My Little Pal

My little running partner had knee surgery for torn ligaments; this means she may never be my running partner again. She has a whole year to recover while I’m gone though. The vet said she’s doing great and she tried to put weight on it the day after surgery. I wish I could be as resilient as her, she’s away from home in a strange place with a busted leg and apparently she is trying to get better so she can get home. I can’t imagine what she is feeling right now. I know what it’s like to be away from home but I made that conscious decision to do so. The vet doesn’t want me coming by and definitely doesn’t want me bringing her brother to see her because she would get too wound up. She will have to be caged for 6 weeks and then rehab the leg for a few months. I have no idea how it must feel to be scared and all alone and then when she comes home to have to be confined to a cage. She’s going to literally sit around and watch the world go on around her. I am reminded of some times in my life where I was similarly sitting around watching the world turn from winter to spring with no way to be a part of it. The worst part I think is that I will be leaving just a few days after she gets home but at least she’ll have my parents and the other dogs around her. I don’t know how many of you have been trapped in a strange place with no friendly faces before but it would seem like the sort of thing that would drive you into a deep depression. It got me to thinking about how when I see an animal with troubles I immediately feel the need to help but when it’s a person I somehow have this urge to get away. I don’t want to see people in distress. Is it easier to avoid someone in pain than to be reminded that it could be you? Is that why sometimes when I see a homeless person at a stop light I immediately start fiddling with my radio? Why is it so different when it’s an animal or a child? It’s not just because they are seemingly helpless; maybe part of me wants to believe or at least hope that I would not make the decisions that put an adult in that situation but then again I also feel very uncomfortable around sick people. Probably the whole mortality thing, I realize it’s selfish and that’s why I wish I was a little more like my puppy, if anyone is sick or injured she rushes to them to comfort them and I find that remarkable. She doesn’t have any of the hang ups I have developed as an adult, she just wants to help. Hopefully some of her kindness can rub off.

Imperfect

I’ve kind of taken a break from Twitter and FaceBook this week, mostly unintentional but it kind of felt good. I got to thinking about all the time I used to spend outdoors when I was growing up (I’ve been outdoors doing training all week) and how much exercise I got just running around with my friends. We have possibly the biggest generational gap between thirty-somethings and twenty-somethings, if you’re in your thirties and have a question about computers or games your children might be your best source of knowledge, they might have to ask you the rules to flag football though. When did it become more important for kids to find friends and communicate online than face to face? More than once I have called someone and they wouldn’t pick up but promptly sent a text message asking what I needed, most of the time I could have just said what I had to say and been on my way but instead I get to spend several minute trying to thumb out the words! Science has proven that human contact and verbal communication are essential to healthy emotional stability. I’m not saying that texting and video games are the reason Tucson just had a massacre; some people are just beyond help. What I am saying is that when we move away from what we were designed to do, living the way we were meant to, that it can cause problems. Everyone has a design, some internal thing that drives them to be what they are. This design used to drive people to what they were meant to be and we have ignored it for so long that it is no longer the norm to step out of our comfort zone and attempt to be great. Not everyone is destined to be a hero, or famous, or rich and powerful but we were all meant to be great at something. We should constantly try to improve ourselves; no one starts out being ok with just being ok. I don’t have a glamorous job but it’s one I love so I do my best to be my best. That’s not to say I don’t slack off every now and then, you can’t run full throttle all day every day. Some people will tell you to take things day by day and just do your best each day, which can be tiring. I see my ideal end-state and work towards that, the key is not to give up or feel down when you mess up. Nobody can be perfect any day let alone every day. 

Hypocrisy

Today I have been kicking myself in the butt. Not that long ago I was complaining about being judged by who I used to be, a man was judging me off of an experience he had with me 6 years ago and yesterday I found myself doing the exact same thing, I was judging someone by who I thought they were 5 years ago the last time I saw them. The worst part of this is that I wasn’t even talking to this person, someone else brought their name up and I immediately began to speak about that person as if he could not have possibly changed, even though I have no idea what he is like today. It’s what we call a knee jerk reaction, a reflex. It’s difficult for us to not think about someone as the person they were the last time we saw them but it’s something I really want to get better about. Hypocrisy is a dangerous thing but it’s something everyone is guilty of to some extent. How many times have you and a friend talked about someone who’s “shady” but you did it behind their back? Like I said, we all do it from time to time. Perfection is never attainable, the best we can hope for is that we recognize these things when we do them, preferably before someone else sees it and “calls” us on it. I was affected all night last night by the thought of what perception I had thrown out there about myself, what kind of man I had just shown myself to be. This morning I apologized to the person I had made those comments to, not because I thought I had offended them but because I felt as though I showed myself to be the type of person that I truly don’t believe I am. I had a momentary lapse in self awareness and I will have to work that much harder the next time. One of my faults is also one of my strengths, I am a communicator, I enjoy talking to people and listening to people. One of the problems with this is that I sometimes talk too much and it can annoy some people or I just don’t fully think through what I’m about to say and how some people may react to it. In the army we call it a “filter malfunction”. I guess I just need to work harder at engaging my filter and remembering that hypocrisy is an easy little evil to fall prey to. So it’s not just do unto others as you would have done to you, you have to also think/speak about others as you would like them to speak/think about you.

Pro-Words

This week I’ve been doing some refresher medical training. We’ve been going over how to treat gunshot wounds and collapsed lungs. I’ve done this training almost yearly since 2004, the first time was before my first deployment. It’s not something you can even picture yourself having to do in a real world situation so it doesn’t truly register the way it should. Often times I don’t value things the way I should at first. When I was younger I wanted to be popular and I was successful too. I always defined myself by what was around me instead of what was inside of me. I was the funny kid, the popular guy, the life of the party, the player, the ladies man, etc. That was how I saw myself and consequently how I was seen. I never saw myself as the smart one, the person with a kind heart, the good Samaritan, the reliable guy, the person making a difference in the world, or any of the things I would like to be seen as now. It’s amazing how your perception changes as time goes by. The things we value and even the way we value things evolves over the years. As we begin to realize the things that will last we re-prioritize the pro-words we want used to describe us. The worst part is that when we try to be what we’re not, other people don’t use the pro-words we want. In college my words were cool, funny, ladies man; other peoples’ words for me were probably more like drunk, slutty, and lazy. I don’t know this for sure but looking back that’s what seems to fit. I think the one word that’s been there since high school is lonely. I was always acting the way I was and doing the things I did because I hated being alone. I was never alone, for a while I lived in a house with 28 people in it! Anytime I stopped dating a girl I already had another one waiting, I never sat at home because that meant sitting in the quiet by myself. I just didn’t like being by myself, never really have.  In my thirties I have no idea what my words will be but hopefully they might be something like kind, generous, overwhelming joy, adventurous, or significant change. I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about the words you use to describe yourself versus the words others might be using but when I really looked back it was easy to see they were not the same.

Courage

Today I got to thinking about how I’m going to spend this next year, not where I’m going or what I’ll be doing but how I want people to see me. How do I want to live this next year, I could say the easy stuff like I’m going to work out more and several other things that I am planning on doing. I think the biggest change is that I want to live my life with more integrity and more courage. Integrity is a soundness of moral character while courage is a quality of the spirit. I know I’m a fairly brave person but that isn’t the same as courage, I read about a German man named Dietrich Bonhoeffer. This man had courage, he is a 20^th century martyr who founded the Confessing Church and worked as a double agent against Hitler. He was eventually captured and executed after the failed assassination attempt on Hitler. I don’t expect to find myself in any situation where I would be martyred; I just want to find that part of me that has the strength to do the right thing even when it’s uncomfortable or unpopular. I think that’s been one of my biggest flaws my whole life. While I may be brave I have never been courageous enough to be unpopular. So this next year I want to live with courage and integrity, the integrity to always know what the right things to do are and the courage to do them. I think I’ve just been selfish, I saw kids get picked on in high school but didn’t want to risk my own popularity. I see the homeless trying to sell their newspapers and I hope I don’t get stuck at the red light next to them. I’ve heard a saying since I was little, “act as if”, it basically means always act as though you are being watched, because you are. This year I don’t want to do anything that I’m not proud to say I did, it’s a tall order and sure I’ll slip but hopefully the overall feel of the year will be good. I know that I’ll end up doing things throughout the year that I don’t want to tell my mother or my pastor but as long as I am making a constant effort to do better I’ll consider it a success. I don’t want to be popular anymore, I just want to be a better role model for my daughter before she gets too old for me to influence.