I was at the check-out counter sitting in my wheelchair, listening to the customer behind me talk to the cashier. He looks at her and says she looks tired. She rings through one more of my purchases and she it has been a long day. The customer relies that it only gets harder the older we get. She doesn't have much of a response to that so he continues by saying how life is so hard and so "miserable" that you just gotta hang on and wade through all the misery. She says uh-huh not really paying much attention to him but that doesn't bother him any. She finishes with my purchases and I pay up and roll on out of there.
Is it really such a miserable life or do miserable people just make it that way for themselves and everyone around them.
I live in a Seniors building. Most of the residents grew up in Europe during the 2 world wars. Some were in concentration camps and bear their numbers tattooed onto their arms. Most are OK but some just want to take a last breathe, roll over and die. Every word out of their mouths is misery. Do they have reason to be miserable? They certainly lived through extremely hard times.
Some are sick and that certainly is no picnic as you get older. It seems everything just starts falling apart at a certain age. Many are convinced that doctors only want to push medicine at them that won't work or will make them sick in other ways so they don't take their medicine and they get sicker and blame the doctors.
Others just want to sit and recount every miserable thing that has every happened to them over and over and over. Isn't that what counselors are for? But really they aren't looking to improve their lives. They just like to hear themselves talk.
So there I was sitting in my wheelchair listening to this guy talk about how miserable his life is. He had no apparent disability but that doesn't mean he doesn't have some health problems. But he seemed to be walking fine. Certainly had no problems talking. No glasses or hearing aids visible. No cane or walker. Definitely not a wheelchair.
I didn't join in the conversation. I doubt there was anything I could say to help him be less miserable unless I perhaps offered to exchange my wheelchair for his feet. But I left the store thinking about it.
Isn't that the message we got as Witnesses. Life is so terrible out in the world that you must stay within the organization.
I have been through enough abuse of every kind that people who know me are surprised that I am still alive. Life has handed me one thing after another and another and sometimes more than one bad thing at a time. Many people would understand if I turned out to be some bitter, angry miserable person. But what is the point of that?
As I rolled down the sidewalk I was glad. I have so many opportunities to do new things, learn new things, to keep challenging myself to grow and be more than I am now. Life is full of possibilities and they only thing that stops me (other than money) is me. I doubt I will ever go skydiving. But if I really wanted to, I would find a way to make it happen.
There is a saying "We are what we eat" But we are also what we think. If I focus all the time on all the terrible things that have happened to me; been done to me I would be one very miserable person indeed. I wouldn't want to live like that. I figure I have quite a few years left to live and I want them to be productive. I want to feel good about each day. I want to go to sleep at night and not want it to be over (I did enough of that when I was younger).
Yea we were in a cult and it sucked. And we missed out on a lot. Find those things you missed and find ways to give it back to yourself. I remember one hysterical night in a park having a watermelon fight with a friend at a friend The inside - not the whole thing, just handfuls of it. Watermelon juice is very very sticky. Take my word for it. It was very funny until the cops showed up and told us to go home. And I wasn't a crazy teenager. I was 38. Now don't all rush out to buy watermelons to throw at your friends.
One thing I learned early on is not to measure happiness or joy by the big things in life. It is in the little things. Today I got a letter from my granddaughter. She is 7 and is learning how to write in French. She already speaks it. It is a Valentine's Day letter to tell me that she loves me. My piece of joy for today.
Count up those little things because in the end they all add up to a wonderful life.