Life Is What We Make of It

Path

This morning I don't have anything to do at The Shop - I'm waiting on people to decide what to do, and ordinarily that's a stressful time for me because some of the people blocking me aren't the most helpful of people I've run into. In fact, they just plain make me nervous. But this morning, I'm listening to Hootie and the Blowfish and I just know that this life of mine is in my hands - no one else's.

Not Liza's. Not the kids. No one - but me.

I can choose to feel beaten up, or not. I can choose to feel the victim, or not.

This isn't the first time I've felt this way, but it's been an exceptionally long time since I've felt this way. Just a silly smile on my face realizing that: No weapon formed against me shall prosper. It really is that simple - and it's really just that hard.

It's been so easy to feel beaten up - face it, there are people emotionally, and financially, beating up on me, so it's pretty easy to think that I am who they see me to be. They want to beat up on someone - they want a victim. So it's easy to see myself as they see me, and I then become the victim.

But the alternative is to realize that I have a code of ethics, a morality, that says I will honor my obligations, and then there's the divorce law, but that doesn't cover emotions. That doesn't cover honor. That isn't the sum total of who I am.

No, that's much more. So I can take the slings and arrows, because I choose how to handle them. They can be deadly - or they can be nothing more than the emotions ejected from others, and while I can see them, I don't have to internalize them.

Good start on the day!