Photo by Marco Aurélio Conde on Unsplash
*(Boring) Administrative Announcement: Hello! I sent this same post from my Substack yesterday. However, I have recently realized that some prefer reading posts here on WordPress instead of Substack. ALL FUTURE POSTS WILL BE SENT FROM WORDPRESS unless I hear otherwise from you. Thank you so much for supporting me so I can feel important!
I prefer whining, usually.
It’s less risky.
Plus, it’s safer on my ego to point the finger and deride others than to realize that we’re the ones who’ve accidentally fallen on our rears.
My example:
Hear us whine:
“Hallowe’en is a lot more disgusting than it used to be in years past, etc,” we said. And so we bury our mouths in tubs of candy, fix our eyes on the latest movie, close our ears to the kids knocking upstairs, and hide in our basements, waiting for November, when all is right once more with the world. (Isn’t it? But I digress. . . )
Hoisting oneself by the seat of the pants and leaving the house:
So we asked the grocery store manager to please remove the DISGUSTING display of realistic, cut-off body parts sitting on top of the oranges. These were their “decorations” during October. “Yes! Of course!” she exclaimed, running off to remove them before we finished speaking.
And then came another fall on my rear with the following sentence from this store manager, “You are the first person who has said anything about these decorations in ten years.”
Ouch. Doing the mental math as I sat on my rear after the fall, I quickly realized I had shopped in that store for that long. I have complained every year and yet never once spoke out in love.
And the store manager?
She wasn’t a fierce wolf waiting to attack the foundations of excellence in our culture. But she was a confused sheep, head in her hands, crying, waiting for someone to shine a light on a mess in her store that she couldn’t quite see but knew intuitively needed cleaning up. She had longed for someone to give her a reason to take down the decorations that the rising tide of culture had deposited in her store.
The other thing is – I didn’t create an enemy in this store manager but the reverse happened.
She opened up to me about her cancer struggle and her search for God. Years later, during COVID-19, when the sign at the grocery store exit said in bold letters, “WE WILL NOT HELP YOU CARRY ITEMS TO YOUR CAR”, I didn’t ask for this service, but she carried items to my car. We shared some love in the way that strangers do when they talk about God together (This is another post).
But the point?
Maybe it’s time to grow up a little?
Nah.
I’ve got a bag of candy I’m enjoying tonight (Yes, sugar is a poison – what is your point?), as I watch another episode, and whining is easier, frankly.
But as my joints become enflamed from all this candy, and my spiritual life shrinks with me as I hide in the corners of my culture and complain, I wonder if I should get up off the couch, again?
Photo by Julian Bock on Unsplash
How about you?
Should we help each other put down our candy and get up?
Nah.
Oh OK! I’ll tell you about the next time I do something like this in another post. Now leave me alone so I can finish my candy and movie, ok?
(Thanks.)
Restoring Life 