Don't play with it

You can spend most of your understanding to date believing a situation to be one way, and in one day learn that your perception was wrong. Like spending your life thinking your grandmother didn't like nor care for you, and a year after her death, discover letters and gifts for you returned to her due to mailing to the wrong address. Or spending most of your life growing up with your mother as a single parent, genuinely feeling like your father doesn't like or approve of your existence, and discover in one visit, it couldn't be further from the truth.

What do we do in such a situation? In some cases, it could be a happy ending. A new path to a different relationship is forged. A 'nothing happens before its time' moment. In others? What does it really change? How much time has to pass to make huge revelations irrelevant? To what degree of a revelation need to be to be considered valid enough to trump the experiences life tossed your way? What does it really change? The people in the situation are still the same people. While a revelation may cast them in a different light...does it always necessarily change what has become your truth to understanding how to deal with them? If someone beat you badly for years, does it matter if they reveal a sympathetic sad story in the end? Does it change the way that experiences shaped and molded your interactions with others... Because that is the reality. Life is happening while the secret life is happening. Emotions, defensive reactions learned and so forth are developed. Does this disappear instantly just because you learn to believe what you learn to be true...is not? 

I've come to learn its too easy to pin selfishness on people. As a friend pointed out to me yesterday, who ISN'T selfish? As humans, at the core, are our actions based off of selfish desires? For example, let's say you have two pieces of fried fish and offer a piece to your friend. One of the pieces is bigger than the other. Who gets the bigger piece? Do you take the bigger piece because it's yours and your offer and you really want the fish for whatever personal reasons, be it hunger, etc? Or do you volunteer it even if deep down you want it to satisfy your conscience more than your stomach with this act of kindness and generosity? Either choice is motivated by a selfish desire on some level - be it to to quell self doubt on being a good, kind person or to give in to the raw desire of wanting and having what you want for the pure reason of wanting it. The desire of wanting even in the selfless ways are in hopes of gaining something. I remember coming down to the last scenes in "7" the movie (on the seven deadly sins), even though the man had orchestrated the 7 deaths to illustrate his point of societal flaws and insisted it was a selfless act of forcing folks to deal with something real and bigger than all of us... it was pointed out that he took pleasure in each killing. And he admitted that he did, but then he asked who doesn't derive some satisfaction from their work on a deeper smug level? Like when the cop was chasing him hoping to catch and kill him. Does it make the cop bad to have derived pleasure from the skilled chase and hopeful killing of a serial killer? He would've been doing a societal good, but the pleasure on a personal level goes deeper than that to pride at oneself and joy of illustrated skill. 

These situations then also beg the question of perceptions of good and bad.  It is possible to the perceived right thing to the masses for the wrong reasons. It is also possible to do something that looks immediately wrong but with good intentions. Is murder less of a murder if it was killing a serial rapist? Is a gift of full university coverage from a wealthy man less of a gift to a female if he has hidden intentions of "special" returns on his investment?

Life mandates that we each get faced with at least one of these perplex situations throughout our lifetimes. Some folks have a more dramatic revelation than others but the take away lesson is the same; Treat each situation as individual, don't discredit the notion of your own personal bias and perception is not to be confused with fact. Sometimes the reason behind the action is irrelevant and other times it is. 

To wrap this up I'll close with a quote by Chronic Future from one of their songs, "Sometimes you are the flight of the birds, sometimes you're watching the flight of the birds and other times? You're yourself." (Sometimes you’re the spectacle people can’t help but to watch; other times you’re watching things in life happen; and other times you’re just you, completely away from all of those things.)

xoxo, 

Shelli

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