Your Geek For A Day!

Evening all.  Today has been a sort of somber day.  From the beginning, I found myself following a little too closely to someone else’s controversy.  I did something I never do: I started reading comments on articles and blogs.  And sure enough, it made me slightly irate and incredibly depressed.  Then some guy flew a plane into a building down the street.  You may have heard about it on the news.  Only a few hours later I got a phone call (after the fact, thank god) from my mother telling me about her horror flight home from New York, how their plane lost an engine and they were actually telling people they didn’t think they were going to make it…luckily the pilot pulled a miracle out of his ass and managed an emergency landing in Little Rock.  Needless to say, mom and BJ rented a car and drove the rest of the way home.  (Aside from that, she also called to tell me she had bought me a stash of Russell Stover nests for me, which made everything suddenly seem okay.) 

I guess what I’ve been thinking about all day is how drama and tragedy and pain tend to bring out the worst in people.  There’s the occasional hero, someone who beats the odds and comes out better than before, sure.  But all too often people choose to, instead, look for someone to blame.  And not often enough, they refuse to look at themselves. 

I’ve had a rough time of it in certain periods of my life.  There was a lot of very unpleasant stuff going on and a lot of pain for myself and people around me.  And it would have been really easy for me to look around and say, “this person did this to me! Look at the horrible things I do because of this!”  But I didn’t.  Sure, I can recognize the series of events that may have led me to act in certain ways, but in the end it boils down to how I reacted to those situations.  That’s something that I learned throughout all my troubles (after a long while, mind you, not in the beginning), that I am the only one who can ever be responsible for my feelings and actions.  No one can make me do anything.  Even with a gun to my face and shouting orders, I still have the choice to obey them or not.  You cannot make me act a certain way, you cannot make me feel a certain way.  What I do and feel are mine alone.  And by recognizing and acknowledging this, I completely accept the blame onto myself.  It’s a very freeing way to live.  I am at the mercy of no one. 

I also have found, in my relatively short time on this earth, that there is almost NOTHING that will offend no one.  It’s physically impossible.  I mean, there are people out there who don’t like chocolate!  Seriously!  But if everyone considered everyone’s feelings but their own before they made a decision, or created something, then nothing would ever get done or made.  We’d be a stagnant waste of life, little blobs of fear and terror hiding in caves, probably freezing and starving to death rather than risk upsetting someone by burning a tree or killing an animal.  I’m not saying we should all just do whatever the hell we want, of course; consequences do and should exist when basic liberties are infringed upon.  But living a life free from ever being inconvenienced or having someone harsh your mellow is not a basic liberty.  Life is hard, life’s a bitch, and you’ve got to be a hard bitch right back to it sometimes. 

Now I know there are all sorts of complications and “yeah but”s out there. (An old friend of mine who’s gone now used to say “yeahbuts live in the woods!” and that was the end of the conversation.  Old people are funny.)  And I’m not saying my life is hunky dory and nothing ever bothers me.  I’m not perfect, I’m nowhere near nirvana or enlightenment or whatever.  But I think I’m doing alright. 

I thought I was going to say something about the guy in the plane, the one that flew into the IRS building, but I’m not.  Mick, being the brilliant man that he is, pretty much beat me to the punch, writing a post that summed up just about everything that I would have said.  When I read it, it makes me want to hug him.  You can read it too; here, I’ll even copy it here so you don’t have to do any work at all!  And that’s where I’m going to leave you fine folks for tonight: in the most capable hands of my most amazing friend.