You are right. And I think it is very important for us to sort our the relationship with our parents from a place of love, for them and for ourselves. Very few people have perfect relationships with parents, and I think it's an opportunity for learning about history, about ourselves, and about love.
Really nice as a soon-to-be elder to feel your love, thank you. 💗
Yeah, they're planning to obsolete us as soon as they've got no more use for us -- if they can.
But they're fools.
Fools always fuck up. Just wait for it.
But I'm not waiting. Applying pressure highly increases the probability that fools will fuck up much sooner rather than later.
And I'm not doing it so that they can realize the error of their ways and remediate. That idea in itself is a result of the mind-fucking we've endured.
I'm doing it to make clear that *we* have no more use for *them*, meaning the "them" they present themselves to be, which is just a pack of lies, figments pretending corporeality.
But we have place and interest and love for the little fuckups hiding in there somewhere behind suits and podiums and scowls and smug, I'm-me-and-you're-not grins, if we could only convince them to come out and drop the theatrics.
But whether they want to or will or actually do, one thing's certain: they can't continue. We can't let them.
And the baseless, thoughtless, knee-jerk belief that they can't be stopped and their evil eliminated is one of the biggest lies of all.
Of course we can stop them. We're already doing it, Christ's sake. Most folks just don't realize it yet -- or refuse to let themselves realize it -- often not even those doing the stopping.
"The baseless, thoughtless, knee-jerk belief that they can't be stopped and their evil eliminated is one of the biggest lies of all.
Of course we can stop them. We're already doing it, Christ's sake. Most folks just don't realize it yet -- or refuse to let themselves realize it -- often not even those doing the stopping."
First I’m not opposed to forgiveness and practice it and recommended it in my counseling sessions when it was appropriate to do so. However this has been a recommended approach for any decades and from a psychology perspective, being told “you are forgiven” rarely stops the behaviors. It simply becomes a “get out of jail” card for the perpetrator who turns around and does it again, making it hard for the forgiver to fully heal. I’ve seen a minuscule number of people actually transformed by this or benefitted. You say it’s for the person hurt but in reality the pain goes on and healing is rarely achieved. Some are so it’s always worth trying to do. But more times than not I listened to the grief and surprise poured out by folks who honestly tried to do this with no easement of their pain nor permanent transformation of their lives. Again, there is always some. But the flowers and hearts scenario does not exist for most. As a society we need to do better at helping perpetrators stop doing harm. Putting them in jail is not generally the answer unless what they’ve done requires that for both justice and prevention and by law. Catching bullying and abusive parents and helping them transform their behavior is what we need to do. Not ignoring children who are harmed. Stopping the insane CRT stuff that will increase this sort of behavior not stop it. “I forgive you” can be powerful. Most of the time it’s an easy thing to do that does not require anyone to get into the mud and actually fix things. This is my objection to these lovely words. They make everyone feel warm and toasty without anyone having to get into the dirt. Just like help lines who do some good. More good would be achieved by friends, family, teachers, and neighbors to NOTICE problems and extend a caring hand or ear to the one in pain. Help lines make us feel like we’ve done good without having to sit next to someone with snot and tears pouring down their faces as they cry out their agony. Yet that would do more good than any nameless person on the other side. My words are not comforting but I have brought comfort by sitting in the mud with countless children and adults as they worked through their agony. Some few have achieved the forgiveness attempt. Of that group, only a handful have ever achieved any lasting peace from it.
Painfully true words of reality, ForestDi56, thank you. In my experience, true and lasting healing, individually or relational-- this is a tall order. Very tall. Having been through Primal Therapy I have first-hand experience of what you are saying here.
Harboring resentment is not so much a choice as it is an effect. Real forgiveness is not really possible until ones' pain has been acknowledged, invited and felt as completely as possible within ones' body. Feeling the feelings is what allows us to really let go and move forward with a free heart. It is deep, painful work that takes time, great courage and fearless inner honesty.
If one is unable do that, then I guess "forgiveness" is the only option. Trouble is, you have to keep doing it over and over again because the pain and resentment are real and they do not just disappear from ones' body because one decides deep, painful feelings can be transcended. This is where religious/spiritual notions fail us and serve to keep us emotionally stuck-- by allowing us to kid ourselves and hide our difficult feelings by engaging in so-called saintly behavior.
If we really want to love our elders, that love must be real and not imagined. It must have true emotional power and that power only comes from a return to the depths of the heart. The heart feels what it feels, doesn't it? We don't control it. We don't get to choose what we feel. The heart is the source of love-- a wild, mysterious, beautiful, flowing power that cannot be contained. Yet as children we are all taught to tame it with a whip like some kind of circus animal.
And tame it we do. But is not that circus animal made a mockery of itself? Is it not absolutely fkn miserable all its' life?
As I said, everybody has own way of getting through that. What's important though, is that there are no theoretical flowers in what I write. I am sharing personal experience and observations. There is a tremendous difference between personal experience and theoretical flowers! That said, I trust it that your own soul knows how to take you through whatever you need to go through. And I wish you the kindest journey!
Thank you, Tessa. This really touched me. I shall be forwarding it to my daughter and post on FB. Having spent much time in Italy, the relationship with elders there is still inclusive and respectful, the family as a whole having far more importance. This holds true in much of the Mediterranean world. I feel we can learn from this as respect and love has not disappeared, as much as Klaus Schwab and the Davos clique may want it to be.
Conversely, when I see entire communities of elders shut away in Leisure World, California, with all their physical needs met but without social or familial integration, it breaks my heart. Yet this is the trend that the Great Reset is built on. As you wisely note, this machine has no soul and this soulless new normal of machine-learning smartphone-connected vaccinated social credits we are being led to accept will ultimately fail because it is without love.
Thank you again for your beautiful, heartfelt article. It is much needed.
I forwarded this to my children and their spouses. Here is a portion of what I wrote.
Two things to say about this article…
First, about the people who were my elders when I was your age.
I only listened to them because they made a point to establish a relationship with me. They felt distant and far too important for me to have a relationship with them then. I learn that in their eldership that we were closer to my life experience than at any point their life. We both felt that we living at the margins, facing unknown futures. When they died, an unfillable hole was left. I ultimately realized it was to be filled with relationships with young people.
Second about me…
When I went to Africa (2019-20), I was honored every where I turned as an Mzee, an older man of wisdom. I had never experienced this before. People were automatically open to me.
Since returning, I have felt my age.
I don’t like being viewed as on my way out. Those who are the closest to my age often show this to me. It is a reflection of their own feelings of alienation from the world that exists. Their feelings are genuine and rational.
I don’t like feeling like a relic. I am not old. I have worked harder this year than ever before. Why? Because I am finally relevant.
I treasure my relationship with each of you. Even though I am acting as if I have another 35-40 years of life to go, I feel that our time is short.
🙏 beautiful thank you !We all have some people in our lives that we can apply this forgiveness and love to ❤️and if 1% of us can do it we can lift humanity’s consciousness past this dark time .
"The Great Reset has a political face but its essence is spiritual brokenness. The Great Reset is a culmination of the mechanistic, fearful, reactive approach to life. It’s a neurosis-driven attempt to establish total control to avoid pain. And what is the antithesis to that? Love and forgiveness."
And, trust and community. That's part of the antithesis to spiritual brokenness. We can build that back, better.
My elders are gone, many years now. Maybe I can love someone else's. Maybe I can be part of that healing for them, in some way.
Mine loved me, and that has made all the difference.
From where I'm at, I know what you write is true Tessa. You're right. So, I called my mom. It occurs to me that the pain of sitting with someone you want to be loved by who cannot remotely see your point of view opens a deep well of pain. My love effort looked like a tensely-gripped 1hour and 26 minute conversation. Shed tears and got nowhere. We agreed it was good we tried. It's like talking to someone who is hypnotized or can't hear what you are saying, no matter how you say it, or what words you choose. What I need is advice about how to just be the daughter she can mother. Is there a version of myself that would make our relationship evolve to a beautiful or more peaceful or mutually enriching place? How can I still be myself and also change every hope and expectation I had for this Mother-Daughter relationship? Right now it feels like banging on thick glass. I think mimesis reflects me away from finding and showing her a better kind of Love - I just can't feel it, and don't know what loving my elders looks like. Maybe the Love I have to give is the kind the never gives up, but is constantly disappointed.Is that enough? It feels like not enough. I welcome anyone's thoughts.
I watched a great movie recently; My Happy Marriage. Its a Japanese film, released last year. I felt like it was the story of my life. I had to heal my relationship with my mother in imagination, and with having a relationship with the mother archetype. She still fears me and doesn't want to have anything to do with me. If I get near, she is vicious. After years of trying, and suffering, and praying, somehow I healed myself. I love the whole world and see the face of God everywhere. It was a difficult karma, but I have made my peace with it, and it has contributed to my development. Sometimes we don't understand other people, and their motivations for incarnation. They have a right to do what they are here to do. So do we. Love itself is bigger than all the stories.
In my experience, it is our expectations that are the source of our pain.
What does "loving" difficult people look like? I believe, in part, it is letting go of our expectation that others can, or ever will be, any different than who and what they already are.
Ed Dowd has said this another way: "Depression is the inability to accept the circumstances of your life." ~ And, the companion piece to Ed's comment comes from Carl Jung: "We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses."
As one near death experiencer has reminded us: "Acceptance is synonymous with love."
Note: I'm not saying here that difficult people can be changed, only that we can, eventually, change our expectations by finally letting go. . . .
Beautiful, Tessa... Spent a lot of time and years healing the pain, shame, forgiving and also getting to know my parents as an adult. Takes courage, compassion and also willingness to let go of the past and to grow up and be the adult. I love the expelling the ghost of the Reset, too, thank you.
Yesterday was an odd day in several aspects. I had worked a long Friday at the clinic again, which did not go badly. I left nothing unfinished.
We drove to the Yoakum homestead Friday night and got a good night of sleep.
Somehow, I felt very heavy and slow on Saturday and Sunday, so I trudged through three to four hours of pushing the little Honda mower, and did work in the garden, but ploddingly. I planted garlic for the winter/spring season, and tended the garden.
I continued to feel a weight of unease, and as we started the drive back to Austin, Sunday afternoon, I had a sense that I should really buy winter veggies to put in at the clinic garden, which I started in 2016, and tend for my coworkers. Putting things off until the end of the month, in my last two weeks of work there, seemed awkward.
We picked up a lot of winter greens and salad starts in little pots on our way into Austin, some for our Austin kitchen garden, but most for the clinic garden.
I did a last harvest of the blackeyed pea row, then cut down the vines, and took them to some chickens that a friend of Jenny's raises.
Yesterday (Monday) morning I worked in our kitchen garden again, preparing the beds for fall and winter, cleaning up the summer debris, and also planting an orange seedling in the bed in front of the house, where the February freeze had killed the one fruitful tree.
After eating, I went over to the clinic with an orange seedling, to replace the two that the February freeze had killed, and all of the winter salad and cooking-green seedlings to fill a couple of rows. I went through the entrance, put on a mask, and went through to the garden in the break area, with shovels and clippers, saying "hi" to a few people and smiling with my eyes. I went out through the garden gate, and brought in the orange tree, then the veggie starts.
The orange tree needed to go in the large bed, which has a Mexican avocado seedling tree, and a banana plant that actually survived February. Mainly it has a lot of sweet potatoes.It's a fairly large bed, and this has been a very good year for sweet potatoes. I filled the three gallon bucket that the tree was in with sweet potatoes, from just a few square feet that I cleared and dug up, before planting it, maybe one percent of that bed.
While I was digging up the sweet potatoes and digging the hole to put the orange tree in, my flip phone rang. I figured it was Jenny. I brushed some of the dirt off my hands and answered it. It was the nice and very well-mannered youngish man, who is currently Director of Human Resources, telling me that my last day of work had been changed from the last Friday of October to the Friday just passed, which was different from what I had been told last week, when the reason for my firing was changed from vaccine-mandate non-compliance, to all of the wrongs I have committed in the period of time since that mandate was announced.
It was a lousy spot for him to be put in, and he seemed uncomfortable having to put it into polite words.He had been trying to call me while I was working on our home garden, but I had not been carrying the phone. I told him that I was at the clinic garden, putting in some things for winter, and that he could talk to me in person. My presence in the garden was unanticipated, though I have worked on my day off frequently in the past couple of months.
We talked as I planted the orange tree and put the big sweet potatoes in the pot, handing it over to a couple of nurses taking their lunch. They had helped dig sweet potatoes last year, and I knew they wanted some. He politely explained that I was not to re-enter the building, and that my desk would be cleared out and boxed for me. The explanation was so polite that I sought clarification.I did negotiate that I could pick up a few notes at my desk with his presence and supervision, which we then did. My badge didn't let me in this time. He had to use his. As we walked through the clinic to my desk, most people had their eyes down. A few coworkers looked me in the eyes, and I smiled with my eyes. I was comfortable in myself, and emanated that (I think).
We grabbed a few boxes and made short work of the packing-up. I got everything, and we carried the three boxes to my little twenty four year old Ford Ranger pickup truck together. We went back to the garden and break-area through the gate, He thought it best that I just leave without planting the vegetables, but I prevailed upon him to keep his agreement to let me clean out the rows and do the planting.
He actually had a fair number of gardening questions, which I answered as I cleared the rows and planted for winter.
I worked expeditiously, taking about twenty to thirty minutes, as I explained the quality of the soil, and how building soil is one of the main objectives in successful gardening. If you don't have enough garden to out produce what the squirrels, birds and other critters can eat, they will eat it all.
You need a big enough garden patch.
We walked back to the truck with shovels and clippers, talking about what's next. The clinic will still pay me for these last two weeks of October, but my patients who are scheduled will not get to see me for a last visit. I have been doing everything possible to avoid leaving loose ends, and to write thorough chart notes, so it will be easy for the next doctor. I have tried to make suggestions for which doctor or practitioner might best match the needs and personality of each patient. I passed my list to give to the Director of Adult Medicine, who has been working hard and well on this transition. It's not a complete list...
I am left to wonder why the clinic took surprise action to remove me from patient-care, while still paying my salary for two weeks. I suspect there was free-floating anxiety about what I might say or do. I had been informing people of the actual circumstances of my leaving, being fired for non-compliance with mandatory vaccination. The management has been consulting with attorneys the whole time, and somebody else is contesting her firing for non-compliance with that mandate, I am told. Governor Abbott did say that vaccine mandates are not tolerable in Texas, Monday of last week. I suspect that my being fired-for-cause, other than non-compliance with COVID vaccination might be more plausible when the date of my firing is moved forward from the prior date of my termination for non-compliance
I do not intend to contest my firing through recourse to the law. The only law I am really, currently concerned with is the Law of Karma, and I am very concerned with that law. I am constantly aware of the implications of Karma as we wade further into this rip-tide of history.
There is also the guilt of being an imperfect child.
You are right. And I think it is very important for us to sort our the relationship with our parents from a place of love, for them and for ourselves. Very few people have perfect relationships with parents, and I think it's an opportunity for learning about history, about ourselves, and about love.
Really nice as a soon-to-be elder to feel your love, thank you. 💗
Yeah, they're planning to obsolete us as soon as they've got no more use for us -- if they can.
But they're fools.
Fools always fuck up. Just wait for it.
But I'm not waiting. Applying pressure highly increases the probability that fools will fuck up much sooner rather than later.
And I'm not doing it so that they can realize the error of their ways and remediate. That idea in itself is a result of the mind-fucking we've endured.
I'm doing it to make clear that *we* have no more use for *them*, meaning the "them" they present themselves to be, which is just a pack of lies, figments pretending corporeality.
But we have place and interest and love for the little fuckups hiding in there somewhere behind suits and podiums and scowls and smug, I'm-me-and-you're-not grins, if we could only convince them to come out and drop the theatrics.
But whether they want to or will or actually do, one thing's certain: they can't continue. We can't let them.
And the baseless, thoughtless, knee-jerk belief that they can't be stopped and their evil eliminated is one of the biggest lies of all.
Of course we can stop them. We're already doing it, Christ's sake. Most folks just don't realize it yet -- or refuse to let themselves realize it -- often not even those doing the stopping.
Well said, Millard! Thank you immensely for this:
"The baseless, thoughtless, knee-jerk belief that they can't be stopped and their evil eliminated is one of the biggest lies of all.
Of course we can stop them. We're already doing it, Christ's sake. Most folks just don't realize it yet -- or refuse to let themselves realize it -- often not even those doing the stopping."
Especially if your parents were immigrants fleeing poverty, dictatorship, terror or all of the above! We have all kinds of "elders" in our society!
All born into a machine that is Moloch, yes. Those longest in have seen the most, and can help us as it falls.
guessing you already know this, but I'm reminded of it by this one, LOVE!!! https://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~koehl/Teaching/ECS188/PDF_files/Machine_stops.pdf
Thank you, Tessa. I am an old guy and just for a moment am basking in the warmth of your words. So kind, and helpful.
Thank you Dirck!!! You are a beautiful, brave human being, and I thank you for being who you are!!
First I’m not opposed to forgiveness and practice it and recommended it in my counseling sessions when it was appropriate to do so. However this has been a recommended approach for any decades and from a psychology perspective, being told “you are forgiven” rarely stops the behaviors. It simply becomes a “get out of jail” card for the perpetrator who turns around and does it again, making it hard for the forgiver to fully heal. I’ve seen a minuscule number of people actually transformed by this or benefitted. You say it’s for the person hurt but in reality the pain goes on and healing is rarely achieved. Some are so it’s always worth trying to do. But more times than not I listened to the grief and surprise poured out by folks who honestly tried to do this with no easement of their pain nor permanent transformation of their lives. Again, there is always some. But the flowers and hearts scenario does not exist for most. As a society we need to do better at helping perpetrators stop doing harm. Putting them in jail is not generally the answer unless what they’ve done requires that for both justice and prevention and by law. Catching bullying and abusive parents and helping them transform their behavior is what we need to do. Not ignoring children who are harmed. Stopping the insane CRT stuff that will increase this sort of behavior not stop it. “I forgive you” can be powerful. Most of the time it’s an easy thing to do that does not require anyone to get into the mud and actually fix things. This is my objection to these lovely words. They make everyone feel warm and toasty without anyone having to get into the dirt. Just like help lines who do some good. More good would be achieved by friends, family, teachers, and neighbors to NOTICE problems and extend a caring hand or ear to the one in pain. Help lines make us feel like we’ve done good without having to sit next to someone with snot and tears pouring down their faces as they cry out their agony. Yet that would do more good than any nameless person on the other side. My words are not comforting but I have brought comfort by sitting in the mud with countless children and adults as they worked through their agony. Some few have achieved the forgiveness attempt. Of that group, only a handful have ever achieved any lasting peace from it.
Painfully true words of reality, ForestDi56, thank you. In my experience, true and lasting healing, individually or relational-- this is a tall order. Very tall. Having been through Primal Therapy I have first-hand experience of what you are saying here.
Harboring resentment is not so much a choice as it is an effect. Real forgiveness is not really possible until ones' pain has been acknowledged, invited and felt as completely as possible within ones' body. Feeling the feelings is what allows us to really let go and move forward with a free heart. It is deep, painful work that takes time, great courage and fearless inner honesty.
If one is unable do that, then I guess "forgiveness" is the only option. Trouble is, you have to keep doing it over and over again because the pain and resentment are real and they do not just disappear from ones' body because one decides deep, painful feelings can be transcended. This is where religious/spiritual notions fail us and serve to keep us emotionally stuck-- by allowing us to kid ourselves and hide our difficult feelings by engaging in so-called saintly behavior.
If we really want to love our elders, that love must be real and not imagined. It must have true emotional power and that power only comes from a return to the depths of the heart. The heart feels what it feels, doesn't it? We don't control it. We don't get to choose what we feel. The heart is the source of love-- a wild, mysterious, beautiful, flowing power that cannot be contained. Yet as children we are all taught to tame it with a whip like some kind of circus animal.
And tame it we do. But is not that circus animal made a mockery of itself? Is it not absolutely fkn miserable all its' life?
Forgiveness is not a substitute for justice.
Everyone deserves another chance -- that's what reincarnation's all about.
As I said, everybody has own way of getting through that. What's important though, is that there are no theoretical flowers in what I write. I am sharing personal experience and observations. There is a tremendous difference between personal experience and theoretical flowers! That said, I trust it that your own soul knows how to take you through whatever you need to go through. And I wish you the kindest journey!
Thank you, Tessa. This really touched me. I shall be forwarding it to my daughter and post on FB. Having spent much time in Italy, the relationship with elders there is still inclusive and respectful, the family as a whole having far more importance. This holds true in much of the Mediterranean world. I feel we can learn from this as respect and love has not disappeared, as much as Klaus Schwab and the Davos clique may want it to be.
Conversely, when I see entire communities of elders shut away in Leisure World, California, with all their physical needs met but without social or familial integration, it breaks my heart. Yet this is the trend that the Great Reset is built on. As you wisely note, this machine has no soul and this soulless new normal of machine-learning smartphone-connected vaccinated social credits we are being led to accept will ultimately fail because it is without love.
Thank you again for your beautiful, heartfelt article. It is much needed.
I forwarded this to my children and their spouses. Here is a portion of what I wrote.
Two things to say about this article…
First, about the people who were my elders when I was your age.
I only listened to them because they made a point to establish a relationship with me. They felt distant and far too important for me to have a relationship with them then. I learn that in their eldership that we were closer to my life experience than at any point their life. We both felt that we living at the margins, facing unknown futures. When they died, an unfillable hole was left. I ultimately realized it was to be filled with relationships with young people.
Second about me…
When I went to Africa (2019-20), I was honored every where I turned as an Mzee, an older man of wisdom. I had never experienced this before. People were automatically open to me.
Since returning, I have felt my age.
I don’t like being viewed as on my way out. Those who are the closest to my age often show this to me. It is a reflection of their own feelings of alienation from the world that exists. Their feelings are genuine and rational.
I don’t like feeling like a relic. I am not old. I have worked harder this year than ever before. Why? Because I am finally relevant.
I treasure my relationship with each of you. Even though I am acting as if I have another 35-40 years of life to go, I feel that our time is short.
I love you all.
Thank YOU!!!
Thank you, Tessa.
🙏 beautiful thank you !We all have some people in our lives that we can apply this forgiveness and love to ❤️and if 1% of us can do it we can lift humanity’s consciousness past this dark time .
Thank you Tessa, Love IS the answer. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Corinthians%2013&version=RSV Perfect love casts out fear, it is that which binds us together.
"The Great Reset has a political face but its essence is spiritual brokenness. The Great Reset is a culmination of the mechanistic, fearful, reactive approach to life. It’s a neurosis-driven attempt to establish total control to avoid pain. And what is the antithesis to that? Love and forgiveness."
And, trust and community. That's part of the antithesis to spiritual brokenness. We can build that back, better.
My elders are gone, many years now. Maybe I can love someone else's. Maybe I can be part of that healing for them, in some way.
Mine loved me, and that has made all the difference.
forgive it, forget it, cuz it will eat you, if you let it
Thanks, Joe! May I quote you?
From where I'm at, I know what you write is true Tessa. You're right. So, I called my mom. It occurs to me that the pain of sitting with someone you want to be loved by who cannot remotely see your point of view opens a deep well of pain. My love effort looked like a tensely-gripped 1hour and 26 minute conversation. Shed tears and got nowhere. We agreed it was good we tried. It's like talking to someone who is hypnotized or can't hear what you are saying, no matter how you say it, or what words you choose. What I need is advice about how to just be the daughter she can mother. Is there a version of myself that would make our relationship evolve to a beautiful or more peaceful or mutually enriching place? How can I still be myself and also change every hope and expectation I had for this Mother-Daughter relationship? Right now it feels like banging on thick glass. I think mimesis reflects me away from finding and showing her a better kind of Love - I just can't feel it, and don't know what loving my elders looks like. Maybe the Love I have to give is the kind the never gives up, but is constantly disappointed.Is that enough? It feels like not enough. I welcome anyone's thoughts.
I watched a great movie recently; My Happy Marriage. Its a Japanese film, released last year. I felt like it was the story of my life. I had to heal my relationship with my mother in imagination, and with having a relationship with the mother archetype. She still fears me and doesn't want to have anything to do with me. If I get near, she is vicious. After years of trying, and suffering, and praying, somehow I healed myself. I love the whole world and see the face of God everywhere. It was a difficult karma, but I have made my peace with it, and it has contributed to my development. Sometimes we don't understand other people, and their motivations for incarnation. They have a right to do what they are here to do. So do we. Love itself is bigger than all the stories.
Wow, what a story. Thank you for having the courage to share it, Eleanor!
In my experience, it is our expectations that are the source of our pain.
What does "loving" difficult people look like? I believe, in part, it is letting go of our expectation that others can, or ever will be, any different than who and what they already are.
Ed Dowd has said this another way: "Depression is the inability to accept the circumstances of your life." ~ And, the companion piece to Ed's comment comes from Carl Jung: "We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses."
As one near death experiencer has reminded us: "Acceptance is synonymous with love."
Note: I'm not saying here that difficult people can be changed, only that we can, eventually, change our expectations by finally letting go. . . .
I suggest taking all that love and giving it to yourself, because broken people will try to destroy it. Don’t let them.
Beautiful, Tessa... Spent a lot of time and years healing the pain, shame, forgiving and also getting to know my parents as an adult. Takes courage, compassion and also willingness to let go of the past and to grow up and be the adult. I love the expelling the ghost of the Reset, too, thank you.
Thanks Tessa. Thanks Dad. I never understood what being a marine in Vietnam and Korea actually meant. When I did start to get it, I didn't want it.
Sort of invisible deciders task people to give me messages these days. Not my "elders"
https://www.johndayblog.com/2021/10/go-down-gardening.html
Yesterday was an odd day in several aspects. I had worked a long Friday at the clinic again, which did not go badly. I left nothing unfinished.
We drove to the Yoakum homestead Friday night and got a good night of sleep.
Somehow, I felt very heavy and slow on Saturday and Sunday, so I trudged through three to four hours of pushing the little Honda mower, and did work in the garden, but ploddingly. I planted garlic for the winter/spring season, and tended the garden.
I continued to feel a weight of unease, and as we started the drive back to Austin, Sunday afternoon, I had a sense that I should really buy winter veggies to put in at the clinic garden, which I started in 2016, and tend for my coworkers. Putting things off until the end of the month, in my last two weeks of work there, seemed awkward.
We picked up a lot of winter greens and salad starts in little pots on our way into Austin, some for our Austin kitchen garden, but most for the clinic garden.
I did a last harvest of the blackeyed pea row, then cut down the vines, and took them to some chickens that a friend of Jenny's raises.
Yesterday (Monday) morning I worked in our kitchen garden again, preparing the beds for fall and winter, cleaning up the summer debris, and also planting an orange seedling in the bed in front of the house, where the February freeze had killed the one fruitful tree.
After eating, I went over to the clinic with an orange seedling, to replace the two that the February freeze had killed, and all of the winter salad and cooking-green seedlings to fill a couple of rows. I went through the entrance, put on a mask, and went through to the garden in the break area, with shovels and clippers, saying "hi" to a few people and smiling with my eyes. I went out through the garden gate, and brought in the orange tree, then the veggie starts.
The orange tree needed to go in the large bed, which has a Mexican avocado seedling tree, and a banana plant that actually survived February. Mainly it has a lot of sweet potatoes.It's a fairly large bed, and this has been a very good year for sweet potatoes. I filled the three gallon bucket that the tree was in with sweet potatoes, from just a few square feet that I cleared and dug up, before planting it, maybe one percent of that bed.
While I was digging up the sweet potatoes and digging the hole to put the orange tree in, my flip phone rang. I figured it was Jenny. I brushed some of the dirt off my hands and answered it. It was the nice and very well-mannered youngish man, who is currently Director of Human Resources, telling me that my last day of work had been changed from the last Friday of October to the Friday just passed, which was different from what I had been told last week, when the reason for my firing was changed from vaccine-mandate non-compliance, to all of the wrongs I have committed in the period of time since that mandate was announced.
It was a lousy spot for him to be put in, and he seemed uncomfortable having to put it into polite words.He had been trying to call me while I was working on our home garden, but I had not been carrying the phone. I told him that I was at the clinic garden, putting in some things for winter, and that he could talk to me in person. My presence in the garden was unanticipated, though I have worked on my day off frequently in the past couple of months.
We talked as I planted the orange tree and put the big sweet potatoes in the pot, handing it over to a couple of nurses taking their lunch. They had helped dig sweet potatoes last year, and I knew they wanted some. He politely explained that I was not to re-enter the building, and that my desk would be cleared out and boxed for me. The explanation was so polite that I sought clarification.I did negotiate that I could pick up a few notes at my desk with his presence and supervision, which we then did. My badge didn't let me in this time. He had to use his. As we walked through the clinic to my desk, most people had their eyes down. A few coworkers looked me in the eyes, and I smiled with my eyes. I was comfortable in myself, and emanated that (I think).
We grabbed a few boxes and made short work of the packing-up. I got everything, and we carried the three boxes to my little twenty four year old Ford Ranger pickup truck together. We went back to the garden and break-area through the gate, He thought it best that I just leave without planting the vegetables, but I prevailed upon him to keep his agreement to let me clean out the rows and do the planting.
He actually had a fair number of gardening questions, which I answered as I cleared the rows and planted for winter.
I worked expeditiously, taking about twenty to thirty minutes, as I explained the quality of the soil, and how building soil is one of the main objectives in successful gardening. If you don't have enough garden to out produce what the squirrels, birds and other critters can eat, they will eat it all.
You need a big enough garden patch.
We walked back to the truck with shovels and clippers, talking about what's next. The clinic will still pay me for these last two weeks of October, but my patients who are scheduled will not get to see me for a last visit. I have been doing everything possible to avoid leaving loose ends, and to write thorough chart notes, so it will be easy for the next doctor. I have tried to make suggestions for which doctor or practitioner might best match the needs and personality of each patient. I passed my list to give to the Director of Adult Medicine, who has been working hard and well on this transition. It's not a complete list...
I am left to wonder why the clinic took surprise action to remove me from patient-care, while still paying my salary for two weeks. I suspect there was free-floating anxiety about what I might say or do. I had been informing people of the actual circumstances of my leaving, being fired for non-compliance with mandatory vaccination. The management has been consulting with attorneys the whole time, and somebody else is contesting her firing for non-compliance with that mandate, I am told. Governor Abbott did say that vaccine mandates are not tolerable in Texas, Monday of last week. I suspect that my being fired-for-cause, other than non-compliance with COVID vaccination might be more plausible when the date of my firing is moved forward from the prior date of my termination for non-compliance
I do not intend to contest my firing through recourse to the law. The only law I am really, currently concerned with is the Law of Karma, and I am very concerned with that law. I am constantly aware of the implications of Karma as we wade further into this rip-tide of history.
John Day, thanks for the update. In the most literal way possible, you exemplify Voltaire’s words: “Il faut cultiver notre jardin.”