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Agree to a point. Some mistakes in decisions made goes to a lack of experience or knowledge like first time home buying for example. But yes, I’ve seen bad decisions lead to bad consequences and then blaming others. My drug and alcohol addicted uncles were great examples. At first they only drank on weekends. Problems began when they regularly called in sick every Monday and were fired. They blamed their bosses but now that they were t working they were drinking more often. They get kicked out of a bar or arrested it was someone else’s fault. Get in a wreck while drunk, someone else’s fault. One of them was so drunk he couldn’t walk anymore and still blamed his wreck on a mysterious “large brown dog” on the road that no one else saw. People make bad choices or decisions. The difference is accepting your mistakes and learning from them. The people you’re talking about don’t do either.
Exactly. I remember once, a guy told me that he wouldn't go out with me anymore because I was bigger than the girls he was used to going out with.
Now...this wasn't a guy I was in love with, and truth be told, I had my own concerns about HIM, but OUCH, that kind of hurt! And I thought to myself "I can't help it, the shape I am!" And almost as soon as I thought that to myself, I kind of had an ephiphany. "Well, if I can't help it, who can? Nobody. I'M in charge of me, and I'm glad. I CAN change the shape I'm in, if I want to." It actually was a happy thought.
Exactly. I remember once, a guy told me that he wouldn't go out with me anymore because I was bigger than the girls he was used to going out with.
Now...this wasn't a guy I was in love with, and truth be told, I had my own concerns about HIM, but OUCH, that kind of hurt! And I thought to myself "I can't help it, the shape I am!" And almost as soon as I thought that to myself, I kind of had an ephiphany. "Well, if I can't help it, who can? Nobody. I'M in charge of me, and I'm glad. I CAN change the shape I'm in, if I want to." It actually was a happy thought.
I keep a journal, and about 15 years ago I titled an entry, "It's all my fault, and that's the good news". Not that everything that concerns me is entirely my fault, but I'm the only one who can do anything about most of it. It's a healthy perspective, when we stick to it
Something that I have noticed, is that there are times when people who wreck their own lives with bad decisions they won't own up to, also are the most critical of other people in various situations. Because of the comfort of the world's problems being someone else's fault, and the comfort of being able to say that others are more messed up than they are.
I know a guy, who is a conservative or so he'll tell you, who has taken tons of government assistance during bad times he created with bad decisions. He's received food stamps and food pantry assistance, unemployment, disability, and so on. But if you ask him where he stands on assistance for the poor, he'll start talking about "welfare queens." See, he deserved it, but people who are not like him, don't.
I've been in years where everything seemed out of my control. Sometimes I tricked myself into feeling more in control than I really was. I warped my own reality into something I could cope with. I've realized that people who have done me wrong sometimes deserve forgiveness, because they didn't see the harm they were doing, or because maybe they were doing the best they knew how to do, with the tools they came to the situation with...their toolkit just sucked, and that wasn't their fault. They had no way to see it. All the same, the key for me, is to have both compassion, and boundaries.
Having no compassion, just anger and judgment, doesn't help anything. Shaming others for their choices or their situations doesn't tend to help them learn to do better. It often just hurts them enough to make them defensive. And sometimes they KNOW they've got a problem, after all, they're living it...but they're putting in a level of effort to try and fix things, that is nearly heroic compared to anything I've faced, not ever having the problem they had to begin with...and it still doesn't solve things. Take body weight. I have a friend from high school, he's been huge his entire life at least since I've known him around age 15 or so. At what point in his life, would some intervention have prevented him from being massively overweight? I never saw him eat more than others did at the same table. He stayed with me in my home for days at a time and I never saw him sneaking off to binge food. He had a personal trainer for years. He had a cocaine habit for years. He worked jobs where he'd walk all over DC hauling an equipment cart to fix copiers in various buildings. None of this changed the shape of his body. When I last spoke to him, there was talk of gastric bypass surgery. I hope he's well, we have lost touch, though. Now compare that to me...I eat whatever I want, whenever I want. I snack on junk food. I don't exercise. But my body size and weight has not changed (except when pregnant, and then I lost my baby weight within a few weeks) since high school. I'm just naturally pretty small. At 40, I doubt if I will ever be fat. Why did he and I have such completely different body size outcomes? Sheer genetic luck, is all I can figure. And even then...every woman on both sides of my family is heavy by this age. Why am I not? I can only figure that I'm a weird genetic throwback. It's luck. Nothing more. I cannot imagine living the life he's lived, fighting this fight with little effect, for decades.
You can't control who you were born to, or what you will have to endure before you even get old enough to start making your own decisions. There will be elements of both nature and nurture, that will never be anything you can alter. You can only do the best you can, with what you've got. Having compassion for people who didn't get the fancy Sears tools in the shiny red metal box, who only have a hammer and some duct tape to work with, won't cost you a thing.
Life doesnt come with a manual. If you are lucky your parents, other relatives, teachers, friends and romantic partners help you along the way, give you advice, show you how to do things the right way, you get exposed to the right influences. A lot of people don’t have that guidance. If young people are surrounded by selfish, short-sighted people the cycle will just continue, and they ll likely turn out the same way.
Thats why I think it is foolish how quick we are today to dismiss traditions and the established way of going about things. Those things offer a framework that gives structure to people’s life. Everything today needs to be new, unconventional, “outside the box”. We place emphasis on outliers because we think thats more interesting than the norm. Vive la difference and all that. But most people arent going to be Steve Jobs, a lot of folks just need simple guidance on how to not fatally screw up in basic life matters. Teaching kids kindness and compassion is nice but those values alone arent going to get you through life. We shy away from teaching life skills in a normative fashion because we dont want to offend the few who take pride in not adhering to any norms even if it leaves the majority of folks without orientation in life.
Life doesnt come with a manual. If you are lucky your parents, other relatives, teachers, friends and romantic partners help you along the way, give you advice, show you how to do things the right way, you get exposed to the right influences. A lot of people don’t have that guidance. If young people are surrounded by selfish, short-sighted people the cycle will just continue, and they ll likely turn out the same way.
Thats why I think it is foolish how quick we are today to dismiss traditions and the established way of going about things. Those things offer a framework that gives structure to people’s life. Everything today needs to be new, unconventional, “outside the box”. We place emphasis on outliers because we think thats more interesting than the norm. Vive la difference and all that. But most people arent going to be Steve Jobs, a lot of folks just need simple guidance on how to not fatally screw up in basic life matters. Teaching kids kindness and compassion is nice but those values alone arent going to get you through life. We shy away from teaching life skills in a normative fashion because we dont want to offend the few who take pride in not adhering to any norms even if it leaves the majority of folks without orientation in life.
I think that you can teach both kindness/compassion, AND important life lessons. And that there are places where the two overlap, that a lot of traditional models left out of the equation.
In fact...I don't see much of an instance where teaching my sons valuable life skills, would be "offending" anyone, no matter how much of an outlier from the norm they might be. I see no reason why learning compassion for others from me, at the same time as my oldest is learning the trade of welding to make a living, would leave him rudderless, without orientation in life. He seems to know what direction he is going.
But one thing that is important, is to learn in tandem with kindness & compassion, and of course "life skills" whatever particular things you might have had in mind there... Personal boundaries. Having compassion for another person's struggle doesn't mean you've got to let them take you down, too. There will be messy people you will meet, who will try. One must learn how to have boundaries, and to maintain them.
Something that I have noticed, is that there are times when people who wreck their own lives with bad decisions they won't own up to, also are the most critical of other people in various situations. Because of the comfort of the world's problems being someone else's fault, and the comfort of being able to say that others are more messed up than they are.
I know a guy, who is a conservative or so he'll tell you, who has taken tons of government assistance during bad times he created with bad decisions. He's received food stamps and food pantry assistance, unemployment, disability, and so on. But if you ask him where he stands on assistance for the poor, he'll start talking about "welfare queens." See, he deserved it, but people who are not like him, don't.
I've been in years where everything seemed out of my control. Sometimes I tricked myself into feeling more in control than I really was. I warped my own reality into something I could cope with. I've realized that people who have done me wrong sometimes deserve forgiveness, because they didn't see the harm they were doing, or because maybe they were doing the best they knew how to do, with the tools they came to the situation with...their toolkit just sucked, and that wasn't their fault. They had no way to see it. All the same, the key for me, is to have both compassion, and boundaries.
Having no compassion, just anger and judgment, doesn't help anything. Shaming others for their choices or their situations doesn't tend to help them learn to do better. It often just hurts them enough to make them defensive. And sometimes they KNOW they've got a problem, after all, they're living it...but they're putting in a level of effort to try and fix things, that is nearly heroic compared to anything I've faced, not ever having the problem they had to begin with...and it still doesn't solve things. Take body weight. I have a friend from high school, he's been huge his entire life at least since I've known him around age 15 or so. At what point in his life, would some intervention have prevented him from being massively overweight? I never saw him eat more than others did at the same table. He stayed with me in my home for days at a time and I never saw him sneaking off to binge food. He had a personal trainer for years. He had a cocaine habit for years. He worked jobs where he'd walk all over DC hauling an equipment cart to fix copiers in various buildings. None of this changed the shape of his body. When I last spoke to him, there was talk of gastric bypass surgery. I hope he's well, we have lost touch, though. Now compare that to me...I eat whatever I want, whenever I want. I snack on junk food. I don't exercise. But my body size and weight has not changed (except when pregnant, and then I lost my baby weight within a few weeks) since high school. I'm just naturally pretty small. At 40, I doubt if I will ever be fat. Why did he and I have such completely different body size outcomes? Sheer genetic luck, is all I can figure. And even then...every woman on both sides of my family is heavy by this age. Why am I not? I can only figure that I'm a weird genetic throwback. It's luck. Nothing more. I cannot imagine living the life he's lived, fighting this fight with little effect, for decades.
You can't control who you were born to, or what you will have to endure before you even get old enough to start making your own decisions. There will be elements of both nature and nurture, that will never be anything you can alter. You can only do the best you can, with what you've got. Having compassion for people who didn't get the fancy Sears tools in the shiny red metal box, who only have a hammer and some duct tape to work with, won't cost you a thing.
Good post.
We never know what obstacles others have gone through. No two peoples brains operate exactly the same. Some weren't given the right tools to navigate life.
I'll steal a quote that a friend used to sometimes use, "I never want to look down on someone, unless I'm picking them up.
OP, be grateful for the mental gifts that were given to you.
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