Re: Suggestion Regarding the Forum and Problematic Posts
There is one thing above all others all of us sincerely need, find dificult to comprehend, cannot fully describe, struggle to give, fail to receive, desperately want, don't always feel we have, and yet we are consoled by its very existence because it allows us to be who we are when it is realized even in the smallest of fractions and empowers us all to try harder, be better, work more efficiently and keep on hoping; that simple, yet powerful thing is grace.
With that exceptionally long sentence to serve as a preface for this post, let me get something out of the way which I know is going to ring unpopular with a lot of people on this forum and probably will for many who read it from the outside. I want to challenge us all to truly assess ourselves and accept something that is as true as the brightness of the moon and the sun, because it is only by accepting this wonderful little itty bitty fact that we can progress to even begin to give measures of this wonderful thing called grace to one another. If you believe in the value and worth of life, you probably believe we are all created equall, which is to say, our value does not change from one to another. The fragile reality of our existence entitles us to various things in this world; America's founders said "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." I believe that idea is not broad enough, but I do not want to turn this into a subjective matter of what I believe or we will diminish the fact I'm trying to build upon. Taking simply life into the equation and what that spark means in its entirety, from conception until death... I mean, it's huge! You have a right to exist! That spark of existence that gives us the essence of who we are and who we will strive to be makes us all equal.
But, and yes, there is a but, (a big one,) it does not make us all the same. Even when we possess certain similarities we are not all the same, not entirely alike. It may seem obvious, but I don't think it's as apparent to us all the way around... I'm speaking of myself as much as anyone else on this forum. We all have expectations for ourselves; sometimes we can meet them well while we really fall hard on other occasions. What we expect of ourselves we usually tend to expect of others, saying things we feel are justified such as, "You're as old as I am, as strong as I am, as experienced as I am, as knowledgeable as I am, as educated as I am, as well off or otherwise financially as I am! Why, for the love of all, can't you do this or that or the other as good as, or even better than me? At the very least, why can't you be more like me and what I expect of myself!"
Perhaps one of the more interesting trends and practices I find alarming at public schools today concerns this idea that everybody wins. You don't tell kids or show kids anything other than the possibility of victory, at the expense of the full truth. Give them all trophies, ribbons and certificates; take them all out for icecream and pizza and cake and whatever other gifts and privilleges. "Forget the glaring numbers of the score; you won because you chose to be here and that's all that matters! You deserve everything you got and a bag of chips to boot, and then, you deserve even more than that!"
And then we get older. We learn to expect that kind of entitlement. We deserve a good grade because we stuck it out in the class with that crappy professor. We deserve to graduate with honors and honorable mentions because we were able to simply coast along and not sink beneath the mire of ranks and scores and scholastic pressure. We deserve our job just because we showed up at the office. We deserve a like on Youtube because we made a video! We deserve a friend on facebook and a follow on twitter because that post sounded good to us! We deserve the trophy spouse because we said I love you before someone else did. We deserve for our children to behave because by good grief, did we not give them life ourselves? Yes we did, and we deserve that and much more from them! We deserve to be seen as kinpins in whatever our orbit is and everyone should acknowledge that, simply by the virtue of the fact that we are and they're not!
I ask you, truly, honestly ask you, is that realistic? No, and it doesn't make for stable societies whatsoever. For every one person trying to do whatever it is they're trying to do, be it becoming a successfull doctor, lawyer, TV superstar or stage celeb with a record label deal, there are hundreds of thousands who won't make it! Not everybody wins! Not everybody is an over achiever! Not everybody is eager, ready or even willing to taste success that the cost of doing everything it takes to get there, because some of us realize that sometimes what it takes to get there is hurting someone else in the process!
Am I saying there's not such a thing as laziness? Procrastination? Lack of drive and ambition? The failure to prioritize? Distraction? Disinterest? Pecimism? Absolutely those things exist! All of them and more! It is up to the individual to accept whatever their demons are as the bad qualities that they are and move along with them, but until they do there is realistically nothing anyone can do to move them foward. Believing in someone does not matter until they too choose to believe in themselves for all the right reasons.
So what now, you ask? I may not be an over achiever, but I can still keep trying. I'm not always a winner, but I'm still alive to fight another day! I'm not the best looking, but hang it all I'm healthy, everything's still working and the world is still turning, and while there are always going to be people who look better than me by virtue of who I am, there will also be those who look subjectively worse in the eyes of society because of the subjective way society works, and that is no more their fault than it is mine for not being the best looking! I may not be rich, may not feel strong, may not act brave, may not be a good cook, may not know how to clean as well as others, may not own a big house with a beautiful back yard, may not have the world falling at my feet and offers to go out on dates and have 5 star dinners with the world's top 1 or 10 percent or whatever's cool nowadays, and that's ok! It's part of life! Someone somewhere somehow someway has to firmly and rigidly hold up the ladder at the bottom so those at the top don't fall, and it's not because they deserve to be up there any more than I do, but simply because they are up there and I'm not!
And that is why when we come back around full circle to the subject of grace, giving will always seem harder than accepting it. Oh yeah! Both sides of the spectrum have issues! Of the people at the top, there are few who are willing to take the time and the effort to say that they are where they are and that they are who and what they are because of greater peple than themselves to stood them fast, who held them solidly in place, who sacrificed more and took greater strides for them than they could have taken for themselves to get to where they are now, in comparison with the many who are ready and willing to say, "I am and you're not, and I deserve this!" Were it not so, we wouldn't be trying to push the wealthy to give to the poor out of kindness, many of whom believe that wealth is soley for them and them alone to use as they see fit. Any person who truly believes they are a self-made individual with nothing and noone to thank for it could not truly and consistently live with that view, because if they truly believed it they would find the quickest way off this planet and go inhabit a world of their own creation to live in, apart from the rest of us.
The point I'm trying to make is this; we need each other regardless whether we choose to admit it here or not. Every single one of us makes this circle of life spin and keep on spinning, regardless what we think of it, because all of us, once we have encountered one another have touched each other's lives in ways we cannot imagine. One word really can make all the difference, particularly on a forum full of people who are not all the same. Some of us are totally blind. Some of us are visually impaired. Some of us have other issues extending far beyond the scope of nonfunctional eyeballs. Mothers and no fathers. Guardians but no true parents. Places to go and eat and sleep and stay warm when the nights get cold, but places that condemn one to suffer in other ways, be they physical, mental, emotional, social, psychological or some other such thing I haven't touched upon. Some of us were brought up poor. Some of us live in underdeveloped countries. Some of us had no person we could look up to or who inspired us. Some of us were left for broken because of who and what we are. None of us, no matter how much we may seem like it, are entirely the same.
And no, just because I'm writing about grace does not mean I have always given it. If you feel this is a critique of you or someone else, let me assure you it isn't... I don't always give grace though I am certain that I should always try. I cannot fully give it because I am not perfect. What I can do is attempt to make wrongs right when I come upon them, and I"d like to do that with at least one person right now.
@Irongranny, cheesy, round wheel, something, thingy, I feel like I should honestly mention you by name and yet I won't because I honestly don't know how you feel about that sort of thing, I apologize. I was wrong for making post 41. The content may have been true, but the method of delivery was entirely inappropriate. I don't know what came over you though I realize you were obviously upset. I don't know that your anger was justified, but I do know it was legitimate and I didn't take the time to consider it. In many respects, I feel like you gave me more grace than I extended to you, because you could have just as easily lashed out at me and had a reason to do so, but you didn't.
-- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
