Lookin out for Number 1

I  was recently playing a game with a friend where we were coming up with adjectives to describe each other, (yeah I play some pretty boring games sometimes), and my friend came up with the word selfless.  I immediately told my friend that I am not selfless at all because as soon as that was mentioned, my mind was flooded with hundreds of instances where I was anything but selfless.

Then I started thinking, what does it mean to be selfless?  Should we all be moving to Africa to become Mother Theresas?  That would be nearly impossible for most people so that can not be completely the answer.  Nor can we all quit our jobs and volunteer full time at Habitat for Humanity or any other shelter or non profit.

So if we are not doing these obviously selfless things what can we do to actually be less self-serving?  I think it starts, as most things, in our heads.  But we have to be careful about even this first step.  I used to think selfless meant I hate myself and that you take care of everyone else then you take care of yourself.  But this was all messed up because it’s simply impossible to take care of anyone well when you haven’t slept, eaten, or been to work to support yourself.  Sure you can try for a while but this will most assuredly result in your own burn out or in letting down the people whom you have trained to depend on you.  This is still a very self-focused approach because you being to focus on your own self-denial rather than on others.

No, I think selfless starts in your head as in, instead of focusing on how bad everything is going for you, like bad traffic, no love life to speak of, angry parents, etc.  Start listening to other people.  Start seeing how much other people are going through the same things you are, or oftentimes worse. Think of what you would want in their position and do it.  Think of a widow and how much a ten minute phone call could be the highlight of her monotonous day sitting and watching soaps, that’s one example.  One.

If we start viewing people as people and realize that most of the time there is something more to why they’re angry all the time, or why they constantly complain we will develop more compassion and compassion always leads to selfless acts.

I’m not saying I always get it right, I’m not saying I get it right most of the time, but I am saying I think I have found the way for us all to love each other a little better;  As friends, as family, as a community of people that are trying to figure out how to cope in this broken world.

Hippy at Heart

The past few weeks have hit me hard, kinda like a sackfull of Krystals do on a hangover.  I’ve realized a lot of things about myself, like how much I care about the delinquent kids in class who could give two shits less what I have to say to them;  and how much I just wanna enjoy everything this life has to offer.

As far as school goes, it took me a full week and two days before I found myself in the floor of the girl’s bathroom bawling my eyes out because some kid just doesn’t care and thinks he’ll be fine dropping out as soon as he’s 16.  I just couldn’t deal with knowing that some people actually think that way.  It further infuriated me to think about his parents who probably are making his situation worse.  Parents certainly have a propensity for ruining their kid’s lives.  Even the good ones can instill bad cases of inadequacy and little self worth.  Not that I know how to do it better, but then again, I’m not having children.  Other than my one” high-schoolesque” bathroom breakdown I’ve been pretty levelheaded through the whole ordeal so far.  Or as much as I can be waking up at 5:30am with no Starbucks in a 25 mile radius.

As far as enjoyin life goes, I work at school 5 days a week and I work at my friend’s pizza restaurant 2 days so Saturday is my only day completely off.  I think the pressure of only one day off a week has made me make the most of it.  Not to mention I am surrounded by high schoolers at both jobs, between the drama and crises it’s freakin exhausting!  Instead of crashing all day and wallowing in my laziness I’ve been trying to do as much as possible.  It also helps that I’ve gotten completely out of the almost boring-marriage relationship that I had stuck myself in for so many years.  It’s frustrating to think of all the stuff I could’ve been doing, and knowing I was just sitting at his house passing my life away.  It amazes me how easy it is to get into something like that and not even realize it until so much time has gone on without me.

Even something as simple as music, I used to be up on all the cool, scenish bands and be in the know.  Now, I’m completely clueless.  I’m having to re-learn and find out about everything now.  That’s not entirely bad, it was just a huge part of my life that I realize I missed.

I’ve realized I never wanna be stuck again.  Stuck at a job I hate, stuck in a relationship that isn’t going anywhere, stuck in a town I just want out of, stuck in a religion that I don’t agree with, just stuck.

New beginnings are painful and sometimes hard to come by, but they’re totally worth it.