – if I scream loud enough, my mommy will give me that cookie even though she said no originally (so parents, keep to your ‘no’s!).  And no, I’m not blaming all parents, but there is a component there, don’t you think?

I don’t want to come down too hard on the other side, the always kind and gentle folk because let’s face it, they’re a hell of a lot nicer to be around.  But it doesn’t make their approach necessarily more healthy.  Be gentle, be kind, be forgiving.  There are times and places for these things, most of the time, many places.  But sometimes?  Sometimes we need to be tough, to protect, to fight, to put up our healthy boundaries and force others to respect them.  ((Mind you, if you take the gentle, kind, forgiving to a different spiritual level, then a slap on the face can be the gentle and kind approach to a situation, but that’s a whole different conversation.))

And what drives that behaviour?  A desire to be ‘good’?  To do good?  To be seen as good?  Sometimes I wonder if there is a hint of the selfish behind some people’s sudden and intense embrace of such concepts.  But that’s just some musing on my part.

The ranting is all about the Gimmees.  They make me think evil, nasty thoughts, and not the good kind.

Perhaps Not Always Right by its very nature siphons off examples of the worst of us and it isn’t an epidemic of self-centredness.  But still, but still…