Amy emailed me in some distress this week. She feels the universe is out of wack, as people around her are experiencing friends and relatives who are sick and dying. "How can this be?" She asked. I was at work, so I didn't have time for a long heartfelt answer. But I felt I had a motherly duty to provide some type of perspective.
I have a little experience along these lines - though when I was her age (25) I had none. For me at that age, bad things were what happened to others. Not me. As the years went by my untouchable status changed. The unthinkable happened - we lost our son, baby Patrick to a heart defect. I found myself reading "When Bad Things Happen to Good People" by Rabbi Harold Kushner, to help myself get some perspective (and regain sanity?). After all - I saw women around Creston who had to be "worse" parents/people than I with healthy babies. Was that fair? It was a paradigm shift for me.
So in my short email to my daughter, in my 53-year old wisdom, I said something to this effect: Yes bad things do happen. If they didn't and we were all happy all the time, we wouldn't recognize it. Life would be boring. I know this doesn't take pain away though. You must build (pray for) the strength to get through the tough things. And to acknowledge others' tough things in life.
A couple things I vow to do:
- Not live my life in fear - of illness, loss, pain etc. Easier said than done, I know. And in the dark of the night - when I wake up and am all alone with my thoughts, those fears sneak in. Is that sore spot in my back cancer? Will I get a bad illness? Will I lose my beloved Pablo and be a widow someday? How would I survive? How would my family go on without me? But then I suck it up and think - You're a survivor. You will have inner strength (grace/faith? - more on this under religion). You have great friends and fam. You're a Bullock.
- Recognize when others are going through bad times and try to be supportive. Of course I'm busy. We're all busy. And it's so much easier to put it out of our minds - less messy to get caught up in the emotional and physical part of a friend's illness or sadness. This will be tough because I'm not getting any younger. And more friends/fam will experience loss and illness. Doing this takes a toll. But it also provides a reward.
Politics. I saw a blurb on Facebook recently that went something like this: My friend Trixie (I made this name up) should be in charge of the U.S. Here's what she would proclaim:
- People don't get food stamps for stuff like steak and "luxury" items.
- Women have to have birth control shots to collect benefits
- People have to have drug tests to collect unemployment
But how many of these people coming up with great sounding ideas touting program restrictions have ever written a rule that can be implemented and enforced? And are they the same people bitching about "BIG Government"? I have tried to write state rules (cuz I'm a state employee - yep, a bureaucrat). It's much harder than it looks folks! I can't imagine trying to put something together like that - and then to enforce it. It would take tons of staff. How would grocery stores, state agencies handle these rules? Nightmare!
I agree - there has to be a better method than what we're doing now regarding getting people to pay their own way. You could say - "Just cut them off altogether". I'm not ready to see soup lines with little children going hungry. Hell - that's already happening! I saw the story on 60 Minutes about all the newly homeless in Orlando due to joblessness. Those kids weren't making it up. They were going to bed hungry. That's not right.
Let's start a national think tank to pilot new methods. I used to think there had to be smarter people than me somewhere up the food chain thinking of stuff like this. Now I'm not so sure... My name is Leslie Bullock Goldsmith and I took the time to type this message.
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