The world is ugly

I think I need to add a little to yesterday’s post. I think it was important to lose the assumption, but at the same time, that could be a temporary thing too. Maybe I just wanted it too much and needed to get over that.

Just as an update, and everything I am about to write is true, though don’t take it to seriously, an inmate friend of Aaron’s tried really hard to be my pen pal, upon learning of that, another friend offered me the recently homeless veteran she is helping get back on is feet, and I may have been hit on by a comic book store owner, so obviously I do have options, and I am just too picky. I can live with this.

The screenplay that I have in mind to write next is about someone who has given up on love and then is pursued, and yes, I totally see the irony, but there was a strong idea that came, and I think I can develop it. Whether it ends up being sweet or bitterly satirical is something I don’t know yet, and then there was the idea to for for zombies instead, and the other night I dreamt that I was a zombie, so who knows, and actually I think I had a love interest in that dream, though I was kind of preoccupied with my leg becoming disjointed. But I digress.

Anyway, there was something else bringing me down, and it’s not like it had never been an issue before, but it was getting much worse. A lot of it goes back to February, crystalizing around the Trayvon Martin shooting.

I had been starting to read quite a bit about ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council), and was pretty uncomfortable with them. The Stand Your Ground law was the type of legislation they were sponsoring, along with many other things that did not bode well, and now there was a dead teenager whose killer appeared to be getting away with it. (That’s still up in the air, but it didn’t look good.)

ALEC is just one part of a huge issue with corporate interests overtaking public interests, and with the poor economy and increasingly negative political discourse, things weren’t looking very good. I looked into the possibility of boycotting the Koch brothers, and it didn’t look like there was any way of making a dent. I had not heard of Sheldon Adelson at that time, but yeah, he’s not really making his money from anything that I do. It was feeling very difficult to make any sort of positive difference.

Okay, from a religious point of view, I do expect things to get very dark and scary, and a lot of my interest in emergency preparedness comes from that. I want to feel able to handle situations, and I want to be able to be helpful to others.

The good news is that I totally know what to do during an earthquake, and we probably do have one coming at some point. I know how to suppress fires and search buildings and render first aid and do all sorts of useful things. What I was finding was that I was not sure how to function in a world where the only thing that mattered was money. I was feeling a very oppressive atmosphere and I did not know what to do about it.

I know some of it is the sense of no control. The last time I renewed my CPR/First Aid certification, I remember thinking at one point that along with my desire to handle things, I had to know that there were situations where my skills would not matter. If you’re decapitated, I will not be able to help you. If I’m the one knocked unconscious, I hope someone else is there and knows what to do. There are things you have to just let go.

Fortunately, things came to ahead right around the time of General Conference, and as the issues of being an old maid in a bad world weighed me down, I did find some answers. One was that I needed to be better about scripture study. I have had very good periods, and I have learned a lot, but sometimes that makes it easier to be casual and not worry about skipping. I need the inspiration though. I need the renewal, because I may be taking multiple beatings, spiritually speaking. I can’t prevent the hard times from coming, but I can prepare to recover, time and time again.

The other point was that I need to get over disliking people. I have always held that we need to love everyone, but liking is a gift. This is fine, except I have taken a sort of perverse pleasure in disliking those who annoy me. I don’t have to like you and I don’t. Ha!

The truth is, when you are feeling like that, you are not feeling particularly loving. It might have worked a while ago, but it would hold me back now, and so I need to let that go. When I see those people now, I mentally say “I am just going to love you.” I don’t believe it with everyone yet, but I had no illusions about it being easy.

Those were very decent answers to have, and things to work on, but the story was still necessary too, and that’s what we will go over next.