A Personal Kick In The Ass

As I strive to find something POSITIVE to end the evening on before retiring for bed. I stumbled across something that was said to me on my birthday.

I originally had intended on posting about this shortly after my birthday, but things got messed up.

Ironically enough this person has a personal image that one would not seem to have the ability to say. Or the desire for that matter!!

I personally think that its those people are the true treasures in life because once they say something so profound and it hits deep, you never really forget them.

Once we find them, what we do with these people is up to us.

But here I was discussing the fact that I don’t honestly have that many years left to live on this planet, due to the disability that I have. And the response that I received? Well… read for yourself:

“Don’t let numbers like that worry you. It is not the years you get but what you do with them. Live each day to the fullest and waste nothing. You have just a good a chance of dying in a bus accident on the way to a gig in Houston as you do from your condition. We are all guaranteed to die, but each of us must choose to live. You always do, and it is one of the qualities that I respect and admire the most in you. Your condition has always been your challenge…never your master.”

Thank you, Dr. Froth.

 

Revelations In Pain

“People’s minds are changed through observation and not through argument.”~Will Rogers

It has been a very wild past couple of days. I’m not bragging or anything. I am just saying its been quite an experience.

I’ve gone through some heartbreaking experiences. Things that I won’t go into detail about, but with every experience that I have had that are similar to what I just went through, there’s always been a rainbow at the end of the storm. And that rainbow is the knowledge of what I did wrong, what others did wrong, and how I attributed to what did go wrong.

So the other day I was speaking with someone and I was expressing my hurt, anguish, and disappointment.

Come to find out that my misery was coming from personal disappointment in other people. I had been placing far too much faith and trust in them, and they turned around and broke it by doing something stupid.

For anyone else, they probably would look at this case and think that these people that I put so much trust in, were complete idiots.

So then why did it hurt so much with great disappointment? Others were doing virtually the same thing, but it wasn’t as consequential as the previous group.

Then came in the revelation. The lesson important to life: The ones that we actually care about and love dearly, are the ones that hurt us the most.

Damn. That was deep!!

The ones that we care about the most, are the ones that hurt us.

Through my previous agony, I realized that this was spot on. The people that I loved, were hurting me the most. Why?? Because whatever they were thinking, they were wanting to “help” me or “protect” me. And therefore did and said some really stupid shit, in my opinion. Stupid enough to hurt my feelings to the core.

I’m becoming better and better at recognizing veils of pain and insults. I’m not saying that I am a professional, but I am getting better at detecting them.

And so those who were disappointing me were attempting to veil their harsh words.

The other thing that makes it true is the fact that when we regard certain people in such high esteem (or even place them up on that pedestal) then we crumble within when we find out that those who we regard so highly does something so low. We believe that they know better, and therefore wouldn’t do it. And then when they actually do it in our faces, your faith begins to shake, and in some cases begins to crack and fall apart.

But these are the same people that will actually hurt you because they care so much about you. Just as much as you care about them. Unless its unbalanced. Then you are just a stalker.

And besides…… if someone does something to you that was wrong, and you don’t care that much about them, it is not going to hurt as much. Why??? Because you do not care and will not take the time to allow your emotions to get tangled up in pain.

I’ve had these past few days to think about who has done what to me and why. And it just comes down to these two main points. That those who care about us the most are the ones who hurt us. And those who we care about the most, hurt us for what they often do.

Its a hard lesson. But I think it is an important lesson to learn.

Never Take Advantage Of What You Have Today

“Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.”~William Shakespeare 

I am writing this because I felt it to be important to share. Then I will go on with the request of writing about how I met my fifth future ex-wife a few years ago and blew it.

I was reminded by some song lyrics about a few things. In general, we should never take advantage of what we have today, because we could surely lose it by tomorrow.

Through these song lyrics that I was reading, I was reminded about how wonderful life is when you have people that are close enough to you in your life to be able to call them “friends”.

People establish relationships all of the time, and they come to us in various ways in life.

And I do use the term “relationship” when it comes to referring to those people that I consider my friends, even though a lot of the time it makes some of them who are of the opposite sex a little nervous. After all, you do RELATE to people in many ways who are your friends. It just so happens that a lot of people that I relate to, and have become friends with are women. That’s just the way it is with me.

But this moment had made me stop and think about those friends that I have in my life. Some are closer to me than others. A few know some of my worst and darkest moments as well as my happiest times in my own life. And they know every single detail to it all.

Others are there, but only at arm’s length. Yet they are there.

It all boils down to a matter of trust in that other person and their trust in me. And that’s where it had struck me that all of us should NEVER take advantage of the relationships and friendships that we have in life.

I certainly have no relationships in my life because I deserve it or it was owed to me. I have relationships and friends because I have EARNED it.

We make the decisions of who we keep close. Not because we feel compelled to do so.

There’s nothing worse for me in my life than to know that I once had a friend and then they left because of something that I had said or did in order for the other person to feel that they must terminate it.  And there are those who are so careless with what they have that they can’t even hold on to what they have. Instead they keep on in their routine and eventually something ends for them. Only for them to replace it and their cycle repeats.

As far as it relates to people and those who I call “friends”, its not anything that I would dare dream of doing to them. It kills me deep inside whenever someone has made their own decision to walk away because of whatever error I had done to them. And in the end after the fire is gone and the smoke has cleared, its up to me whether or not I have learned that lesson to never repeat such a mistake with other people in my life.

But I also must keep in mind that with my friends there has been ZERO obligation. These people are not obligated to do anything with me. It remains because of a strong and mutual desire to have one another in our lives. And usually there is a bond. That bond is the glue that keeps things going.

I had reminded myself that I should never take advantage of anyone who has come into my life because they do not owe me anything. But rather I should cherish each and every moment that I am able to spend with each of them and be thankful that I do have them in my life.

And I am thankful. My heart is filled with appreciation and joy for each and everyone of them. Both present and past. I do my best to convey that message with them to the best of my abilities. Sometimes I hit the mark, other times I do not. And even though I may miss, I have to have faith that they somehow know.

We place a lot of trust in people. And that really should count for something. It definitely tells you that there is this level of trust and faith that others have IN YOU, and you should never take advantage of that. Because once that trust and faith is gone? Chances are, either you’ll have a very difficult time earning it back or you will never get it back at all.

I am thankful for the expression of emotions and feelings through song lyrics. I am very passionate about music in my own way. And through this recent experience, I am so thankful that I actually did remind myself of what I have today, because God knows that I’ve done nothing to deserve it!

Change

“A lot of people get impatient with the pace of change.”~ James Levine

 

People often say that “change is scary”. But then there are others that tell you that “change is good”. So it can be difficult to know who is right and who is wrong.

 

But I think that we all have come across a point in our lives when we were in need of some kind of change, and we live to tell about it. But then why is it so scary??

 

I’ve come to my own realization that it isn’t the change that is causing the fear. But rather it is the fact of the unknown of what is going to happen once we make that certain change. We have no assurances of whether or not the change was a good or a bad idea.

 

We become overwhelmed with being so nervous about what could possibly happen next. Instead of focusing on the reasons why we felt we needed the change in the first place. We don’t remind ourselves as to why we need the change. But we fixate on the dark and scary future, to which we have no idea what will become of our change.

 

Over the past weekend, I was carpet bombed with a dose of reality that it damn near choked me. And it caused me to believe that I am in need of a change. And if that change does not happen, then I am surely going to be heading down the road of misery and sadness for years to come.

 

So then why is it so hard? Because I don’t know what is going to happen to me once I make that change.

 

Often times, we know what is the right thing to do. But we never do it because we fear the unknown future. And so our lives continue to suffer to a degree because we don’t make those changes.

 

We begin to think about the things that we could lose because of the change. We become fearful of to lose something that we have been so comfortable for so long in having and we wonder if we will lose it entirely? And if so, it takes us completely out of our comfort zone. And nobody honestly likes that. So instead of having faith that our change will take us to a better place in our lives in the long run, we cling to our old comfort zone and stay in that place of comfort, even if it means we continue to be miserable.

 

Change is not difficult. Being able to keep holding on to our faith that we will be okay, is the part that makes it hard.

 

And then there is change that happens to us without warning. How we as human beings cope and adapt to it will often be the way in which we can tell how we will deal with the change. Things happen sometimes, and we cannot control it. So in that case, change happens whether we like it or not.

 

But for those times in which we hit the crossroads, in which they are many, we have to be strong and brave enough to know that we are doing the right thing for our lives. A constant flow of positive thinking could help us along the way to remind ourselves that we are doing this for a reason. And usually that reason is for the betterment of our personal lives.

 

As for my situation, I eventually will hit that spot in the road where I will make that decision to change or not. And so I must have faith that “it will be okay”.

 

 

Patience Can Pay Off

“Some things just take longer than others. We are only as strong as our patience allows.”

 

Let’s face it, we don’t always get what we want but we will always get what we need and when that time comes for us to have it, then it will come. Yet not a lot of us on planet Earth have the patience or want to be patient.

 

It may be a new job or a new car or home, or it could even be the smaller things in life that we want, usually feel we deserve, and still we never seem to get it. And we usually don’t because we do not want to wait any more for it to just fall into our laps. We go out on our own and try to change fate, and then end up just screwing up our lives because we didn’t have the patience.

 

I spoke in length with a guy today, who is so desperate for many things to happen in his life that it literally destroys the inside of his body to the point of depression. I listened to him complain about how life sucks and he’s done fairly well so far and he just cannot seem to get ahead. But by getting ahead he meant that there were things missing in his life that he really wants so bad. More specifically, he talked about wanting to have a relationship with a woman. Something that would be long term.

 

The more he thought about it and talked about it, the faster he would speak. The faster he would speak, the more times he would get tongue-tied and the more he got tongue-tied the more frustrated he would become. He would stop, take a breath, but then he would apologize by saying, “If I had a girlfriend, this wouldn’t be happening to me.”

 

I didn’t say anything to him but I disagreed. The way he behaved caused me to believe that if he actually had a stable relationship with a woman and he got this excited, he’d be changing his pants every 30 minutes.

 

That actually is not an apology but rather him making excuses for himself. But nonetheless that is what he asserts himself to believe.

 

I told him that he couldn’t rush things like that in his life. And unfortunately my responses to him where nothing that he truly wanted to hear. So he was not really appreciating what I was telling him. And of course he questioned what authority that I have on the matter because I too, am single.

 

Finding love cannot be rushed. Heck, a large majority of us don’t even really know what love is. At least not the kind of love that we think we are looking for. Love is not little fat chubby kids in diapers and wings with an archery set strapped to their backs just waiting to hit you as their target. Love is not what television, movies, and media portray it to be either.

 

We hunt for this sociological ideal of love, believing that we know what to look for but in the end we may or may not have involved ourselves in a relationship by that point… but surely it was just as fleeting as the last sneezing fit you had from your last allergy attack. It was there, and now its gone.

 

In this world of technological advances of “quicker, faster, larger” we often make the mistake that the rest of the aspects of life should always be in tune with everything else. But again, I’m talking about technology. Not feelings and emotions for another person that is reciprocated back. After all, you COULD go out and build yourself a partner, but the lack of emotions that it would give you would definitely cause you to still feel lonely in the end. And seriously, not all of us has the money to go out and buy a robotic partner.

 

This guy knows what he wants (in a sense). His career goals are set and he is well on his way to reaching them. He is just lacking the human emotion and feeling of having someone to come home to every evening. Someone to share with him. Many of us can sympathize.

 

He told the horror stories of how he has in the past been “successful” in finding a girlfriend or two, but he was unable to maintain the relationship for one reason or another. He actually went out and tried to force the hands of fate to give him what he wanted. And he either kept losing or he would find someone but they were not quite what he was needing or not everything that he was interested in or looking for was found within these women, so the relationships always ended in a complete disaster.

 

I felt bad for him because he tried to force things to happen and they blew up in his face. It was truly a shame. It wasn’t like he was some arrogant man, other than the fact that he wanted a woman and wanted it RIGHT NOW!! Everything else about him seemed to serene and pleasant. Because he is not patient, he falls prey to his loneliness quite often and it buries him into a sea of depression where he just wants to give up on everything in the world, and I don’t think he should think like that. Yet, he doesn’t want to be told to “wait”.

 

Sometimes the hardest things in life to hear are commonly the right ones. Why?? Because deep down we already know that they are right. And our own thinking is totally wrong, and we just don’t want to admit it.

 

I am single as well. Trust me, I don’t like it either! I would much rather have someone to spend my days and nights with. I think that my personality as being a very social person also has something to do with it. Yet I don’t want to be alone for the rest of my life and yes, it really does suck being alone!! But I can’t force myself against women to spend time with me, because they will only resent me and in the end they’ll disappear and once again I’ll be lonely all over.

 

So I put my trust in being patient. Even if I don’t like it and think that it sucks.

 

Unfortunately for this guy, he’s on a cycle of repeated disaster relationships because he’s not thinking about anything but “getting to be with someone”. Relationships take a lot more work than just finding someone mutually agreeing to be with you. I hope he does well and I do hope that he will some day realize that if he just is patient a little while longer, then his wishes just may come true.

 

Things such as these have their own time. They come when they are best for us. And a lot of times its not when we want them the most. But they do eventually arrive. And on the other hand, we have to make sure that we nuture those things that come to us, to make sure that they grow steadily with us so that we can cherish them for as long as we can, instead of just taking everything that comes our way for granted. Because if we do that, then we surely will lose.

Empty Promises

“You pile up enough tomorrows, and you’ll find you are left with nothing but a lot of empty yesterdays.”~ Robert Preston as Prof. Harold Hill in “The Music Man” [1962]

This blog site is now back on the air and back in business after being gone for a week. I made a last minute split decision to go out of town and hang out on a farm about 100-130 miles from my home. I am sure that I will get into more of that later as it was quite eventful. Complete with fights, animals, screaming, and the local authorities getting involved. I have so much fodder for blog posts its not even funny.

For those who are the faithful ones, I will do my best this week to catch up with posts, so your head doesn’t fall off from not having anything to read about.

But as I gather my thoughts today, I seem to be having this feeling that I have brushed upon this subject matter before already. I just don’t have the desire to thumb through all of my posts to make sure.

But in my journey last week, the person who had invited me to his farm was more than willing to put himself on the line again. (This being the second time I have visited, and the first visit was just so miserable and boring.) And because of the fact that I did not enjoy myself the first time, I told him that there was going to be a few conditions to me agreeing to return back to the farm. Conditions that he must abide by.

So then his reply was this: “Oh no problem. I promise you, I got you covered! Just come on down and have some fun.”

In a list of about seven “conditions” that I had presented, only three were fulfilled. Compared to the ONE promise that was made and that one was not fulfilled at all from the first visit.

I guess you could say, “he’s getting better”. But really, would you do that?!?

Nothing sucks like an empty or broken promise. This guy definitely is all about the sale by whatever means necessary. I have had many people promise me something and then never ever do they deliver on their promises.

Broken promises are lies bascially. You were told something was going to happen and it never does. So they’ve lied about that certain thing happening because it didn’t. There’s really nothing much that you can do about it. You’ve found yourself in that trap and then you begin to feel quite foolish and humiliated because you had your heart set on something and you didn’t receive it. Of course a person might go through a bit of anger because of the deceit, but still- what are YOU going to do about it??

What CAN you do about it?

Well, in my case I believe it is simple. Naturally the trust that I originally had, begins to fade away. Just like the saying goes, “once bitten, twice shy”. And because of the broken promises, I actually find myself in a better position to be armed against it. Now that I’ve been bitten twice. Those emptied promises that were conditions of my second visit to the farm, I will remember. And if a third invitation is offered, then the request will either be denied or placed on hold until he is able to fulfill his previous promises and shows that if I am needing something from him, that he provides it EVEN BEFORE I begin to pack.

If a person has broken their promise to you, you’ll feel the sting of their burn. You can either forgive the person or not. You can choose to trust in that person in the future or you may not ever again. That choice comes from you and you alone.

But in an effort for optimism, there will be those times where a promise is made but is broken and sometimes the circumstances around it are out of the control of the person providing the promise. Life happens. I just believe that this was not the case in my situation. But it has and can happen for others.

Once you figure out that the person was either lying to you, or said one thing and couldn’t hold up their end of the deal because of something that was out of their control, you can either forgive and forget or you can allow yourself to lose that trust with that person.

We feel so awful and full of shame that we allowed ourselves to believe in that person, when they couldn’t deliver. We’ve got to go ahead and pick up the pieces and learn our lessons. Then our decisions must be made on whether or not we will trust these certain people again.

Where does your faith stand?