We Need Each Other

I am always looking for quotes and thinking about the application to your life.  You are probably sick of me giving you quotes and showing how a movie or person can be relatable to your life.  I know that there are not enough quotes or movies in the world to make everything right.  But this is my way of getting through all this.  This is an outlet for me to perhaps share my thinking to make a difference in the life of someone else.

There is a saying about when things get tough, we truly see what people are made of.  I am not sure if that is the exact quote or who said it, but I know have I heard something like it before.  Some people handle hard times really well.  Some people don't handle hard times at all. There are some people who could be standing in the middle of a fire and still smile.  There are others who leave at the sign of the first spark.  We all handle stress and hard times differently.

The one thing that makes me sad is when I see people handle hard times by showing the worse in themselves.  We can get negative...mean...we begin to accuse...assume...shame...blame.  I get it.  It is hard to be nice when we are frustrated, scared, and faced with uncertainty. It is hard to be cheery and positive when it feels like everything is falling apart. 

It is proven that empathy, compassion, and kindness to our fellow humans in the time of greatest need is key to both parties surviving through the toughest times. We must remember there is always a person on the other side and just as it may have happened to them, it could just as quickly happen to you. Often the fear of what others may say about you is harder to overcome than the actual event.  We can try to control many factors, but things may still happen to us.  That doesn't make us a bad person.  It just makes us a person that something happened to.

Again...I know this is hard time.  I know you are good people.  I know that you are exhausted.  I know that you are working hard.  I know that you are overwhelmed with everything in your professional life...your personal life...with the world.  I know.  I know.  I know it is hard to see anything positive right now.  But please don't turn on your fellow humans.  I saw a quote on a card that was uncredited.  It said, "If we can't see eye to eye, let's try heart to heart."  We may not agree on all things, but we do need to agree that we all have feelings and more than ever, we need each other.

Fencing

I wish I could sum up in a few words how we are all feeling at this time.  It is hard to come up with words, but it is also hard because everyone is feeling something different.  Some people show their feelings, some people bottle them up.  Some people show their feelings in ways that may be similar to us, some people don't.  Some people have good coping mechanisms in place, some people have turned to not so good means to cope.  What is important in this time is to understand we are all going through this "thing" together.

One of my coping mechanisms is television.  I become pretty dedicated to what I watch and while I some times watch things that are mindless ("The Real Housewives" franchise fall under this heading), I do watch some pretty emotional shows.  One of those shows is "This is Us".  Ugh.  I think I cry at some point during every episode.  It is that good.

For those of you who don't watch, the series focuses on a family of three siblings.  This family has experienced heartache and great triumphs.  You hit the first heart break in episode one...it is so good!  Last week was the premiere and the episode drew onto everything happening in our world...COVID, racial tensions, protests...plus all the tensions that the family is experiencing with what is going on with their own lives.  The focus for everyone was on what was going on in the world and the impact within their family.

Randall, one of the brothers, has a good wife named Beth.  She always knows what to say.  As Randall was struggling as a father, a son, a brother, and an African American man in the world today, Beth presented him with a great analogy.

Beth related the bad things, the sorrows, the sadness in life as fence posts.  They are these permanent markers in our lives that we remember.  We all remember all those things in our lives.  Where we were...the date...the year...our feelings at that exact moment.  Then Beth reminded Randall to look at what is in between those fence posts...all the things you hang on your fence posts.  Those are the good things in your life.

Right now, we seem to only see the fence post.  This moment in time is grounded in our memory.  But look back and look forward.  There are good things that have happened between your last fence post and this one.  There are good things that have happened since this fence post has been placed in the ground.  There is good out there still!

If you have ever helped with fencing, you know putting the post in the ground takes the most work.  It is where you see the sweat and tears.  What you hang on those posts takes not as much effort.  But it is what you hang on the posts that does all the magic.  It is what keeps the cattle in.  It is what keeps us as humans going!  

Think about what you have between your fence posts.  There are good things out there.  Keep hanging good things between your posts.