Duct Tape for the Soul for May 12, 2014

Stop Punishing Yourself! Please?

If you’re like most people, when you were a child, and did stupid, dangerous stuff, you got punished and lectured to death. Your parents were hoping you’d learn something, sooner, (before the Emergency Room visit), rather than later. If they were old fashioned they likely beat your butt for good measure, to impress their displeasure on you for being a dunce.

You eventually either grew up and learned something reasonable, or you left home, ill prepared and doomed to have life beat your butt, for continuing to be slow. Which was it? There’s not much point in lying about it, especially to yourself. If you’re still going from one scrape to the next, are plagued by problems and disasters, you clearly haven’t gotten with it!

It would be quite funny, to watch all the people who inflict misery on themselves, if it wasn’t so sad. Worse, some of them are probably your friends, relatives, kids or even your spouse! Not much to laugh about, when you’re standing at ground zero, is there? Their failure always seems to become your problem too! If you aren’t kicking their butt for continuing to be slow, you’re contributing to the problem, not making it better.

Never let someone like this get away with blaming God or “bad luck” for their misery either. I’ve met a lot of miserable humans in my six decades, and none of them could legitemately claim to be suffering from Divine retribution or malevolence. Frankly, most were just being as dumb as a rock. Life has really simple rules. Make bad, stupid, self-destructive choices, and bad things happen. Fail to use the brain and free will you’re accorded, and unpleasant things will afflict you. Its not rocket science.

Naturally, lots of people are lazy and don’t want to do any work, towards creating better decisions or for creating a better life. They’d rather cry and complain, and blame someone else. That never ends well. I’ve got a couple of kids who went merrily down that path, and have much to regret. I’m able to find the humor in their mess, simply because I’m guilt free; I told them how the universe works repeatedly. They just didn’t listen, like a lot of other people. I even told them how to fix their problems, but they didn’t like that either. The great news is that I don’t have to wear my arm out beating their butts; they’re doing that on their own!

Jack

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