My Face In My Hands

Have you ever sat for an extended period of time with your face in your hands? I'm not sure why I do it. I think I am hoping that when I lift my eyes back out into the light, the problem will have fixed itself.

It's called exasperation. It's one of the highest levels of frustration where you feel like the first thing coming up is the white flag of surrender. My patience level sometimes gives up.
Some days will go by and I'm pretty good overall. I am generally ok these days. It seems like between the redneck neighbor (before you pounce on me, please go back through the archives and read about that one. It's a lifestyle not a monetary circumstance) bad news and mean people, I find myself saying, "Hey God, that rapture you promised? Anytime soon?" lol

Please understand it's not anything personal that I am going through, just this sense of anarchy all around me. While I am good at closing the windows and blinds and shutting out the world, it saddens me every day! I think my biggest issue overall is the way people are talking to each other...their spouses, neighbors and children. Everyone seems so mean!!!! I know siblings are that way, I mean I was left for dead in many a cornfield growing up, but it seems so unnecessary. Have you ever been the person in the room while others fight and you are told to mind your own business so you suck it up? It simply makes me sad!!!

As I have previously discussed, I am working on showing more kindness overall...kinda like that song we sang as kids, "Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me..." But holy crap! It's tough going it alone!

I found myself reading a story today(it's bizarre, but quotes and stories find me more than I find them) about a soldier who felt this way and so obviously with me being safe in my home and not being shot at (although I am in LA...lol) it deepens the perspective.

He had enlisted to go overseas and while he believed in what he was doing, he found himself in a situation where the character of everyone around him had changed. What he was determined to maintain during his leave was a sense of being a peace-keeper. He talked extensively about the people around him. He cited examples of men he considered his brothers who started to treat it like a videogame. He also added that war plays wicked mind games on you and that he didn't necessarily blame them for it, but did explain his disappointment in them. Long story made very short, he was left with saying, "my face was melting in my hands".

While he and I don't have much in common because he is literally risking his life and I'm not, I did use his thoughts as a means to lift my face up out of my own hands. It's perspective that he offered me. But what I also have in common with him is the sense of simply being sad that so many people whether we know it or not(or allow it or not) are changing.

If you look back to your own childhood, maybe it was very rough and it's changed for the better, but an overwhelming number of people I talk to, have had good childhoods with lots of giggles, laughs and memories and it's their adulthood that sucks. So what's changed?

I think being an adult can be sucky. We have obligations. We are faced with crazy decisions. We have extensive responsibilities and our limits are being pushed as well as our buttons...almost daily. I think we drop our faces into our hands in order to escape it all. For some reason the darkness makes you feel like nothing else exists. The perspective this man gave me was that it can get really rough. You can literally witness someone you love kill someone. In this man's case, he's killed people himself. So how do you go from your face melting in your hands to opening your eyes and walking on? How can we continue to grow as humans and get our character back and feel ok about every day again?

For me today, it was perspective. Yes my hurts matter...bleeding heart, right? (past blog also) but sometimes the story of someone else can show us some clues in how to manage our own.

He also said he was by no means perfect, but he was determined to be a positive example to his brothers in arms. After all, we are all being pushed to the max...and a little understanding and a good ear can go a long way.

Yup, it's easier to shut the blinds and windows to lock out the noise. But if I crank my tunes really loud, perhaps my music can infiltrate the neighborhood.

Hmmm, Master of Puppets or Paganini?

Breathing is good,
Karen

"The world itself looks cleaner and so much more beautiful. Maybe we can make it that way - the way God intended it to be - by giving everyone, eventually, that new perspective from out in space. "~Roger B. Chaffee