The Best I Can Do

There is a sort of self satisfied, above it all feeling that some people seem to carry around with them that says this would never happen to me, not the way I live. It implies that if I only lived better, my life would be as good as theirs. The truth is they probably don't live any better than I do. Their standards are just different.

Some of us are born with such a great need to belong that we can, and do, endure terrible things. It can run the range from something as simple as working ourselves to death so our kids can have fancy clothes and belong to all the right clubs, to even denying who we are and what we are born to be. Others are born with a need to be true to ourselves and the truth as we see it.

Lines are difficult to discern here since they often depend on who we are and whether, or not, it is me I am talking about, or you. Minds tend to justify whatever truth seems most powerful at the time and the closer to home it is, the harder it is to be objective.

I try not to judge people. In fact, I tend to admire people who color outside the lines and walk a little bolder than most of us would dare, but I'm no fool. I know they have paid a price, do pay a price for their freedom and I try to do what I can to support them.

I do not like conflict. I really do not like it! I go to such lengths to avoid it that when I finally boil over, I am too angry. That is counter productive too, so I have learned to step up, quaking in my boots, and take a stand as early as I possibly can.

It ain’t easy. Of course if it’s approval I need, I might as well give up, because somebody’s always righteously unhappy about something. Right now I’m just sitting on the side lines watching my friends stand up for what they believe and cheering them on.

It’s the best I can do.