I am not a trusting person-but I'm getting better and trusting and I keep pushing myself more and more to be more trusting, more of a teammate and worker among workers and more positively focused in developing mutually nurturing friendships.Dealing with years of abuse and bullying, as I've mentioned quite a bit in a number of earlier blogs help to frame an unsustainable and crippling mindset of, " How do you KNOW that you can trust him or her? How can you be CERTAIN that these SEEMINGLY good people wont turn on you?", I know it is pathetic and absurd but a year ago, this would have been a very sound analysis of what I THOUGHT about other people and how how I responded, too often,to them.
The 19th Century Fictional British Miser Ebenezer Scrooge, as we all know, developed a love of wealth and the security and insulation it would provide to him, It cost him love, family and eventually transformed him into a bitter and misanthropic man who thought that the poor deserved the misery that they were afflicted by and he thought, as well, that anyone who asked for people to donate m money to aid the poor were thieves who sought to gain donations to benefit no one but themselves.
The visit of 3 ghosts/ spirits and a look at how his life might logically end and the fact that his death might actually be seen as a source of PLEASURE to some caused him to abandon his soul-shrinking ways and become outgoing, generous and caring.
Late last year and earlier this year,The Greater Washington DC area was visited not by 3 spirits but by 60 inches of snow, an amount of snow far beyond our snow- removing abilities to cope with.We had a period in February where we had back to back blizzards. The maintenance staff of Orleans Village- the apartment complex I reside in, as were many of their peers in other complexes were sorely over matched by this onslaught.The walkway to my apartment and the sidewalks that would lead me out into the neighborhood had been transformed into an area absolutely unsafe to navigate upon on foot. To get out of the complex, I would have needed to walk across a downward sloping black -topped driveway. That also seemed to be, at that moment, a suicidal adventure.
This led to being confined to my apartment for a period of 169 hours- I had all that I needed except the presence of other human beings and the sound of human voices- I did not have a telephone at that point. This was fine at first. Yet as I learned, You can only sleep so much, spend so much time on the computer, play so many video games, read so many books and magazines and so on.After awhile I felt imprisoned and cut off, I actually became angry at the snow and ice and wanted a 75 degree day!
169 hours- is one hour longer than a week- This isolation against my will really showed me that conversation works best when you listen caringly to what the other person is saying- rather than just wait for the first moment of silence to interject your opinion yet again. It means you hang out with people not offer lame excuses to allow you to be by yourself once again. It means that you take seriously the concept of : living and letting others love", that you can have friends who disagree with you concerning social, political and EVEN moral issues.An ancient writer once recorded that " It is not good for a man to be alone>' Earlier this year this concept went from a "yeah sure" notion in my mind to one that I see as most valid! I need other people, I gain from other people thus I am seeing more clearly with EACH passing day that selfishness, isolating and turning my back on others because it might be difficult or demanding to care about them or be moved to act to do something FOR them is a poisonous and destructive way for me to live.My Birthday on November 16th and My Thanksgiving were marvelous days due to having people who matter to me choose to include me and make special efforts to surprise and delight me.
Those two snow storms were my 3 spectral visitors. I am a different and better person than I was 9 months ago. This period has truly been, in fits and starts and stumbles, to be sure, on my part- a period of significant renewal and rebirth. No man indeed is an island- and I make a very poor Gilligan! I still am far too selfish, whiney, complaining and self-obsessed and I'm working to become less so. I want to live the fullest possible life, I crave a life of continuing improvement and that formula cannot come to be if the only people involved in making this come to pass are me, myself and I!
God, I guess I actually am THANKFUL today for those blizzards!!! - Wink and LOL!
- Johnny -
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