Choice


No, this entry isn't about 'a woman's right to choose'.  That would be another entire blog.  (Just in case you didn't know this about me, I believe abortion is murder.)


It's about the fact that we are fully capable of choosing our lives.  
I am tired of hearing whining about people's 'luck' or 'my parents never let me...' or 'my life just hasn't turned out the way I planned'.  Big girl panties, people.  You are a grown up now, nobody can choose for you.
Yes, we all get into situations that seem impossible to escape sometimes.  We've all  been broke (well, most of us!) at some time in our lives, with the bills piling up and no apparent way to pay 'em.  We've all had miserable things happen for no apparent reason.
SO???
Those define you?
No.  They don't.  Who YOU are is who you choose to be.  Attitude is everything - you either let the outside influences affect you negatively, or you choose to stand firm in who and what you are, standing tall in what you know to be true.  If you've hit a rough spot, it doesn't mean you are a bad person.  It means you've hit a rough spot.  How you choose to move forward is far more indicative of 'you' than the position you find yourself in.
If you hit one rough spot after another, perhaps it's time to sit down and think about the fact that your learning curve might need some tweaking.  
Personally, I have a problem with budgeting.  If there's money in the bank, I feel safe and am (frequently overly) generous with my family and others in need.  Then there's a lot less  money, and I feel stressed and worried.   I know I have to figure this out, it's just extremely difficult for me to say no when I could help.  That's my biggest 'learning curve' problem, but I own it and acknowledge that it's something I have to fix.  And I will.
I have the advantage of having lived for a long time and having many experiences which I have survived, so I know that nothing is ever the end of the world. (No matter how bad it seems at the time.)
What I find frustrating is listening to people who constantly whine and whinge about their lives, blaming everybody else for what are the consequences of their own choices.  They never seem to learn that THEY, and they alone, are responsible.

In my many years of work with victims of domestic violence I met many, many women who were brainwashed into believing they had no other choice but to stay with their abusive partner.  Sadly enough, these women also considered themselves responsible for the situations they were in - the abuse was always 'their fault' because they believed their abusers when they said the women  had done something wrong that justified the abuse. 
I am not talking about these women as being responsible for their choices - just like prisoners of war, they are not free to think their own thoughts or make their own choices.

I'm talking about people who are not victims, but choose to make themselves so.  The person who has a problem with their attitude, and gets fired from one job after another.
The person who signs a rental agreement that specifically states 'no more than four people' and then proceeds to let their out of work brother, an old friend, and their mother move in, and gets evicted.  
The person who has a small income, but spends to the limit on their credit cards and then can't make the payments.  
Unfortunately for them, often the above scenarios all happen to the same person.  And they happen time and time again.  Then the whine is 'we're living in a horrible little shack because nobody else will rent to us'....


And then there are those who feel the world has done them wrong because they weren't born Bill Gates, or their grandparents didn't leave them anything in the will, or they didn't win the lottery, or they didn't get to go to Hollywood and become the next Big Thing, or...or...

We choose what and who we are.  Yes, we do.  Our lives are the compilation of many things, some of which were out of our control, but how we choose to live is completely up to us.  There are people with nothing, living in the most unimaginable poverty, in appalling conditions, who love and cherish their children and manage to make their lives worth something.  And there are those who have 'everything', who are bloody miserable and make everyone around them miserable too.  And there are the rest of us - perfectly unremarkable people, who live as best we can with what we have.  

I have no patience with whiners.  If you can fix it, do so.  If you can't, suck it up and keep moving on.  If you hate your life - pick a different one.  Or change your attitude about the one you have.  If you have a medical problem, no insurance, and it's getting worse - it sucks.  But that doesn't mean you have to whine about it to everyone - it doesn't fix your problem and it just makes them feel bad too.  Focus on what you CAN do, not what you can't.  You can't fix world hunger, or climate change, or genocide - but you can volunteer at a soup kitchen, buy locally and recycle, live with love.  You can bake cookies for a homeless shelter,  donate used books to a senior centre, volunteer as a foster parent for pets (kids are much more challenging!).  There is always something you can do for others, rather than sitting about and feeling sorry for yourself.

And there's a lot you can do for yourself, too - it all begins with attitude.  No, I'm not recommending you look in the mirror every morning and chant some mantra about how wonderful you are.  Perhaps that works for some people - good - but for most of us we would just feel silly about lying to ourselves.  But you can think about what you want, what you believe your life should mean, what you want to have pass before you as you come to the end of your life - the really important things.  And then consider whether you are doing what you can to accomplish those things.
Don't focus on the minor stuff.  That comes and goes.  Take a look at the whole picture of your life, and what really matters to you.  Who are you?  What do you really want, as opposed to what you were thinking you want right now?  
If long-term planning is your thing, excellent.  Me, I have no idea what I'll be doing next week, let alone next year.  And I lived many years without any idea of where I was going - but somehow, the 'meaning' of my life has always been clear to me: I was supposed to change the world. (megalomania much?!!)  Seriously, my driving force was to make a difference, to make things better for others.  I have definitely wandered into some pretty strange arenas in my efforts to make that happen, but now here I am, at 14 months away from 60, and somehow I have 10 children (2 of them biological).  And five of them still live at home - ages 2 to 27.  And the majority of them have issues that make living an ordinary life impossible for them.  So I have muddled along in my own peculiar way, but along the way I've been making a difference.  Huh.  Who knew?
We're usually juggling bills, recycling and re-purposing a lot, and doing things that don't cost money, but there is a lot of laughter here, and a lot of love.  At the end of every day I am exhausted (and after midnight is about the only time I have to write), but my littlest boy (6, has severe autism, is non-verbal) now climbs up on my lap for a cuddle, and voluntarily gives me kisses....and when he came to live with me 4 1/2 years ago, nobody thought that could ever happen.  I'll sleep when I'm dead ;)
Or, I guess, I could whine about how tired I am, and how exhausting it is to care for so many needy little people, how hard I work, how difficult it is to make ends meet....but I CHOOSE to find joy in my life, in the little bits of magic that happen daily.  Both attitudes have a true basis, but only one allows me to celebrate.  I choose joy - your choice is up to you.




.......................................................................keep dancing