Let me be real for a moment...Not that I'm ordinarily dishonest in what I write, but I want to just directly address a misnomer about me that seems to have permeated the minds of practically everyone I know.
I do not hate myself. I do not think I am less worthy of love and acceptance than anyone else, and at the same time, as my parents taught me, I am no more worthy than anyone else.
My earlier post on this blog today referred to the vastness of the universe, and in comparison, my smallness and how in reference to how enormous everything is around me, I am very small and insignificant.
It really bothered people. It had the opposite effect of what I intended and people who sincerely care about me responded by assuring me that I am worthy of love, that I am not insignificant, that they'd give me more if they had it to give. Thing is, I don't remember asking for anything. Not in that post, anyway. I think perhaps in the flurry of fundraising and talking about transplant and my own worrying over my lack of income due to circumstances beyond my control, I've given the impression that I expect folks to just give me things, or give me money hand over fist.
That is not who I am and it's not what I want.
I appreciate the generosity of everyone who has given money to my fundraiser, my friend Alison who has come up with clever ways to raise money, my daughters and my sisters who have worked on the "transplant campaign" for the last few months more than I could ever express. I also cannot tell you how indebted I feel to all of you already. I couldn't ask you for more.
I appreciate everyone who prays for me, who sends me their love, who offers help or a thoughtful gesture. You all enrich my life so much, and I only wish I knew how to repay your kindnesses to me.
When I say I am small, I mean we are all small. We are all just specks in a huge mind-blowingly incomprehensible Universe. To me that thought is comforting, to some it is troubling. It took a long time for me to find comfort in my smallness, but if I stop to remind myself of it, my heart rate slows down, my hands stop trembling, everything seems better, if only for a moment.
Sometimes I wonder (and this is not a criticism of anyone's faith) if we let our own narcissistic view of the world influence our spiritual beliefs. If I'm small to God, I must not be very important, right?
Wrong.
Bees. Bees are small to us, but we need them all the same. Sometimes they hurt us, but we still need them. Sometimes they show up where we don't want them, but we still need them. Sometimes they're deadly to humans, but we still need them. You can crush one underfoot, and as long as you're wearing shoes, never know it. The bees from its own nest might have to work harder when one bee dies, but they continue on. Bees have a job to do, and they do it, no matter what.
We are small and many of us, myself mainly, do not know what exactly we're doing here, so I guess you could say the bees have one over on us.
Really, I was going to go smaller, but on the other end of the "Universe spectrum" are billions of creatures so small you can't see them without some high-powered magnification. Dust mites, for instance, which sleep with you every night, but you don't even know they're there. But then, there are creatures even smaller, deadly ones, if they end up in your body....
People are just part of the cycle, part of the program, a small player in the cast of Life itself.
So all I'm saying is, I'm trying to get over myself.
That's all.
Wednesday, May 8, 2019
Perspective
Did you know that the observable distance of the Universe is 93 billion light years? See, even though I tell you that, neither of us can comprehend it.
But beneath that vast star-scattered sky, eight planets (Pluto, a planet no more) rotate around the sun, all of them different. Among those nine planets, Earth. It's in just the right spot, the perfect distance from the sun. Since ancient times, humans understood that the sun gets credit for all life on Earth. If our planet were closer to the sun the heat would eradicate life. If it were farther from the sun, the cold and darkness would make life impossible. Scientists still search though, for signs our planet isn't a fluke of nature. They look for even the most microscopic signs that any living thing can exist elsewhere. Glimmers of possible life-forms pop up now and then, but nothing so far, to get really excited about, has been discovered.
All most of us ever know of the Universe comes from science class or episodes of TV shows narrated by Neil Degrasse Tyson. We only think about it when, on rare occasion, we step outside to look up at the night sky. There we stand, beneath it, in awe of it, with no ability to fathom the vastness of it. In fact, most of us don't even think about the existence of it until the sun goes down.
We are small. The smallest of small things, nearly, when you put into perspective the vastness of what exists around us. I forget sometimes how small I really am. I forget that in the grand scheme, my problems, my very existence is pretty much insignificant. I am one of over 7.5 billion people. Even that number is more than most of us can fathom.
I am one mother with one son, sitting at a red light in front of a middle school at 8:14 a.m. handing a tissue to her kid so he can blow his nose and wipe his tears before he goes inside. I am one mom who woke up overwhelmed and stressed and had a full-on meltdown over three $3.95 plain t-shirts she bought at Wal-Mart yesterday, even though she was afraid to spend the money. I'm one mom with one son who is outgrowing his clothes and had no short sleeved shirts in his dresser. One mom who just lost her shit when that son didn't want to wear any of those $3.95 shirts, despite that they were all he had that fit.
It all seems so silly, doesn't it? That two tiny beings would get all worked up over three cheap shirts. But it happened today, not just in my small house on my small patch of grass underneath a big blue sky with the sun rising over us. It happened in other places too, I'm sure of it. With Seven and a half billion people--most of them struggling with something every day, you know some other kid cried over shirts this morning, and some other mom cried over feeling alone in her struggle. With seven and a half million people on this planet, how can anyone feel alone?
I do. I mean that, not to chastise anyone for not supporting me. In fact, I thought to myself this morning that I wish I could stuff all of this year back into the bottle and start over again. I wish I could give all the money back and forget about the transplant. I wish I'd never told anyone about losing my income, or the mix up with Social Security or well, any of it. I wish none of you knew that I am struggling and I wish I had never started down the transplant path. I regret it with all my being at this moment because I realize how insignificant it really is, rightfully so, to most everyone besides me.
Someone once said, "The difference between a big problem and a small problem is whether or not it's YOUR problem." And there's the rub. None of this is anyone else's problem and honestly, I need to learn to keep my problems to myself.
So I offer my apologies to all of you, my friends, for feeling hurt or neglected because I felt forgotten or not valued. Frankly, it was wrong of me to expect everyone to forget about their own battles to come help me fight mine. The only reasonable thing to ask of anyone is their kindness, and all of you have been nothing but kind to me. I understand that my problems, well in consideration of all the problems in the world, they are very, very small.
I'm sorry for not being more grateful for what I have. I'm sorry for expecting too much. I'm sorry for asking for more than I could even begin to repay.
This is me, trying to gain some perspective on life this morning as I conclude this little rambling mish-mash of thoughts and get back to the minutia of handling things. I'm filling out applications for help online, printing pay stubs and tax returns, putting together files and making copies so I can prove things to people whose job it is to help people like me. Maybe I'll get somewhere, maybe I won't. I guess time will tell.
Meanwhile, I wish you well as you navigate your own struggles today, and always.
But beneath that vast star-scattered sky, eight planets (Pluto, a planet no more) rotate around the sun, all of them different. Among those nine planets, Earth. It's in just the right spot, the perfect distance from the sun. Since ancient times, humans understood that the sun gets credit for all life on Earth. If our planet were closer to the sun the heat would eradicate life. If it were farther from the sun, the cold and darkness would make life impossible. Scientists still search though, for signs our planet isn't a fluke of nature. They look for even the most microscopic signs that any living thing can exist elsewhere. Glimmers of possible life-forms pop up now and then, but nothing so far, to get really excited about, has been discovered.
All most of us ever know of the Universe comes from science class or episodes of TV shows narrated by Neil Degrasse Tyson. We only think about it when, on rare occasion, we step outside to look up at the night sky. There we stand, beneath it, in awe of it, with no ability to fathom the vastness of it. In fact, most of us don't even think about the existence of it until the sun goes down.
We are small. The smallest of small things, nearly, when you put into perspective the vastness of what exists around us. I forget sometimes how small I really am. I forget that in the grand scheme, my problems, my very existence is pretty much insignificant. I am one of over 7.5 billion people. Even that number is more than most of us can fathom.
I am one mother with one son, sitting at a red light in front of a middle school at 8:14 a.m. handing a tissue to her kid so he can blow his nose and wipe his tears before he goes inside. I am one mom who woke up overwhelmed and stressed and had a full-on meltdown over three $3.95 plain t-shirts she bought at Wal-Mart yesterday, even though she was afraid to spend the money. I'm one mom with one son who is outgrowing his clothes and had no short sleeved shirts in his dresser. One mom who just lost her shit when that son didn't want to wear any of those $3.95 shirts, despite that they were all he had that fit.
It all seems so silly, doesn't it? That two tiny beings would get all worked up over three cheap shirts. But it happened today, not just in my small house on my small patch of grass underneath a big blue sky with the sun rising over us. It happened in other places too, I'm sure of it. With Seven and a half billion people--most of them struggling with something every day, you know some other kid cried over shirts this morning, and some other mom cried over feeling alone in her struggle. With seven and a half million people on this planet, how can anyone feel alone?
I do. I mean that, not to chastise anyone for not supporting me. In fact, I thought to myself this morning that I wish I could stuff all of this year back into the bottle and start over again. I wish I could give all the money back and forget about the transplant. I wish I'd never told anyone about losing my income, or the mix up with Social Security or well, any of it. I wish none of you knew that I am struggling and I wish I had never started down the transplant path. I regret it with all my being at this moment because I realize how insignificant it really is, rightfully so, to most everyone besides me.
Someone once said, "The difference between a big problem and a small problem is whether or not it's YOUR problem." And there's the rub. None of this is anyone else's problem and honestly, I need to learn to keep my problems to myself.
So I offer my apologies to all of you, my friends, for feeling hurt or neglected because I felt forgotten or not valued. Frankly, it was wrong of me to expect everyone to forget about their own battles to come help me fight mine. The only reasonable thing to ask of anyone is their kindness, and all of you have been nothing but kind to me. I understand that my problems, well in consideration of all the problems in the world, they are very, very small.
I'm sorry for not being more grateful for what I have. I'm sorry for expecting too much. I'm sorry for asking for more than I could even begin to repay.
This is me, trying to gain some perspective on life this morning as I conclude this little rambling mish-mash of thoughts and get back to the minutia of handling things. I'm filling out applications for help online, printing pay stubs and tax returns, putting together files and making copies so I can prove things to people whose job it is to help people like me. Maybe I'll get somewhere, maybe I won't. I guess time will tell.
Meanwhile, I wish you well as you navigate your own struggles today, and always.
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