Tag Archives: friendship

Ruling Myself

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Posted by on in Assistance, collaborating, Community, distraction issues, Family, impediments, Inner Struggles, Matters of Faith, Personal Values, Service Activities, Spiritual, Striving

April 20,2021- Today was essentially a good day-for my own self-control, in accepting the reality of a friendship’s nature. It was a good day for widening the scope of justice in our struggling nation. It was a good day for the Baha’i community, as we observed the First Day of Ridvan, the twelve-day period that celebrates Baha’u’llah’s declaration of His mission.

It was also a challenging day, in which someone on the edges of my circle told me, very bluntly, that he regarded himself and his children as my personal responsibility. To some extent, I have my own efforts to help him contact aid agencies to blame. I also recognize that he is an orphan, and as such cannot help but latch onto anyone who shows him kindness-demanding more and more, until the cord ends up being cut. I am playing out my endgame here, with a GoFundMe campaign and a continuing effort to match him with financial entities that are far better equipped to help, than is any lone individual.

I have waited a long time to be the ‘captain of my soul”. My actions will remain rooted in service to humanity-but NOT to anyone who barges into my space and expects fealty. I am involved in a far more global long game. Perhaps this is just another case of my holding someone, who wants to get close to me, at arm’s length-as another such individual told me, just before I blocked and deleted her from my life, nearly three years ago. More likely, I am figuring out how to handle someone who MAY be a grifter (most people who hound others for money ARE grifters). More likely, I am standing up and saying that my primary duty is to the Lord God; that my secondary duty is to my (biological) family and not to any interloper, no matter how many years he/she has been seeking my help.

As I said, today was a mixed bag-and this month, or next, may well end with some very emotional volleys being made.

Are You Aboard?

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Posted by on in Community, Poetry, Striving

April 2, 2018, Prescott-

We are entering a Spring,

when our institutions

seem ready to let us down,

big time.

Are you aboard the train

of friendship?

Are you riding in the car

of community?

We, the people

stand a chance

of surviving anything

the powers that be

throw at us,

if we ride together,

if we stand together.

Are you aboard?

A Thing Called Love — Mental Stimulation

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Posted by on in Inner Struggles, Personal Values, Social, Striving

“Love is friendship that has caught fire. It is quiet understanding, mutual confidence, sharing and forgiving. It is loyalty through good and bad times. It settles for less than perfection and makes allowances for human weaknesses.”- Ann Landers Love is something that everyone experience at least once in their life. It is a feeling that […]

via A Thing Called Love — Mental Stimulation

ME:  This is a repost.  I see a lot of people tossing around the greeting “my  love”, and not meaning it in the least.  I take my friendships and feelings towards others, very seriously, very deeply.  Think about this, people.  Who are you helping, or hurting?

It Wasn’t the Women’s Fault

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Posted by on in Social

“There’s a killer on the road.  His brain is squirming like a toad.”- Ray Manzarek, “Riders On The Storm”

I love women; always have.  Even when they were girls, I thought they were beautiful.  My Mother was my first best friend, and I tried to be hers.  My relationships with girls and women ever since have been friendships first, and, in about five or six cases, they were more than that.  The friendship, then and now, is the, most important element.  It is what held my marriage together, even when I was making a mess of my life, in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, and it was what gave Penny some semblance of quality of life, in her declining years, later in that merciless decade and in the first fourteen months of this one.

I’ve had friends of both genders, and of all ages, before and since.  Beautiful women are among my best friends now.  There is no romance, to cloud the vision, and when a few of my women friends have started seriously dating, I am among the first to cheer them on. It’s a happiness thing, a means of some fulfillment.  More important to me are their dreams, their goals.  Don’t get me wrong.  If someone special comes into my life again, it’ll be just fine.  This is not a priority right now; that’s all.

It was therefore with profound shock that I read and viewed news reports of the carnage in the Isla Vista area of Santa Barbara, on Saturday.  The deranged assailant/killer blamed rejection by women- in a pseudonarcissistic rant, which fooled no one. Santa Barbara was, and is, one of my favourite places in California.  I was last there in 1997, but keep abreast of  more seemly events there, through an online friend who has ties to the area.  It is, like many places in our modern society, a fast-paced and sometimes anonymous community.  When making connections, one must be patient with those around you.

I am somewhat of an outlier, myself.  I do not blame anyone else for that.  I live comfortably, I make friends more easily than I used to.  In my youth, I did not have women throwing themselves at me.  I was considered “an individual” by those of the elite who were thoughtful.  I was seen as a bit weird, by the rest.  That was never something for which I cast blame on others.  We all rail at our plights, now and then, and I did, just before meeting Penny.  Figuring that it was the way I was going about meeting people that was the problem, helped me right my social sailboat.

So, buying expensive clothing and driving a BMW didn’t work for Elliot Rodger.  Is anyone surprised by this?  If anything, it confirms what one of my beautiful friends from the early 1970’s had to say- “No personality, no date.”- Lisa was gorgeous, but never shallow.  Apparently, neither were the three young victims in Isla Vista.  My condolences to the families of the dead.  My entreaties to the Elliots who are still out there:  It is not the woman’s fault if she doesn’t find you attractive.  Each of us has a personality, and the tools for determining whether chemistry exists between us and others.  No personality match, no relationship.