We make our own way in the world.  No one should gaze on another person and think, “They’ve been treated miserably,” because it is impossible to understand what has happened unless you have been part of the situation yourselves.

As I sit here tonight, late, tired, hungry, I ponder all the turns that my life has taken.  I might complain with bitter force that this one or that one made a choice that negatively impacted me, but when it comes right down to brass tacks, we bear responsibility for our own lives.

One of the reasons that I have tried to learn to live complaint-free centers on my desire to release the past.  Not just the near past, but more powerfully, more necessarily, the distant past — my childhood, much of which left such deep scars that I shudder when I am touched even by the most tender of hands.  Living complaint-free requires that I accept responsibility for my condition.

Part of accepting responsibility for my condition demands that I send out this alert:  Blame no one else for how I am.  Not my father, not the secretary who embezzled money from me, or the doctor who incorrectly predicted my imminent demise 18 years ago.   No one.  Accept that you might not have all the information you need to understand what current carried me to the cove where I linger, sometimes battering myself against the rocks.

After all is said and done:  I steer my ship.  Perhaps I have defective instruments.  Certainly, my low opinion of myself causes me to push people away.  I’m terrible at delegating; I micro-manage; I bark at people when I am tired; and I have difficulty discerning humor, often mistaking it for ridicule.  So do not blame anyone for any state that I occupy.  Oh yes, a few folks admittedly meant to do me harm, but I’m fairly certainly no one knows who they are; they receded into the past when I left behind my carefree mis-spent youth.

Most everyone else just lived their lives as well as they could.  Any harm to me was an unintended consequence.

And now here’s the rest of the story.  Just as I bear and accept responsibility for my sorrows, so too must I grab hold of the tiller and steer myself to joy.

Keep watch.  It might happen yet.

It’s late on the third day of the thirtieth month of My Year Without Complaining.  I am weary.  But my life continues.