Tradition!

My world feels normal to me, but that wasn't always true. I grew up knowing all kinds of things I took for granted.

Those things we grow up knowing are almost sacred parts of us. They are the traditions we fall back on whenever we are in doubt and they vary from family to family.

Unless you are a counselor who listens carefully to people, you generally only know the traditions of your own family and maybe your partner in life.

In my family the workaholic is highly praised, topped only by martyrdom. It is considered a mark of heroism to over do, to go to extremes. When these extremes produce dire results, instead of becoming a lesson for moderation, they become the folk tales and epic sagas of our family heroes.

We believe if a job is worth doing it is worth doing until it surpasses the point of questionable sanity.

If one pill makes you feel better, imagine what ten can do. If one drink makes you happy, the whole bottle should send you into ecstasy. Broken bones, misaligned backs, illnesses and disfigurement of every sort are a badge of courage earned by over lifting, over working, over doing -- almost everything in life.

Extremes, no matter how misconstrued, are the norm. And with lots of people in the family there are lots of different extremes. Few people live farther than the edge of town. The ones who do are considered odd. Strange. People who do bizarre things like run for their health, or travel alone, or just choose to try and live a more moderate lifestyle based on healthier, more educated ways.

These are the family odd ducks. The ones who broke tradition and no one knows quite what to do about them. They make jokes about them. Occasionally they look up to them, or marvel at their success stories, but they don't EVER model their ways, because that is not how things are done.

It is not tradition!