Introducing "Guido"

I have a disease in my mind.  You see, although it's the manifestation of the disease, its not about the food.  I think that people think when they learn about the "allergy of the body" that's described in The Doctor's Opinion, they think that it means they can justify having a fixation on finding the right "foods" when not addressing the spiritual malady that we learn we have.  By focusing on my spiritual program of recovery and not what I'm eating, I get to experience freedom from the obsession.  It's a gift I don't take for granted. 

I'm also a visual person.  I do better when I can a picture of something to give it animation and life.  And somewhere in the past 40-ish days I decided to give my disease a persona.  This persona feels familiar because I've been under the influence of it's whims for a very long time.  My disease has a name:

His name is Guido.  

You see Guido lives in Bayonne New Jersey in the refurbished basement of his 89 year old tiny Italian mother who still presses his shirts and folds his underwear.  He's 47 years old and his life is going nowhere.  He sells used cars at the lot over by the fairgrounds.  He remembers with fond nostalgia the times of Starsky and Hutch and wears the fashion to prove it.  Velvet suit cut in an homage to the 70's, white spread collar dress shit underneath unbuttoned unfortunately too far to reveal a smattering of chest hair with a gold necklace laying on top of it.  His hair plugs are going to take any day.  He thinks his pinky ring is savage.  You can get a whiff of the High Karati cologne.  

Guido's sole mission in life is to render me dead.  He truly believes I deserve nothing but pain and suffering and torture and turmoil.  He is mean spirited, likes humor at the expense of others, and is just generally, pardon my French, trying to fuck up my shit. Here is a short list of his goals for my mind/body/spirit:

To be alone. To FEEL alone.  To be emotionally cut off from virtually everyone who cares about you, unavailable to enjoy the fellowship you crave.  Broke financially, because let's be honest, you don't really think I could pay cash for that much bingeing.  No self-respect, no dignity, no hope.  Unable to take care of your own personal hygiene.  Unwilling to be honest with anyone.  Fearful, irritable.  Physical body broken, emotionally vacant, spiritually void.  

The fun part of all of this is the Guido, being nothing if not resourceful, can change his form at a moment's notice to accommodate the needs of his victim.  If it seems that her food issues are being reigned in, let's start fucking with her money, money settling down?  Let's start messing with her relationships, creating friction between people I love.  Whatever he can get at his fingertips, he will use to crush my hopes and dreams into oblivion.  He wants me annihilated .  He almost won.  

But luckily, with a tiny mustard seed of faith, I recognized that I had received the gift of freedom from the obsession.  I truly believed that a Higher Power had intervened on my behalf and taken me by the hand to beautiful new place called abstinence.  Abstaining feels effortless right now.  The compulsion is removed by abstaining from foods that I know trigger the allergy of the body and the obsession of the mind.  I refrain from sugar/flour/DoorDash.  The boundaries are lazer sharp and crystal clear.  I know the lines I do not cross.  And in turn for what feels like a small amount of surrender; we receive a disproportionally larger gift.  Entire Abstinence.  As someone who tried to "think" my way to freedom; I was dismayed to find out that knowledge was worth less that nothing.  In fact it was a direct hinderance to my being able to let go of my self-will just long enough for Mike to take my hand.  

One of the leaders of one of my favorite meetings says, "God sends out search and rescue missions for us addicts". Because I have been rescued.  For as long as I had tried to think my way into right action, I was governed by a self-will that was determined to work as Guido's underling and keep me sabotaging any chance I might have at a real life.  That I have finally surrendered to my disease and admitted that I am absolutely a compulsive eater to my core.  I will never NOT be a compulsive overeater.  I can never think my way into right action.  I can't solve a problem with the mind that created it.  I'm so grateful that I finally dropped the friggin rock, I can really only collapse in exhausted gratitude.  That I am finally know that my THINKING is the problem, not just the food I put into my mouth.  You can't turn a Volvo into a Porsche.  I had sat in a lot of meetings wishing I could be struck ignorant.  That I could let go of the incessant nagging drive to figure it out.  Find the loophole. I can just stop.  I can let go.  

I finally recognize that I don't need Guido's influence in my life.  Seeking Guido's approval almost killed me spiritually if not physically.  I can't do it anymore.  I'm done. 

But who's going replace the void that Guido's place in my life?  He was my common law spouse and he'd been with me for the past 20 years.  Whoever was going to replace him better get his act together and help me or I'm going to throw a tantrum.  He needs to be loving, possessing a borderline sardonic sense of humor that delights in the absurd but never revels in another person's pain. He wears his Power confidently, without the need to brag or boast.  He needs to be patient, and understanding.  He KNOWS that he can take care of me better than that sniveling weasel Guido.  He's here, waiting to take you to a beautiful place you've never been.  He wants to care for you.  He want's you to trust him.  Unlike Guido, he keeps his promises. He knows you're precious and deserve to be cherished.  He's ready to do the heavy lifting.  He's begging you to turn your back on Guido. " Please just leave him"  He will never give you what you deserve.  He will leave you hanging every time. "Please just trust me.  I won't let you down."  His name is Mike.  He holds out his hand.  I think to myself that the only thing left for Guido to do is kill me.  I don't want to die.  I've got shit to do.....

The Gift

So, there are absolutely people who can be in program and be struck sober.  There are some people for whom it is a struck by lightening experience.  That is not my story.  My story is a lot murkier and darker.  But what happened for me is that while I can't say I was struck abstinent, I WAS in fact, struck willing.  I went from someone who was just NOT a part of the larger world in any significant way to being willing to change my entire life to get freedom from the self-loathing that comes with being a gutter compulsive overeater.  If you don't believe in a power greater than yourself, I dare you to try and explain how someone like me, who was legitimately slothful towards the end of my relapse; goes from an average DoorDash bill of $74/DAY to someone who can sit at a birthday party and feel total and complete neutrality amidst 2 different decadent cakes.  They truly could have been sawdust for all I cared.  As a gutter, low bottom compulsive overeater I can only tell you that it was nothing short of miraculous.  The freedom was intoxicating.  I jumped off on the "pink cloud" and headed towards the sunset.  Old Timers looking at me with timid hope, "I hope it is different this time.  She's been like this before and has relapsed."  It would be tough to watch someone you care self-destruct again.  It's heartbreaking.  

But what do you do when you have absolutely NO STREET CRED left. People just don't believe you're going to walk your talk.  I joked that I have a PhD in B.S.  I talk a good game.  I get why I was always told I had a personality for sales.  I'm optimistic and outgoing in public situations.  I wanted so badly to say, "No but you don't understand!!!!!  It's "different" this time!" I can completely understand why people would be skeptical.  It's tough to risk hope on someone you care about who seems to inevitably self-destruct into the closest comfort available.  Which for me was always food.  

My sponsor is gloriously direct in her communication style.  Being so direct makes it extremely effective.  She also has a sense of humor that is truly a gift from Mike to me.  There's a line in the AA Big Book, "we are not a glum lot". When you've been DELIVERED to a new way of acting, you want to run around the town square screaming it to the rooftops.  My enthusiasm was borderline obnoxious. In my zeal of abstinence, I wanted to do everything all at once.  I asked questions that to me seemed to be an attempt to gain more information.  To my sponsor, it was an attempt to control and be in self-will. And while I was defensive in the beginning, I quickly began to see that my being so "enthusiastic" in conversations, often became interrupting and dominating conversations.  Everyone's endearing is another persons irritating.  

As my sponsor coached me on things like; keeping commitments to have homework ready to share with sponsor.  Being clear about start times for our daily Zoom meetings.  Things that seem benignly troublesome are an example of my being in the grips of the disease.  Because I was used to running the show see, and if I was going to give control over to an entity I was only just beginning to define, it was going to have to be convincingly worth it.  I took my lumps and bumps and coaching from my sponsor.  And she ALWAYS framed it as an opportunity to learn something about ourselves that we can possibly use in service of others.  Because that's really the whole point of all this.  To be spiritually fit enough to be of service to others in every interaction you have.  It's a tall order for sure.  But giving it away is the only way to guarantee protection from the first compulsive bite.  It's one of the promises of the program.  

A (funny) Thing Happened on the Way to the Bottom.

 Hola!  I feel like I need to do some catch-up posts to sort of catch y'all up on things.  So we left off in the Fall of 2022.  I had managed to survive the pandemic with "most" of my sanity in tact.  I had spent the last 9 months bingeing, sleeping and hiding.  Life felt pretty small.  I was having different problems physically that I had not had to deal with before, which made me believe I had gotten even heavier than I was before.  A "point of no return" land where I was destined to die alone.  Thankfully that wasn't possible because I had roommates, but they never saw me during daylight hours; when the effects of yet another night of bingeing would present and I'd have no other choice but to sleep the day away, so I could be up and ready to repeat the cycle again in 8-10 hours.  It wasn't much of a life.  And one night something in me shifted.  I FINALLY got sick and tired of being sick and tired.  You'd think that having a hip joint bone on bone since 1994, two knees bone-on-bone since 2001would make anyone want to change their life.  But as a Irish Catholic who endured 12 years of plaid skirts, let me assure you my tolerance for pain is SUBSTANTIAL.  Nope, I'd gone from using a cain, to using a walker, to using a wheelchair, to not moving very much all by mid-December of 2022.  And luckily because of the pandemic, 95% of OA meetings were on Zoom.  I went to the December 21, 2022 meeting.  There I heard what I can only now confirm were words from Mike, my Higher Power (more on Mike later).  I heard, "You have to be willing to go through the discomfort of detoxing from your alcoholic foods." Being "uncomfortable"  is NOT one of my preferred states of being, if you haven't guessed.  But that kernel of truth got stuck in my mind and would just not leave.  And there was a person there who absolutely had what I wanted by way of recovery and she was available to sponsor.  After the meeting  I called her and asked her if she would be my sponsor.  "Why do you think I'm reluctant to be your sponsor?"  I knew why but didn't want to give voice to one of my most embarrassing character defects:  I'm a quitter.  I don't stick.  I don't stay.  As soon as things get uncomfortable, I'm OUT of there.  I take the easier, softer way.  I couldn't argue with the truth.  I copped to the truth.  She said she'd give me a 30 day trial.  I would take whatever I could get.  Little did  I know what I was getting into.  In the best way possible.  

We got started at the beginning.  Did I believe that I was truly powerless over food, and that my life had become unmanageable?  I was ready to cry, "UNCLE!".  I was beat.  I could no longer try to pretend that my life was any kind of manageable, let alone desirable.  I conceded to my truly inner most self, for the first time ever, that I was completely unable to control and enjoy my food.  I was ashamed, exhausted and humbled.  I was finally done.  I was now able to relax, my body sagging against the ropes of the boxing ring.  Food had knocked me out.  

When I finally came to, there was my sponsor in my corner.  

My sponsor said that how she got the recovery I wanted was by saying  "how high?" every time her sponsor said jump.  I was afraid that what would start out as a good faith effort would fizzle away like every other good intention I had ever started with.  I finally decided to divorce myself from the word "forever" and get to know my good friend "tomorrow".  My sponsor told me I would be meeting with her an hour a day M-F, have nightly homework and needed to go to as many meetings as physically possible.  Luckily zoom meetings were in an abundance at the time.  It was literally an embarrassment of riches in that respect.  I would find myself going to multiple fantastic meetings in a single day.  With a willingness that I can only describe as Miraculous, I made a beginning.  I think it's a miracle that I did.  

Like Sands Through the Hourglass.......

Well hello there friends, it's been quite a long while since you've heard from me. I've decided to resurrect this blog because I've got stuff that I want to share about.  There has been A LOT going on in my crazy life.  So here goes nothing.  

So most of you know I "outed" myself as a compulsive overeater who is in 12 Step recovery around my food addiction.  I attend Overeaters Anonymous, and have been aware of the fellowship since February 2000.  I have come to understand that anonymity is  a very personal choice for people in recovery.  I have an above average comfort level with people knowing I attend OA.  It's not like I don't wear the ramifications of my disease on my body literally.  When you meet me in person, you KNOW that I have profound issues with food.  So to me it's no problem that people know I'm in OA.  I personally think that OA isn't well enough known in the community abroad, especially among the bariatric surgery community where many people go looking for help regarding having too much weight on their bodies.  When I went to my bariatric surgeon for a consultation, I was not surprised to discover he'd never heard of OA.  We are not well known in the medical community.  I brought him a newcomer packet and that was about it.  

Another part of the reasoning behind anonymity is because if you are someone like me, who's relapsed back into compulsive overeating and have substantial weight gain, you are subliminally showing people that the OA program of recovery does not work.  The truth of this for me is that it's not that the OA program didn't work.  It's that I wasn't working the OA program AS INTENDED and therefore I was a good example of a bad example as they say.  Truer words have never been spoken. 

So I came into OA in February of 2000 from the rooms of Weight Watchers.  I had lost 50lbs but was stuck circling the same 5 pounds for a few months, and getting increasingly frustrated by my inability to  shift my weight.  A girl at the WW meeting was young and energetic like myself and we went to coffee after a meeting one Saturday morning.  She asked me if I had ever heard of OA.  I hadn't.  Despite growing up with the disease of alcoholism in my home, the 12 steps might as well have been in Sanskrit when I heard them the 1st time.  But there was a 100lb emphasis meeting that happened on Saturday nights that was very popular so we went.  There I found a group of people who were the antidote to my mom's favorite mantra, "I'll be happy WHEN I'm thin".  Here were people of all ages and sizes who seemed genuinely happy NOW.  They embraced us newcomers with zeal and welcomed us to a fellowship of people who were united not necessarily by the common problem, but by the common SOLUTION of the 12 Steps.  I wanted what they had and enthusiastically committed myself to this new way of life.  

The ethos at the time in OA was that most people had success sticking to a "3-0-1"plan of eating. That was 3 meals a day, nothing in between One day at a time.  In OA we learn that we have a physical allergy that makes us crave some foods.  And a mental obsession that guarantees that we won't be able to refrain from starting to eat our alcoholic foods.  Everyone has their foods, that they cannot seem to eat moderately in any situation.  For me at the time, that food was Wheat Thins.  I have often joked that I think Wheat Thins are the chemical equivalent of heroin.  How else do I explain how I can open a family size box and finish it in one setting; my tongue raw from the coarse salt on top of the crackers.  They say, "If you want what we have, do what we do."  And so that's what I did.  I lost 10lbs a month for 14 months straight.  I got to a weight I hand't been to in my young adult life.  I received a lot of attention in the program for the weight loss.  While I NOW understand that attention, as being just a external representation of the miracles of the program working in my life, I was unable to keep perspective on all the attention I was getting.  For someone who felt invisible because of being morbidly obese, to get POSITIVE attention for my body size might as well have been a line of crushed up Wheat Thins, ready to be snorted in a line by yours truly.  And as slowly as a thief in the night, my disease returned to snatch victory out of my hands.  I relapsed around year 2, and spent the next TWENTY YEARS in a cycle of chronic relapsing and returning.  I am SO GRATEFUL that I never left the rooms of OA entirely.  Another popular slogan is, "Don't leave before the miracle happens!"  How true that sentiment is for me.  

OA bases itself on the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, changing only the words, "alcohol and alcoholic" to "food and compulsive overeater".  As someone who truly bought into the conventional wisdom that controlling food is a matter of "will power" and "discipline", it was a new vision to learn that we were actually powerless over food.  We learn that we have a 2 fold illness; a physical allergy to certain foods.  And a mental obsession that guarantees at some point that I will turn back to those alcoholic foods for ease and comfort.  "If Suzie can eat X, why can't I?"  It took me a long time to understand that the reason that I cannot is that I am DIFFERENT.  That somewhere in my makeup are different cells when it comes to eating food.  Somewhere in my past, I taught myself that food was something I could stuff into my "God shaped hole" to try and fill it.  But like all GSH's, the bottom of the hole could never be reached. I could increasingly eat larger and larger quantities of food each time I would binge.  By the fall of 2022, I was spending the majority of time in my bedroom alone, in the dark, eating $74 of DoorDash A DAY, eating that in the dark only to the glow of my cell phone playing YouTube videos.  It was a very small life for me because I couldn't escape my disease.  

I was morbidly obese, compulsively overeating, and depressed.  What could happen next?  

Stay Tuned...............

It's REALLY not About the Weight

It's October 9, 2015 and I haven't written on this blog in a VERY long time.  For those of you that know me, 2015 has been a CRAZY Year.  But since this blog is about me, I can only focus on my journey, so here it is.

I was preparing for bariatric surgery the last time I posted.  I'm SO GRATEFUL to report that the surgery went off without a hitch on November 24th, 2014.  Surgery was 11am on Monday and I was home by 8pm Tuesday.  The worst part was the gas they have to use to inflate your abdomen to see around in there.  It truly does have to come out one way or the other, which can be uncomfortable.  But for the most part I have been free from complications or any serious side effects.  How lucky am I????

With surgery being November 24th, I looked to the New Year with renewed optimism and hope.  January 21st my father was hospitalized with what turned out the be stage IV metastatic colon cancer.  It felt completely out of the blue.  His first major hospitalization was 71 days.  For a died in the wool Catholic girl, all I can say is OY!  If you don't know, there's nothing so exhausting as sitting beside someone you love so dearly watching them be sick.  I thought I knew tired....I had no freaking idea what that was until this happened.  The anesthesiologist advised us because of the emergent nature of the surgery there was a 50/50 chance dad wouldn't make it off the surgery table.  As the surgeon came to speak with us after the surgery, the anesthesiologist walked by, stuck his head in the waiting room and just said, "Man your dad is tough".  You got that right!  The now named Honey Badger walked through major surgery, a cancer diagnosis, wound care for an 8" incision for which he'd prefer a sexier story to explain, physical rehab and having to start chemo.  He did it without complaint and with the constant concern of not being a burden to his family.

As the person who lives with my father, I had absolutely no reservation about doing whatever was needed to help care for him.  I am an unashamed daddy's girl.  He's truly the person who taught me about unconditional love.  I do however, have physical limitations that made this journey more challenging.  It's been a steep learning curve on balancing self care with care taking.  The old analogy of putting your oxygen mask before putting your child's on, definitely applies.

I am so very grateful and surprised by what I've been able to do on behalf of someone I love so very much.  I have two words for you:  COLOSTOMY BAGS.  Speaking of steep learning curves, there's just no way to explain what a challenge that is to get into the groove of that whole experience. I'm exceedingly grateful for my sense of humor.  My mantra became, "In case my father loses his S%*T, it does not mean I get to lose my S%*T".  There's a lot to be said for humor in the face of things that are difficult, painful or embarrassing.  There's a gift in caring for those who've cared for us.

More than anything, it taught me about the importance of ACTIONS.  It's truly not what we say or what we feel it's what we DO.  I am someone who gets plagued by inertia frequently, so to have to walk through the daily business of putting one foot in front of the other, and do the things I don't necessarily want to do, gives me reassurance that I will be able to do that for myself more than I have in the past.   As an Irish girl, I've realized that there are times when I'd prefer to stick sharp objects under my fingernails rather than ask for help.  My village has bridged the tricky traverse between granting me space, and offering help, to insisting on help should I become a wee bit stubborn.  (Me, stubborn?...NO WAY!...lol).

My father has had a lot of challenges this year.  Three separate hospitalizations for complications of the chemotherapy and a difficult decision to end IV chemo in favor of a shorter but richer life expectancy.  I've watched with a lot of admiration and even sadness as he asks what he did to deserve me caring for him like I have.  I watched as he's lost his enjoyment for food.  You know a person's taste buds are shot when Oreo's aren't appealing.  But I've also watching him poison himself with toxins to stay around those he loves.  I've seen him be more motivated than most to be present.

My weight has become a truly secondary part of this journey.  I'm very grateful I decided to do the surgery when I did.  I'm also grateful in some ways that I had something else to focus on this year, or I could have become quite neurotic and obsessed about what the scale said.

I'm so glad to be on this journey and grateful you're willing to travel the road with me.  As always, thanks for reading.

It's ALL About Your Village

It's truly amazing how fast life can move once a decision is made.  And that certainly holds true for me.  As someone who has struggled with morbid obesity for 25+ years I think I can truly say that I have tried every option out there to try and get some weight off of me.  Except for one....And that is to have bariatric weight loss surgery.  It's been around for quite a while and I've had the experience of watching people close to me and strangers do the surgery and have varying degrees of results.  Two of the women who were with me in treatment were there because they had become bulimic after weight loss surgery.  It was a harrowing cautionary tale to watch.  I wanted to be one of those people who could accomplish something like loosing significant amounts of weight with just my OWN PERSONAL POWER.  (Pause for the rueful laugh of someone who by the definition of being in a recovery program around food GETS how ridiculous that statement is).  And so while talking to my Rhumatologist who has known me since I was 16 years old, I asked him about it.  He expressed his concerns and then very casually said, "But it could be the best thing you ever do for your health." And for some strange reason the door was open.  The footwork began.  That footwork has moved at a rather breathtaking pace for a Libra like me who could cheerfully debate and issue into oblivion.

And what I have come to realize is that it truly is ALL about your village.  I have become completely amazed, overwhelmed and humbled by the people who have expressed their support for this new chapter in my journey.  To my medical team who have been 100% behind me, to my friends who have said that they support me no matter what. To my family who are behind me as well. And especially my recovery friends who are helping me to become as emotionally and spiritually prepared for this next phase.  Because as I have been going through the footwork, I have to remember that for me, who identifies as a Compulsive Overeater, I must always remain vigilant that I have a problem in my mind primarily, and that this is in NO WAY a fix or panacea.  The honest truth is that I find I'm doing MORE of the recovery work than I was before considering this, which is a bit surprising to me.

I was on a day road trip with one of the members of my village, and I was talking about this whole experience and I said rather emphatically, "This HAS to work."  And when I say work I mean get me to the weight the doctors say is required for joint replacement surgery.  And after some contemplation this person to me, "That's just an awful lot of pressure you're putting on yourself.  You're going to be okay no matter what happens."  And I can honestly say that I didn't believe him at that point.  I was full of a great deal of fear and anxiety about the situation and was just convinced I was going to find a way to mess this up.  My weight has truly been the most significant place where I buy into the belief that I can't do "it".

And the truth is that "I" can't do it.  Not alone.  And that's the part I had been missing for quite awhile.  I believe that a Power greater than me is going to restore me to sanity, and for me sanity means taking this next step.  Because I am in a 12 Step spiritual program for this addiction, I believe that I have to be successful using ONLY the tools of that program.  Picture me meditating under a tree while shoving Wheat Thins in my mouth...that's pretty much it.  I thought that choosing this surgery was a failure in some way, or meant I didn't believe that in recovery for myself.  NOTHING could be father from the truth the closer I get to the actual surgery date.  What truly is the recovery for me is realizing that I'm worth doing this surgery and that I can reach out for help in whatever form it takes.  That still blows my mind as I read it on the computer screen.

Because I have a lot to lose.  I've got a lot of life to live.  Lot's of adventures and lot's of travel and lot's of service to give to the world at large.  I've got my dad who wants me to be okay before anything happens to him.  And I've got my village who has just shown up in a way that maybe makes me finally believe that I'm a lovable imperfect person who deserves to have a full, crazy life.  Because if there's one thing I know, it's that I want Westboro Baptist Church to picket my funeral.  Hee Hee!

If you're reading this, thanks for being part of my village too.

In Praise of Tolerance

Whew!  It's been quite a while since I've been here.  I will definitely say I've been sort of chipping away at my emotional and spiritual rock pile and so I've not been really called to write a new post.  HOWEVER....the topic of tolerance keeps popping it's head above ground like that Whack-A-Mole game I used to play at the arcade.  Over and over again it's been popping its head up.  So I guess when I just can't whack-a-mole any more, I just have to write about it.

Like most well-intentioned people, I like to consider myself pretty tolerant.  But I've recently learned that it's terribly easy to feel tolerant when you're surrounding yourself with like minded people.  As long as there are no challenges to my way of thinking, I'm Buddha on the Mountain top. I'm Gandhi.  I'm completely and 100% Zen.  Get someone who challenges my beliefs or thought processes in any way, and lets just say it's not exactly a pretty picture.  I'm not exactly a fan of realizing that I'm a stones throw away from becoming the very thing I judge so harshly, but you gotta bloom where you're planted.  Right?

My first encounter with my issues around tolerance happened in no less than a church.  As a cradle Catholic, I am firmly of the opinion that church should above all other things be a safe and welcoming place.  Certainly as the church continues to come out of the priest abuse scandals, feeling safe is more important than ever.  I had the opportunity to accompany a friend of mine who has a special needs child to Mass to celebrate his making his first Reconciliation.  This child has Tourette's and his current tick is verbal and quite loud.   Now, being in this kids life, I'm used to the experience and have been coached by his ROCK STAR mom on the best way to handle this particular tick.  But I was not in any way prepared for the responses by several of the other member's of the parish.  Many lingering stares, some hissing to get him to be quiet, more staring, an offer to remove the child (to make others more comfortable I'm sure), and just a general lack of understanding.  It should be noted that the kiddo was wearing this great shirt that had been made especially for him that explained the situation, along with the fact that he couldn't control what he was doing and asking for understanding.  This very special and wonderful child wears this shirt like armor to protect himself from the seemingly ignorant goobers that are out and about in the world.   The experiencing of being in church and having this reaction made me QUITE upset.  I thought to myself, "Why can't people be nicer?  More understanding?  More, dare I say, Tolerant?" I went home resentful and upset on behalf of not only my godson, but his mom who is a single parent and deals with this like a boss.

In talking to someone about this situation it was pointed out to me that perhaps it was unrealistic to expect me to think that imperfect people coming to a house of worship for spiritual solace would be open to this sort of challenge.  I immediately became incensed.   "That's not how it's supposed to be!"  I railed self-righteously in my head.  And my idea of what was "RIGHT" was like a brick wall in my mind.  This person just sort of chipped away at my sanctimonious way of thinking I came to realize that tolerance was not just about what I thought was the correct way of being.  If I was going to truly be Buddha on the mountain top, I had to show loving kindness to not just the people who I think deserve it the most.  I also have to show that same loving kindness to those I think deserve it the least.  How's that for choking on my own good intentions?  Thank goodness we were having this discourse via Facebook messenger so I was able to make ALL SORTS of faces to the computer screen, as it slowly sank in that perhaps this person might just be right.

The second treatise on tolerance occurred when I was chatting with someone and we happened to be discussing politics.  I became a Political Science major in college because I truly love politics. I once read a 950 page biography of Harry Truman...for fun.  I would say I'm somewhat liberal in my thinking on many topics; the specifics of which certainly don't need to be divulged here.  So I'm talking with someone who has a much more conservative view on not only social policy but economic policy as well.  We're NOT agreeing on much, let me just put it that way.  And again, I find myself getting all up in my self-righteousness and being "better" than the other person because I knew that my way was the true path to enlightenment.  Politically speaking of course.  If you want the true path to true enlightenment, other than coffee, I don't have much right now.  Check back later...;-)  And as we were getting into some verbal combat on a few topics, I realized how much I just wanted to say, "Screw you!" and take my toys out of the sand box, conversationally speaking.   And it's become an all too common theme in society today and certainly in myself, that if the voice of opposition is speaking, the options are to either: a) cut them off, speak over them and 'win' the argument or b) just say that they're wrong and leave the battle field.  And if this way of handling different opinions seems familiar, we need only to look at our desperately unproductive Congress in Washington D.C.  Lack of tolerance leads to stalemates and gridlock and nobody getting anything they want.

I will freely admit that I do not have the solution when it comes to tolerance.  But I think that it's completely fascinating that the moment it has become an issue for me, it starts showing up ALL OVER THE PLACE.  Funny how that works.  So I now am asking myself some interesting questions;  Am I being tolerant of MYSELF (Ew...)?  Am I being tolerant of those who think and act differently than I do?  Am I teachable today?  Thank goodness life is graded on a very gentle curve.

Thanks for taking the time to read......