First of all... did you see the Octomom on Oprah? She definitely opened up a new can of crazy in that hour. Oprah was even a little stunned by her obvious anxiety. She said that she had kids because she was addicted to the unconditional love that kids give. Really? Reaaaallly?? Here's the thing, that woman has to live with her addiction FOR-EVER!
Okay, I will get off my hooty-tooty high horse for a minute. What the Octomom couldn't be honest about was why she had a hole in her heart that not even 14 kids could fill. Denial is coursing through her life, and believe me, there are rapids in that river of hers. What I took from that really awkward hour of train-wreck TV (other than a profound appreciation for Suze Orman... LOVE her!) is the painful understanding that we have to be honest enough with ourselves and gracious enough to deal with the honesty.
Topic #2: I went snowshoeing today. It was awesome.
I live in a part of Colorado where it seems that a person is measured by how many miles they run and how many fourteeners they climb. I am the opposite of that. And when I get out in the wild, I try to enjoy it for enjoyment sake, not because I have some crazy bucket list. Summer is harder to hike in. It's crowded and hot and my engine runs into overheat pretty fast. Then I feel like Shrek-ette huffing up a dusty, dirty trail. But in the winter, the crisp, cool, clean air seems to inflate my soul and I fly up a trail. Plus, everyone on the trail is on wobbly snowshoes, a great equalizer. You may have climbed Maroon Bells, Climby McMachoman, but you have crappy balance, ha HA! I don't mean to be so bitter, but sometimes I just wish I lived around non-mountain obsessed people. Like people from Kansas. Bless you, Kansassians!
But all this leads to my main idea, which is that we all need a little forgiveness. When the tragedy in Tucson happened last week, I was reminded about how much forgiveness we need to give ourselves. Don't get me wrong, the shooting was a senseless, horrible crime and I weep to think of the lives lost. But that is a whole other blog post. I guess I wonder if that gunman would've opened fire on a crowd of people if he was able to be really honest and gracious with himself. Let's not wonder about this guy's motives for a sec. Whatever motivated him was secondary to how much he hates himself. Taking that self-hate out on an available target is really cowardly, but really easy. My mom always said that 99% of how someone treats you is about them and not about you. I wonder how much of that guy gunning down innocent people is about his own self-loathing and the inability to deal with that hatred. I wonder how much of Octomom's problem is about how she can't open that big, dark box of painful honesty in her emotional attic. I wonder how much of my antipathy towards Climby McMachoman is really about me.
I beat myself up a lot. I'm a bit of a bully when it comes to picking on my own faults. And then my friends get all up in my face and tell me to stop beating their friend up. We all do it. And each time we beat ourselves up, we build a brick wall of shame, denial, and defensiveness. Listen to that Patty Griffin song, "Forgiveness" and try to hear what she is singing. Times are hard, life is unfair, difficult and painful. We do life because we know there will be moments in the sunshine. But the hard work is to be honest and gracious with ourselves.
"We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us." --Martin Luther King Jr.
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