can we be honest about some things?

My brain has been mulling over something quite a bit over the past few weeks:

Atheists are kind of jerks. 

And,  if I'm being honest, I just say "kind of" to be socially acceptable. Every atheist I know is real life is a jerk regarding their beliefs (or lack there of). They are generally perfectly normal, nice folks in other areas of life.........and huge, huge jerks about believing.

I'd like to have some real talk about this.


My atheist friends are quick to jump into discussions about religion and immediate bash their believer friends. And those discussions typically take one of two turns........the "You're stupid to believe in fairy tales" approach or the wider "Look at all the problems that religion causes!" argument.

Let's start with the later. "Look at all the problems religion causes!"

Here's some real talk: In my day to day life, in my town, in my circle of friends, in the community I participate in every day,  I don't know any abortion clinic bombers. I don't know how any jihadists who have suicide bombed a building.

I do know people who go out of their way to attempt to make me, and other believers, feel badly about themselves. I do know people who regular call others "friend" and then seek to tear them down.

You want to talk about making the world better or worse? Let's be real about it. Let's be honest with what our contributions are to our community on a day to day basis. Because I think we could all agree that America is kind of messed up right now and a huge part of the messed-up-ness we find ourselves in lies in how disassociated we are from one another.

What makes my world worse, real life, day in day out, in my community, in my circle of friends, in my town........is people who find it ok to insult and demean others because of differing beliefs.  What makes my world worse and what demonstrates bad behavior to me is people calling me "friend"...and then seeking to hurt me.

The former argument my atheist friend use...the "You're stupid to believe in fairy tales!" argument... is just a tag-along to this. That argument was only created to tear others down. Because...lets be real... on a day to day basis, how many believers do you know personally who are going around deliberately trying to harm you? And, let's say you know some. Is the best contribution you can make to your community divisiveness? Resistance of compromise and understanding? That's really your best choice? That's really  helping things? What does it matter if someone doesn't believe the exact thing you do? How does it make anything better to take something someone finds very important and scoff and call it mere fairy tales?

At the end of the day, what makes my community worse is more conflict. More unkindness.


And I'm gonna go off on a little tangent here:
When you post your snarky little memes on social media, and you are aware you have believers as friends, you are being a jerk. You are insulting those you call friends. Let's just be honest about it. I don't know if you're trying to pretend your believer friends don't see it or you're falling back on the ol "It's my FB page and I should be allowed to post what I want" line. Either way, insulting your friends and calling them names makes you a jerk. (I mean, unless you have a ton of folks on your FB that you don't really like and don't care about.......but it's still a pretty jerk move to willingly insult your audience).

Anyways........


You want to sit around a belittle others for not doing life exactly like you? That's your best contribution to your community?

There is no "right" side of intolerance. There is no "right" side of hate or spite.

When you seek out to tear others down simply for the sake of doing it, you are part of the problem. And that's a truth for believers and non-believers a like.

real talk

If you end up spending a majority of time shoving it in everyone's face how happy you are with yourself, maybe you're not that happy with yourself.

Instead of trying to find artificial happiness in the words of others, what about the idea of being still with yourself for a bit and seeing if you can generate that happiness yourself.

My experience has been that true contentment generally isn't brash.

futile

This blog has not been updated much lately, not that anyone reads or even really knows to read.

 

The silence comes from struggle. I have come to the blogger site dozens of times only to have dozens of entries sit in the “draft” folder, and most likely never to see the light of day. My last entry of any substance touched on my feelings that, months later, still have a strangle hold on my words.

A friend asked me if I’d quit blogging and quit twitter. Kind of? (Well, yes, I did quit twitter, actually).

To be plain…I don’t feel like my words will be welcomed. The things that weigh on my mind often somehow weave into the relationships I have…..and I don’t think I have permission in any relationship (except my marriage) to be honest.

I was listening to a sermon the other day and the pastor said something to the effect of “You’d better have friends in your life that you give permission to be real and honest with you”.  And it struck me…..that’s why I’ve pulled away from social media, that’s why I don’t tweet or blog or post much on FB……I know that I do not have permission to be real with most anyone I am in a relationship with.  

I want to write things. And I write them and then realize that whatever I wrote  might end up hitting a nerve with someone I care about. Someone who I probably don’t have permission to be authentic with. So I realize I will probably just offend them or hurt them or, worse, push them away.  So I say nothing. And I hit “draft” instead of “publish”.

I don’t say any this in a judgey way. I come away from these situations feeling like a pretty horrible person most days. Whatever is going on in life and the world and our culture seems to dictate that I sit back and watch people I care about do harmful things. I feel like a terrible, terrible friend most of the time. Something in the way my brain is wired takes this on and I feel…..guilty. Why can’t I magically come up with the perfect words to tactfully and effectively convey what I’m trying to say? I suck at that. As this blog entry so clearly demonstrates.

So lately I’ve just been running away from it. I’ve been closing myself off from a lot of relationships and closing myself of from even having to engage it conversations.  I really just want to go between work and home and not think about what other folks are doing.  And I’ll be real…….it’s just because I’m tired and scared.

Anyways……….I don’t know if that makes sense. Or sounds just profoundly awful. Maybe I’m a horrible person and I just don’t know it. See? I’m finishing this up thinking “Oh lord, I’m going to sound like a giant jerk and it’s all going to be taken the wrong way and I’d better just hit draft instead of publish!”

 

So that’s where I’m at right now. I’m feeling like…..words are futile.

And no, don’t feel like this entry is a call for smoke to be blown up my butt or that I’m feeling sorry for myself.  I want people to be authentic with me. And I guess I need to figure out what, exactly, is my calling in this area of life. Right now, I just don’t know.

the world has gone mad

There is so much backward logic in the world. Has it always been this way? (a question I find myself asking a lot.......)

Once upon a time in a different life, I had a husband who left me. He ran off to another town with another woman and said many hurtful, horrible things to me. And during those times, back in those olden days, he posted on his MySpace wall (I told you it was the olden days) a quote attributed to Dr. Seuss:

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."

I knew it was a virtual slap-in-the-face to me, the bitter ex-wife who criticized his choices and who he was. And it infuriated me because that's not what that quote is meant for, damnit!

I knew he took some smug solace in the knowledge that Dr. Seuss, of all people, approved of him being who he was and that I didn't matter, nor did my opinion. And oh it burned me up inside.

I see this all the time, and I suppose it's much more in my face because of the internet. But every day, I see dozens of examples of people bastardizing some quote that was meant to inspire. They post these quotes and and use them to justify bad/damaging/unhealthy behaviors.

And they are everywhere. There is no shortage of fun little quotes on the internet. Heck, I have a board of them on Pinterest, as do many others.

But lately....I feel jaded when I read them. Just a million and one more excuses to justify shitty behavior/actions.

I see my friends doing it and, oh, it burns me up inside. People I know who are smart and good and kind and wonderful.....and they are also being deliberately obtuse with regard to their own emotional intelligence.

I want to shake them sometimes. "No! Don't make excuses to settle! Don't make excuses to accept less than you deserve! Don't make excuses to waste another year less happy than you could be!"

It doesn't burn as badly as that stupid quote my stupid ex posted that one stupid time on stupid old MySpace. (Sorry, Dr. Seuss....you know I don't really think you're stupid.....) But sometimes, reading these quotes and how seeing how folks corrupt them.....it burns a tiny bit.

I sat thinking about this while on Pinterest this morning. I should just stop pinning quotes. I mean...what if I'm just as guilty? What if I've done the same thing? I probably have. That thought burns a bit, too.

It's just another frustrating thing that people do that I have no control over that makes me just want to throw my computer out the window and take my kids to a remote patch of land in Montana and never be heard from again.

100 words - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots

Her name is strongly Japanese, although she looks anything but. Through the grainy veil of a webcam, though, she can be anything you want her to be I suppose.

"You're so strong" she says as you suit up in your gi for her. Of course your lessons ended years ago and you haven't actually practiced. Although you'll tell anyone who will listen that you will kick their ass if you have to.

"What is that over there?" she asks, gesturing towards the corner of the room. The little toy robot is your daughters. But you lie and say it's yours.

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This entry is for my friend Lance's 100 Word Song writing prompt. This weeks is 100 words based on the song Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots by The Flaming Lips.

note to self

The more disciplined I am in life, the happier I am.

what love is like

A friend wrote (or at least half wrote) a very beautiful story about how she got together with her fiance.

It reminds me a lot of my relationship with M. We struggled for years and years. And I got to a point where it hurt too badly to be with him so I ended our friendship. We were both in horrible, horrible spaces when we met and for a couple of years after...and it just wasn't our time.  And like Ally, I got to a point where I really had to so some soul searching and decide what I was willing to live with......the pain of just being friends or the pain of living without him.

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M and I had dated (poorly) and broken up (even more poorly). We didn't speak for a while, but of course that didn't last either. We struggled and argued for months and decided to start all over as friends. The point was to build a solid friendship, but I admit I had an ulterior motive. I figured "Yeah, we build a friendship....so we can be together". How awful to build a friendship on false pretenses. I think I knew how awful it was back then, I just didn't want to admit it.

Anyways....so for months we "worked on a friendship". Well... he worked. He worked very very hard at becoming a very good friend to me. And over the course of a few short months, he became my best friend.

One day we had this totally random unplanned day out. We went and explored the city and ended up getting tattoos together (no, not matching!). And it was just such a fun, awesome, easy, great, purely happy day.

And at the end of that day when we dropped me off and went off to do something else, I sat in my living room and cried because I knew that I had to accept that he would never love me like I loved him. But he was now my best friend and I couldn't just walk away. And I had to finally and truly accept that we were just friends and nothing more and that chapter was over.

That day was one of the best and worst days of that year. It was so so great and so so sad. But finally...after three years of struggle...I finally accepted the romance just wasn't there and decided it was time to move on and figure out how to get over this man while having him as my best friend.

And I gave up. And it was about two months later that he came to me one night and professed his love for me and hasn't left my side since. And when I told him about my recollection of the awesome/awful day, he laughed at me and said "That's funny, because that's the day I realized I could never be just friends with you".

Funny how life works out like that.

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I really have no idea how Ally's story ends but I want to know. Well, obviously it ends well because he put a ring on it and the are wedding planning. But if you happen to read this and happen to read hers too, please go pester her to finish her story.