Having listened recently to conversations about progress made and not made in life, I’ve come to appreciate the value I get from chaos and hardship. People, myself included, are not where we imagined we’d be at this point in our lives, and have the opportunity to be upset about it, or not.
I’ve mostly gotten over not being where I thought I’d be at this point in my life. I never expected to make it to fifty, being murdered before then from political cause. But when I made those “dreams” I was wrong in my beliefs about many many things, including the political arena. I’m nearly sixty, and my life is mostly over, but what I’ve done with it, I am still doing with it. Learning and teaching. Like now.
Each day is a gift. I get to see what happens next.
Chaos gives perspective.
Chaos does give perspective. I’ve learned and gotten more perceptive because of the chaos and hardship in my life. I value intelligence over comfort and accommodation. Surviving repeated torture and possible rape as a young boy hardened me, and life since has tempered my steel, bringing flexibility into my experience and understanding of things. I am much less brittle, and still forged hard and sharp.
Intelligence, which I define as the ability to notice, is built of many sensitivities I could only get from chaos. The price of vision is suffering and survival. Survival being damned hard to endure at times.
Look closer, notice your fortune.
At closer look, my life is pretty ideal. I get to spend my days working on things I care about. How does it get better than that?
I am someone I respect and am happy to be around. That’s not always been the case.
I am perceptive of other people’s hurts and exploits. Not everything, but many things. The gift of helping someone who’s trying to help themselves, its a parental role that make being here that much more rewarding. Regardless of the outcome. Being here, doing the work. Awesomeness all around.
My conclusion about these shared experiences of disappointment, is that disappointment is a choice, that I choose not to be. Instead, I am happy that I am okay, and I’ll be okay, and that being free of distractions is a better living of my time.
And because I’m in love with who and what I happen to be, I’m not looking for approval from others. I don’t really care about it, one way or the other.
My life isn’t quite over yet, though I’m okay if it is. I don’t live to “be important” so dying un-noticed and forgotten, so what? I’ll be dead anyway. While I’m still able, I continue to write, and learn and teach. Spending my days working for things I care about.
When you are tempted to be disappointed, but you live an honest life of goodwill and service, then choose to love yourself, your life, instead.
Where short on sincerity, goodwill and service, consider becoming an American. You’ll then have those tenets to live by.
Clarity, unity, organization, action. Let’s not fail where it counts.
Be American. Stay American!
David Weeks, Information Developer, Tampa, Florida.