It's Not About Me.

There's a difference between trying to be THE better person and trying to be A better person.  I do strongly believe that the former shouldn't be a goal; it shouldn't, but it can be tempting.  The end result might be the same but the motivations that get you there are sometimes more important.  WANT versus DO, though- that's being challenging for me today.  Challenges aren't supposed to be negatives but seriously... today?  I'm whiny.  I want things to be easy and perfect and lacking in conflict and moodiness and sadness, and when I don't get what I want, sometimes I get off kilter and my responses aren't the greatest.  I'm human.

This morning I let myself get sucked into my own little private pity party for awhile.  It's been a stressful few days/week, and letting myself wallow in that rather than meeting its' challenge isn't good.  It isn't good for me, or for the people I might poison with my crappy attitude if I let it stick around.  It doesn't do anything but perpetuate negativity and we have too much of that available as it is without growing more.

"To have true friends and be loved by them, we must in turn feel love and sympathy for others." His Holiness the Dalai Lama posted that on his Twitter today.  It's simple. True. Short enough to remember and kind of make my little mantra for the next day or two until the clouds pass and things get a bit easier around here.  I do not question that I have true friends. I do. We have a good system but that system only works properly if everyone holds up their end of the support network when chips go down... and while I'm not saying I've been an asshole, the people that I want to support deserve the best.  They deserve better than they can ever be given, by me or by anybody else... but at the very least, they're going to get the best that can be mustered.  Dammit.

It isn't my job, today, to be self-absorbed, at least not beyond the point of taking care of myself so I can take care of others.  Tomorrow, Wednesday, next week, next month... that day will come, and it will be fine, then, but for right now my job needs to be trying to figure out how to make things a little bit easier for others.