Everyone has an opinion and, good intentions or not, they will share it with you. Everyone has advice on how you should live your life and often they do more damage than good. Most of the time, it comes from a place of love and a desire to help a friend in need. Other times, advice can come from a place of selfish needs. When you read my blogs, you are doing it voluntarily, so don't loop me in with that pushy group!
"He is a dick and you should have broken up with him years ago".
3 days later you are back together and you now know how your friend REALLY feels about the guy you are dating. The tone has been set for future awkward moments. By soliciting that advice, you have put a wedge between you and your friend. By giving that advice, even though you did it out of love, you have set your relationship back a ways. If you always hated the guy, then selfishly you might have taken the opportunity to alter the balance of the relationship to your liking. There is rarely a win-win here.
So why listen? Why help? Why ask for advice?
We don't like being the one who makes hard decisions that hurt or change feelings that affect ourselves. We are all experts on the relationships of others, because we don't have to suffer the initial or long term pain that comes with it. The easy answer is to encourage the severing of the relationship. That way, nobody gets hurt when they are all alone. Lonely people will never get hurt, right?
We all know what's best for us. Deep down inside, instinctually, we all know what we should be doing. Addicts know they shouldn't be doing meth. Cheaters know that they shouldn't be cheating. We are not a bunch of babies, so we can't fall back on any idea that we didn't know any better.
"He doesn't know what he's doing". That's crap.
I don't give advice as much as I reaffirm, to people who ask, what the right thing is to do. You almost always know the right answer, but you need to hear it from another person. Consensus makes the obvious become more obvious. Group decisions give the person who is pulling the trigger, the security blanket that comes with siding with the mob.
Make sure you surround yourself with the right people and not those who would use your moments of weakness and doubt against you. Surround yourself with people who will give it to you straight and tell you what you really need to hear. Just be prepared to accept what you are asking for because the right thing is rarely the easy thing.
You already know what the right thing to do is. Just do it.
It's a challenge for anyone to resist the urge to retaliate. It's hard to turn the other cheek and let karma just run its course. Although it's bad karma to wish ill upon anyone regardless who is in the right. Isn't it?
I once worked with someone who was at war with a fellow coworker. So much that this person let their disdain for this other person, consume them to the point of no return. Instead of doing what they were paid to do-they made it their job to sabotage the other person. They figured that if they could paint this other person in a negative light, they would be rewarded somehow. You know the rest right? They eventually got fired due to their own incompetence and the person that they hated eventually got promoted in the company. For the record, I was neither of these people, but rather an observer of what occurred.
In this case, no matter who the "bad guy" was, karma picked the one that deserved to get sifted. Karma is an imaginary force of nature that most of us fear, but for valid reasons. We've all seen it run its course. It's the reason I don't laugh at people who get pulled over by the cops or use the phrase "I told you so" when others experience the thing I warned then about.
It's hard to resist, but you are a better person for not finding happiness in the misfortune of others. It is weak to want the piano to drop on another person’s head like an old Bugs Bunny cartoon. Instead of waiting for the bus to hit them, you should spend that time looking for ways to help them get out of traffic. This way, when the bus does hit them, there is no blood on your hands. Karma won't then land on you. Well, at least in theory it works that way.
Tit for tat is no way to work as part of a group. Keeping score against a coworker will only yield a waste of time and prove to be unproductive and a poor use of energy. Don't be so consumed by your need to be right that you become blind to the group goals. Congratulations, you were right! Now what? It doesn't mean you won. You will continue to be a part of an unhealthy situation. Good for you. Sit back and wait for the next inevitable issue, because until you learn to let go, things will never get better.
You have to be willing to lose a few battles in order for the team to win the war. Personal agenda, jealousy, vendettas and insecurities will derail and ruin every relationship every time.
Move forward.
My niece sleeps with my brothers old Green Bay Packers jersey. Truth be told, my brother didn't own much when it came to valuable possessions. When we finally received his belongings, you could fit pretty much everything he owned into the trunk of a car. He left his writings, pictures, a few guitars and not a whole lot of anything else. He did leave a lot of memories and funny stories that outweigh his lack of worldly possessions.
If you could, it would be nice to leave others something to hang onto. Leave things that would only hold value to those who truly loved you. If you have ever lost someone, you would know that possessions that hold some sort of monetary value are the things that mean the least to those you left behind. Others will cling to it and cherish is as if it is a part of you. They will talk to it, hug it and yes even smell it if there was a chance that some sort of physical element of the deceased was still attached to it. I look at a picture of my brother everyday. Sometimes I talk to it, but I almost always make contact with the picture in some capacity.
If you are a parent or someone that comes from a loving family, what have you created that is entirely YOU that you can pass along to your children or loved ones? Yes, making sure they are financially set or receive some sort of financial support is always nice, but nobody is going to hug the money that you leave behind...not even if you were the Monopoly guy.
I would like to think that my blog is something that my children would appreciate if I got hit by a bus tomorrow. I work in radio and there are hours of recordings that have my voice on them. My kids have been on more vacations in their few years on this planet than I went on in my first 30, so I would hope they could look back on those moments with great fondness.
You hope that the people you leave behind truly understand who you were. There is so much going on in that brain of yours that will be lost to the world when you pass. Things that would be of little or no value to those who didn't know you, but would bring a world of comfort to those who are looking to cling to some sort of piece of you. Give them something. You owe it to them and these "things" will bring bring them comfort when they need it.
Paint something. Write a blog. Draw cartoons. Write letters to others so that they can read them after you pass. Hell, write a letter to your 6 year old daughter now, that she can read when she graduates college or gets married. Put the things that are uniquely you into something that your loved ones can have if and when the bus hits you. Trust funds are great and they bring people financial comfort, but you can't fall asleep hugging them like you would an old jersey your daddy used to wear.
Years ago, back when I was a teenager, I had a near death experience. My dad, cousin and I were helping a family friend build an electronic gate on their ranch. We were making trips back and forth from the house to the gate location, while riding on a flat bed trailer. At some point in the trip, the trailer came unhitched from the truck and the three of us (dad, me and my cousin) all jumped from the trailer as it was headed downhill. If we would have stayed on, chances are we would have died or been hurt more than we were.
When I jumped, my feet hit the ground first and then my head. After laying on the ground for a bit, my father shouted "Get up! Get up"! Ask any doctor what the last thing someone with a head injury should do and they would suggest that getting up is a terrible idea. I came to my senses and got up. Staples in my head, a concussion and some bruised ribs later, I eventually went back to work that day. I still remember my dad's outline as the sun was behind him. Nothing angelic about my father, so I knew I wasn't in heaven and it wasn't because I didn't hear harps.
Getting back up is all you can do sometimes.
When I was 11, my 8 year old brother died in a car accident. I got back up.
This year my older brother died. I got back up.
There are dozens of life experiences that I certainly could have stayed down for, but I decided to get back up. You probably have some as well. If you can't think of any off the top of your head, then sadly they will be soon to come. Deaths, divorces, loss of job, etc. When they knock you down, get back up.
Honestly, what else can you do? Getting up is all you can do.
There is a certain amount of satisfaction that comes with telling life to suck it. There really is! It's a liberating feeling when you can take life's best punch, wipe away the blood from your lip and put your hands back up for the next round. Knowing that you have the power to endure almost anything can give you a great sense of accomplishment and confidence. Yes, I would trade all my confidence and mental toughness to bring back my brothers, but we all know that there is no possible way to broker that deal. So, I suck it up and keep moving.
I am not claiming to be tougher than anyone else. I'm not better than you and I'm not looking for sympathy because I may or may not have taken more life bumps than you. We are all capable of enduring amazing things and you often don't know how deep you are able to dig till the moment occurs. Know, no matter how much comes your way, you have the ability to get back up. You are resilient.
Because getting up is all you can do.
