Saturday, March 31, 2007

Life's Choices...

It seems to me that everything in life ends up boiling down to choices. While the "yes" and "no" choices seem to be okay, it's the "what if" ones that seriously suck for my brain.

This last few weeks have had a lot of the "what if" choices and the resultant stress which invariably comes with them. In my self-absorbed mind my "what if's" for me (at least the ones I will admit to) tend to be about the usual boring work\home delimas.

The worst of the "what if's" is the question which lingers in my brain as I write this now at midnight on Friday night- What if he had called someone instead of jumping off the bridge? What if I had seen him that day? What would I have said? What if I had driven the Blazer that day and he asked me again if he could drive it...? What if the world was more tolerant of differences and people and their choices and lives? And the questions go on - never to be answered...........

While my usual posts here end up being about my life and job stuggles, this post comes from a very different part of my brain. The part I don't let out in "public" very often. The part which prefers to write and do so under some other name where it feels free to write some blatant honest truth without any recourse or acknowledgment.

People are all individual and all require different things to get them through their lives. Maybe you create something to find that happy place in your life. Maybe you go out in nature and watch the birds. Maybe you choose to simply watch the sunset over a mountain. Maybe you choose a partnership with another person. Maybe you choose to live alone in the woods. Maybe you have a dog, a cat, or even goats. :)

Whatever your choices and requirements are in life, understand that other people have theirs as well. What works for you might not work for them, but we should at least try to understand what makes other people happy. With this understanding comes empathy and tolerance. That empathy and tolerance breeds good will towards the other people we share our planet with.

By having tolerance in your life, it is entirely possible for you to show someone the reason NOT to jump off the bridge. You may not realize they look at that bridge differently than you do, but you just might change their view without ever knowing it. It's in what you say and it's in what you don't.

Think for a moment today about all the people and events in your life which shaped who you are, and what you believe, and the choices you have made in your life. Do these people know they influnced you? Do they know you considered their opinions and acceptance or non-acceptance of their lives? The answer seems to be that most don't know. And that's fine. However, understand that you have the same types of impacts on other people's lives. EVERY SINGLE DAY!

Monte, if you read my blog I have one thing to say to you - NEVER jump. There are people on this planet who love you and want to know you are alive and well somewhere... While you may not always be able to bring yourself to that place, and that "non-public" part of your brain might not get there - even with pharmacutical help - the happy place exists somewhere here on the giant blue ball - that happiness is not out in the unknown darkness. It doesn't lay at the bottom of the river. Just maybe it can be found in the people around you. Or in the birds you watch. Maybe it's in the sunset over the ocean or the mountains of Washington. Or, just maybe, it's in the refelections your life makes in other people's lives.