Here I am again

To the Vanzant quote the other night, I believe that what has stumped me for so long is this, how can I have lofty ideals when financially I have felt stumped by matters beyond my control? I think that that is an extremely important statement for me to make to myself now. The answer coming to me is that I must understand that the things that have been in my way are just that, things in the way. I can see this year that those "things' in my way were a product of what was "happening' in my life and NOT My life as it were. They were happening to me, most certainly, but they were not because of me or for me. They could have occurred to anyone else. I took them very personally. It took reading an article yesterday about a very serious topic of refugees from Africa going to Italy, and those from Syria going to Turkey. The plight of black women as opposed to the approach of the article about Syrians, showed that one group was clearly suffering greater atrocities than the other. The Writers were simply writing the facts that they observed. I kept wondering where the hell was the United Nations in all of the smuggling, gun running, prostitution and human trafficking? These Writers obviously were not the only people on the ground in these countries aware of what is going on even as I write this! I got completely caught up in the plight of the women and children in particular. I know that I am veering off what I plan to state about my own issues, but I need a moment...I kept asking as I read, why is it that women have no choice but to sell their bodies as they leave one part of Africa for the other and then have to do it all again when they get to Italy? The refugee women from Syria were not mentioned as having any such fate as they flooded into Turkey! I was very alarmed! I suppose that this is but one article, in reading others, I may come to see that it is not just one race of women having to make such decisions. It is all occurring to me right now, as I write this. So, yes, I was reading that excellent article and it got me thinking about the things that affect your life. Things can take certain directions that seem to upend your best intentions. Meanwhile, you my find yourself assuming that the lives you glimpse of others online are so much better than yours. There are little children growing up trying to come to terms right now with what their lot in life is against a child they may see at school with so much more than they have. There is much to reconcile about having and wanting and needing. I remember going to our house-keepers home and finding that she lived with her family in what to me seemed like real love and closeness. Was I somehow experiencing less than that at home? I do not believe so, but they way she and her family got along, I just felt the love and never forgot it. So I found that she was indeed wealthy despite not being materially rich. Lots of things happen to you, and you have to deal with it. It doesn't mean that your lucky or unlucky. It just is. No one really avoids life's emotional roller-coaster. Life is just always happening. So much of it is lived the same way by all of us. We all eat, seep, cry, laugh and connect with each other in some way or other. Sometimes I marvel at how much we don't know as a human race, how much we need to improve and work on to be way better than we are now. I am so grateful that I no longer feel things so close to the skin that I freeze and take it personally. I understand that there is a bigger picture, that the story is partly obscured. I see the need to be understanding that I am going through an experience and that it just is what it is.