Maybe They Need the Hunger

Why are we so anxious to rescue people? More and more I feel uncomfortable with the idea that they even need help. This may sound heartless but what if hunger is necessary to prompt someone to better their own circumstances? Or what if the experience of being 'poor' leads to a creative idea that benefits others and provides abundance to the previously 'poor' person.

Why are we so arrogant to believe that our own lifestyle is what everyone should aspire to? Diversity is fine so long as you are not tainted with it.

Your preferences are your own. They do not need to be mine or that homeless guy's you see shuffling off to The Lords Diner for his next meal. We may not understand why a person would make the choices they do and experience the consequences that result from those choices but why do we think we have to?

Helpless creatures and people will always be the exception to this. No one wants another child being found starving in a closet. No one could agree that harming an animal is the right thing.

People living in other places, who do not choose to live like the majority of Americans, don't need missionaries looking to save them. It's possible they could use clean water, knowledge to help them provide for their own dinner table or a warm article of clothing. But they do not need their souls saved. Their souls are Jim Dandy. Their choices belong to them. Who or what they worship is not my business.

Sometimes life carries us to a place deeper and darker than we ever imagined so that we are then moved to look for the light. It isn't always possible to know the whys of these things. We just don't have a big enough perspective

Before you righteously open your wallet and hand the homeless guy 3 bucks for McDonalds, consider what the hunger might be teaching him. Perhaps the hunger will move him to better his circumstance or maybe not. Maybe he made a decision at the soul level to experience this. Help is not always the right option because in making the decision to help we are arrogantly assuming, because of our own limited perspective, that they need it. Maybe they need the hunger.

The Ghost is Me

Maybe I should begin with the title. The Ghost Steps Out. The Ghost is me. These words were also included in a poem I wrote about a life altering incident that came about in November 2008. Ghost is also how I have felt in a good part of my long term marriage. 

Even though you might feel frozen by events that happen in your life. It is not true that life stops. Mine hasn't. In this new blog I'm changing things up. I was urged by a family member to get rid of my prior blog because she was concerned it might hurt people close to me. For this reason, I plan to remain known simply as Ghost. I choose to begin this new blog for other reasons as well. I will be able to write more freely. Share more freely.

I won't stop writing my experience because it helps me to cope and heal. I believe it could help others as well. I share my experience and thoughts, trusting now, that those who are meant to see them will find them and those who I no longer wish to have in my life will not. 

Baseline to Decent

Two people have told me in the last 6 weeks that I inspire them. One even said that he models himself after me.

I am struck dumb by these compliments. I'm tempted to jump in front of a mirror to make sure I am still me or to look behind myself for the other person that, surely, they must be talking to. 

See, I feel so flawed. Am I a decent person? Yes. If you are my friend could you call for help and be sure you'll get it?  Yes. If I say I love you do I mean it? Hell yes. 

But isn't the above paragraph the baseline to decent? I can draw. I was a good Mom. Obviously a flawed wife. Mostly a law abiding citizen, my bail fund, courtesy of my Brother, notwithstanding. 

I have picked myself up, albeit slowly, from a life altering event and am struggling forward. 

I just don't see what there is in all that to inspire. I am not a Mother Teresa clone. In fact most of society would not approve of me for a variety of reasons. Yes I have some friends that love me. But I tend to think I just got awful lucky to have found them. 

I also have had some folks that have referred to me as narcissistic, self involved, hurtful, offensive etc. 

I just don't see how a person who struggles as much as I do to make it from one day to the next, who has no idea where her life is headed, who has contributed as little as I have, is inspirational. 

The guys were sweet but they were wrong. I am not inspiring. I  am screwed up, flawed, stubborn, confused, lost and despair far more often then I let on. 

At times I hate me. 

Inspiring is someone who uplifts. Not someone struggling to stay afloat.