You and the horse that brung you

Some days I wonder what is wrong with people that a good swift kick wouldn't cure.
Our society has chosen to devolve into parasites seeking to drain blood money, energy and strength from other people for saying the wrong thing, looking too happy and not giving enough worshipful adoration to an individual. And in our rush to our unrighteous judgement, just appearing to be guilty is enough evidence to ruin lives through the media and through tale-bearing in a local setting.

Verbal miscues and downright rudeness happen. From time to time, we brush up against the harsh reality that everyone doesn't love us as much as we love ourselves. Words sting. But the epidemic of seeking another place and another time and another circumstance where the gilded age of understanding will distill upon us and make us universally accepted is the goal. We don't want to be left out when the parade passes by. It is almost as if people believe that it is possible for there to be a utopia where they will be a singular point of light that everyone else gravitates toward and is worshipful to us in awestruck wonder.

Then there are the excuses of why we don't do better in our lives that we foist upon everyone else in the world as the reason for why our lives are miserable without ever thinking about any root cause for our unhappiness.

If only we lived in another town things would be different.

If I only attended a different school, I'd be popular.

If only our family went to a more friendly church, we'd be happy.

If only people understood my special circumstances.

If only, if only, if only...

Are you kidding me? Don't you see the problem here? It isn't everyone else and their mistakes and human nature that causes you grief... pure and simple it's YOU bringing it upon yourself! You choose to focus on the bad and miss seeing anything that is good!

As individuals, we ALL want to be loved and accepted as being of worth and as having something special that makes us desirable to others through friendships and relationships that transcend time. But this attitude of 'you have hurt my feelings and I'm never going to forgive you' is just so second grade.

Attitudes bring people close or repel them. When we wear our heart on our sleeve and dare the world not to bruise it, we ask for our own cup of trials with a second helping on the side. No one will protect our heart better than we will and God designed a sturdy place for it inside our chest so that it could better weather life than it would have on a sleeve. Metaphorically speaking, we wear our heart on our sleeve, but realistically speaking, we wear out our emotions publicly and dare others knock the chip from our shoulder and to offend us so that we can call everyone unfair and withdraw. It's the "Well, screw you and the horse that brung you" mentality. We are seeking to blame someone else for our own self-imposed trials and for the reality of mortal life.

Seeking to be offended by a word or a deed has become a popular refrain due in large measure to the self-pampering culture that puts "I" before "WE" and "SELF" before "OTHERS". Materialism and comparisons crowd out reality with vague dreams of riches and popular standing.

There are those who believe that someone else is secretly ratting them out to the powers that be just to keep them miserable. Well, okay. That's a pretty sweet trick. There are spies all around us and you are telling us all that outside forces have the absolute power to make your disposition sweet or sour dependent upon what pressures are brought to bear against you.

It floats up from the playground to the very seat of human power. "It's his fault!" Really. And you didn't have any role at all in your own misery. Just blame others for your problems and somehow that lets you skip away on your horse free and clear?

Personal responsibility is a concept that we readily seek to apply to others but which becomes a pretty fuzzy idea not quite in focus when applied to our own life. It's inconvenient to realize that whatever attitudes we have follow us into whatever neighborhood we live in and that attitude determines what kind of happiness we enjoy.

Laying the ghost to rest here and now, we need to see clearly that blaming someone else doesn't FIX the problem and chances are, blaming others won't really make us happy. Eventually we will run out of 'other people' to blame for our personal feelings of persecution and misfortune.

We can't have everything we want. It's just not going to occur. And comparisons with other people only serve to hurt us in the long run. We weren't meant to have the same mortal experience. Different things create growth in different people.

If we take the time to review the self-limiting excuses list and change a few items, it might just change us for the better.

If only I would choose to get involved in my town I would be different and effect real change in my community.

If only I would choose to lay aside the desire for worldly popularity, I'd have the opportunity to develop real friends that I could depend upon and who could depend upon me.

If only our family made an effort to greet people and help make our church a more friendly church, we'd all feel more welcome and we'd all be more happy.

If only I overlooked my own circumstances and chose to see the special circumstances of others, I could truly serve them.

If only, if only, if only...

What happens after we ride into town depends more upon personal choice than upon circumstance. While your horse may have brung you here, the influence you have while you sojourn in this segment of mortality has more to do with what is in your emotional saddlebags that upon location or self-importance.

No one gets everything they ever wanted and sometimes when we DO get what we thought we wanted, it's not 'all that and a bag of chips'. Then we are stuck with sorting through the dream and the reality to craft something we can live with, grow from and move on.

Money doesn't solve everything. Being the most recognized person in your church doesn't guarantee that you will be happy. That is an internal decision. And the constant obsession with nitpicking through what someone else meant when they misspoke only serves to separate us instead of creating an opportunity to extend grace and grow together.

David O. McKay once said: "The true end of life is not mere existence, not pleasure, not fame, not wealth. The true purpose of life is the perfection of humanity through individual effort, under the guidance of God's inspiration.

"Real life is response to the best within us. To be alive only to appetite, pleasure, pride, money-making, and not to goodness and kindness, purity and love, poetry, music, flowers, stars, God and eternal hopes, is to deprive one's self of the real joy of living."

Go out and claim your joy of living. It's out there and it has nothing to do with present circumstances and everything to do with where our heart is.

And, God bless you and God bless the horse that brung you.

Jazz and the exercycle

Programming up a list of comfortable favorites of my jazz selection, I get the music humming along and start to pedal away the fat and calories that insulate my frame.
Since I've been so cold lately that I could have used my hands to chill steaks, I wonder about my sanity. Having a zero thyroid function isn't for the weak and sissy.

Only those brave souls who are willing to bear around the winter chill with them even in July know of what I am speaking.

Some days, the very idea of getting up and moving is so unappealing, but I am navigated to a sitting position on the side of the bed by sheer willpower, and I'm quite certain the will is someone else's. Were it my little voice talking and taking over the reins, I'd be under the electric blanket with the heat setting turned up barbecue and the portable phone on the floor by my houseshoes.

Compelling the weak and flabby body to sit atop the gel padded bike seat for my attempts to coerce fitness from a body that would rather ponder upon the blessing of central heat is a sometimes Herculean task. Pedaling more out of guilt than pleasure some days, I do what I can in the nasty rainy cold of winter.

Snowy days look so pretty when I can stay inside and warm. But if I have to get out in them, I feel very put upon.

Days that are so cold and achy make me wonder if I could have gutted out the trek across frozen hills and plains that bore my ancestors from place to place in the cycle of hunting, gathering, planting and sowing. And God bless those folks who made their home in the moors and fens scratching out a spartan existance from the most meager of circumstance.

I realize that if all of your neighbors live the same way and there isn't 24 hour news coverage to tell you that you are in a bad way or impoverished, then you don't dwell on it. It kind of makes me wonder just how much better our world could be without the saturation of 'news' and 'newsmakers' who intrude upon our reality and make us think we need oh so much more than we have.

So I pedal and wax philosophical, or at least as philosophical as I am likely to get while the washer and dryer buzz plaintifly to me to come and pay them some attention lest they take revenge on my clothing.

The jazz music is alternating forms of pulsating rhythm from around the world as interpreted by people through their own cultural eyes and experience. As I pedal, sometimes I imagine roadways and byways with there hills and dips. Sometimes, I'm riding a smooth boardwalk or pathway through a seacoast town. Other times, I'm just mindlessly riding to check the box and say "I did it" for the day.

One thing that is sure, winter isn't my friend when it comes to exercise. I sympathize with bears too much and feel that hibernation might be good for us all. Imagine how well rested we'd all feel with a long winter's nap tucked under our belts!

As I pedaled along I reflected upon a report I heard about the blizzard that shut down Washington D.C. They said the closures of government services was costing yeah so many millions per day.

I thought and said it was probably cheap at twice the price because when D.C. is open for business they are wasting billions of dollars weekly as if printing more money is the solution to everything.

Time to heed the dryer's frantic call. It's warning me I'll have wrinkled towels if I don't drag myself from the bike and come RIGHT NOW and rescue the towels.

I promise I'm getting there. But I have to confess I'm not all that fussed up about whether or not my towels are wrinkly. Should that happen to be a trigger for you, you are more than welcome to come and steam press creases into my towels. I won't stop you.

But I might write about how looney you are for pressing a towel...