The rugs in my house seem to have a problem staying clean, even though I own a steam cleaner, the darn things are forever covered in foot prints and grime. Some of the prints are human sized and some are Big Dog size, like little mud pies.
I bring this up not to discuss my dirty rugs on a day like today, a day after Virginia Tech, but to point out how hard it is to not get personal in my personal blog. Dirt covers everyone and gets into our lives, if we are living it well.
Behavior fascinates me endlessly. How do people get to where they are? What drives them to the point of insanity and yet, others, when faced with similar tragedies can simply rise up and reach for lusty heights of goodness? How does that happen?
Is it our past that shapes us? Not entirely.
Is it ourselves? Not entirely.
Is it our environment? Well, again not entirely.
Who we are, a sampling of the whole thing called life and the choices we make, the very epitome of Free Will. That grandiose and age old concept that each of us has choices to make in life defines each of us.
A Choice.
Do I take this anger and disappointment and dive off the deep end (to use a cliché I just could not escape) or do I take it and build a monument to the pain?
Or do I study it and let it go?
Really let it go.
Suppose it depends on which manual is being read and which books are lining one's bookcases.
Tragedy does not beget tragedy if the choices are made well.
That is, if the lessons are truly absorbed.
Behavior Inventory...
Before the great ban on my words, the dark editing of what I could and could not write about, I felt a freedom to express a part of my heart here. (To wax poetically if I so choose too.) This blog was my release. And I always thought that I protected that which I had been asked to protect. There was not ever a moment though that my words were not guarded like a jealous lover, that I did not try to pick carefully what wrote about.
Even when discussing MS I have always tried to be forthright and clear...but I tried to limit the amount of information on exactly what I have endured. Sometimes I have offered information about MS in general. Sometimes I have talked about the illness in general just to leave me out of it. Sometimes it was to mask the real issues in my life that I was dealing with that had nothing at all to do with MS.
What makes me who I am? The circumstances that have brought me to today, I suppose added to my own reactions to them. Life alone does not make me, I make a choice.
I choose.
My feelings are mine.
My path is mine.
Funny when tragedy occurs people start to seek the placement of blame and sometimes, well sometimes the blame is just too much to bare. Yes, I meant bare, as in the naked truth would be too much.
Will we as a nation ever know the sadness in that young man's heart? Probably not.
He chose oh so poorly and with total depravity.
I can remember being in a lovely Doctor's office while my weak ex-husband was trying to build the courage to tell me he wanted a divorce wondering what I had done wrong. Wondering what I could do differently and telling him that his feeling were valid and OK. After he finally told me what he wanted I told him I would respect his wishes that I wished it would work out differently but OK. His Doctor excused him from the room, did you catch that? HIS DOCTOR excused him and then told me that the issues were not my issues but that man's. The doctor asked if I had had counseling before and said it showed in my responses to my ex-husband.
The nice Doctor told me next time, choose more carefully. And I did.
Rambling some and not really.
Behavior.
Inventory.
Rampages are adult tantrums and some adults are deadly.
This is a sad and despicable thing.
Learning to reshape one's own tantrums must be done from the heart.
My rugs require constant cleaning and my tantrums are reshaped before they get out of hand. At least I can admit to having them, I can acknowledge my mistakes, analyze them fairly and robustly and then plow gleefully over them with the steam cleaner.
Best present ever from Charley, that steam cleaner. Best husband too, even if he sometimes gives presents that plug in.
