Understand that asking a person suffering from PTSD to revisit their trama when they aren’t ready or willing is the same as asking them to let it happen again.
No Good Choices
Sometimes we don’t have much of a choice. It’s either back of the bus, or face down in the road.
The Idiocy of Mandate
Making something possible doesn’t make it viable or ensure it will be done. When you want something to happen, it should have value to all those involved. True change happens when we see what’s in it for us. If the desired result doesn’t follow your efforts to eliminate barriers, and you aren’t asking yourself what you are doing wrong, your approach and solution is invalid. It’s a research, try, assess, refactor, try again loop, not a commandment.
Helping Others
The people who need you the most are not obvious or easy to find. They are hiding from you.
Softhearted
I understand being softhearted now in ways I didn’t as a younger man. It’s akin to eating unseasoned food, like a steak, when young. Then life adds seasoning, with failure, loss, heartbreak, success, love, and appreciation, and the definition of a soft heart takes on a clarity that is both dramatic and pleasantly surprising. One day you realize precisely what “sweet pain” means.
Lifetime Companions
If I had my way, dogs would live as long as humans, so they and those who love them might never be separated.
Existing in a Real World
When you are sensitive, attentive, analytic, and logical, you likely live in a personal mini-hell. Allowing oneself to care means the observational data is presented to your heart and mind in equal measure. Mix in the mistake generator that runs in our background, and we have this incessant analytical process that weighs whether we care selfishly or unselfishly, when that changes, and when it matters. Relax.
That means you aren’t a monster.
Appearance vs. Substance
Appearance is easy. Substance is hard. Same as it ever was.
A Playlist and a Memory
I was looking through some old files in online storage today. A text file, “chris top 20.txt” dated “Mar 5, 2009 at 10:03 PM”, caught my eye. I opened it and remembered its story. Christopher and I spoke of music often. That, along with technology, were our biggest common interests. We were talking of our favorite albums, and I asked him to make me a list of his top 20. This was the result. I remember listening to everything so I could better know what mattered to him.
I made a playlist in Apple Music today. 18 hours, 19 minutes. For the memory.
A Day for Love
Love comes in two forms. The love that just is, like how a parent loves a child. Or a child loves a parent. The taste of a favorite food. How you love that puppy the very first time you feel his nose on your cheek.
The other form is the love you choose. The thing you do over and over and one day you realize you love doing it. The game you play. The person you meet, learn about, experience life with, and then one day, realize if you don’t stop it you are going to love them. That threshold event that happens in a relationship.
Some days are for reflecting on what and whom you love. Do it so you don’t have regrets. Do it today.
Approaching Zero 