Submitted for your consideration

The eleventh month of my year without complaining draws to a close.  This blog, unlike my Saturday Musings(tm), is not intended as a forum merely for telling pleasant tales or depicting images to amuse, entertain, or endear.  This blog chronicles a personal journey for me.  The goal of the year started as the intention to live complaint-free.  Along the way, the goal has morphed almost beyond recognition.  Now, rather than merely learning to live complaint-free, I yearn to walk in a state that I can only describe as “grace”.

I turned a corner this week.  I’d like to share it with you in the abstract, if you will indulge me.  Someone lost patience with me and criticized  me for what I consider one of my strongest abilities:  tenacity.  I realize that a small grey strip separates persistence from obstinance but I walk that line gladly.  I’d rather be seen as stubborn from time to time than to surrender.  And please, make no mistake:  By “surrender”, I do not mean “give in” but “give up”.

“Giving in” means letting others make choices.  That has always been difficult for me, indeed.  I include that possibility as an element of the change which I strive to embrace.  More and more, when someone suggests a course of action, I find myself thinking, Okay sure, why not? and smiling.  Amazingly, I care less and less about being the decider.

But I do not wish to give up, as in, quit the fight to move forward towards attainment of my goals.  So I navigate that narrow strip between tenacity and bull-headedness.  If I stray over the line, so be it.

I suspect that the person who castigated me for my tenacity  would, I am sure, classify my choices as cursed pigheadedness without exception.  I can accept that.  Call me what you will.  I operate under the principle that solving problems means working for the outcome.  Most of the time, I’m trying to solve problems for other people, including family, friends, and clients.  When I love someone and they find themselves twisted in knots, I find the end and start unraveling.

I haven’t stopped doing this.  I’m on the phone for people.  I take their faces in both my hands and soothe their frowns.  When their heartbeat accelerates, I rub their brow.  When they burn themselves, I take them to get aloe.  if they war with their family, I sit, or stand, or rock, and help them process.   At the same time, when I need something, I push until I get it or find a way to meet the need it would have fulfilled without it.  Or I find someone who can and will meet my need.

And you know what?  I like that about myself.  I’m thankful for that quality.

Would I wave a magic wand and make myself a little softer on the edges?  Sure.  Are there days in my journey when I’ve behaved in ways that I now would not choose?  Absolutely.  Have I ever knowingly abandoned my values or failed to at least try to help any and every person in my world, starting with each and every person whom I love?  No, I have NOT.

So, then, submitted for your consideration.  Call me names, say I have failed.  Say that I did not rise to every occasion and sink every shot.  Say that my qualities don’t appear on your list of what a person should be.   Say that I’ve got light-years to grow before I get my wings.  But never let it be said that I did not put one-hundred percent of myself into every effort.

I’ve heard that showing up is eighty-five percent of life.  If that’s true, then I have the whole one hundred percent, because I show up, stand up, and let myself be counted.

If I am on your side, let anyone be against us, because I am a force with which to be reckoned when I champion a cause.

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6 thoughts on “Submitted for your consideration

    1. Lisa Way

      Thank you, Corinne.

      I am thankful for truth, yours and my own and truth of the world. I am thankful that I still seek the whole truth, the full picture, No matter from whence it may come, no matter whether it pleases me in every aspect.

      “Bliss is a by-product” of my quest to remove blinders, to release preconceptions and misguided judgements, so that people and the world shall be revealed in pure and whole form. It is a quest finally to achieve TRUST in my own perception, people, and the world.

      I would rather you be stubborn or maybe wrong sometimes, than to give up! Whoever thinks differently is not appreciating your full picture and that is their short sight.

      If you drop a hammer on someone’s toe, whether intended or not, the toe still screams, and this is an occasion for apology and if possible, ammends. But NEVER apologize for your art, in this case, the art of self-actualization, which can be said to be at the root of all art forms. And only in embracing our whole unique self shall the world be revealed to one and all, thereby prepared to achieve any vision of grace.

      Gobbly Goodness today!

      Reply

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