Monday
“As society just becomes so filled with these conflicting feelings of ngggggh, that we’ve just gotten to the point where we’re the most aggressively inarticulate generation to come along, since, you know, a long time ago.” Some Boob
Maybe it’s just me, but it just seems as though you can’t rely on anything anyone says anymore. And what’s worse? Nobody cares. Oh, well. Let’s see, you e-mailed me an address that was incorrect so now I’m driving up and down a busy, six lane thoroughfare in the heat of the day at the height of lunch hour traffic, circling about looking for an address that does not exist. You said you were going to e-mail this information to me on Friday. Come Monday morning I have to call your office asking for the address. Now I have to call (again) to get the correct address. Now that’s twice I have to call to get information you said to me on Friday you were going to provide for me on Friday. Liar!
“Just be patient, you have the job,” he said. “We have to wait for the budget.” Six months later I have to demand to know whether there is an intent to staff the position or not while CFO and Ms Controller sit there staring at me like we gonna party like it’s 1954. Oh. Not? Liar!
“Oh, I won’t have the money until Thursday,” she demurred on Monday. Two months later I have to ask her for it and then to add insult to injury she makes an unwilling lender out of me a second time. Liar!
Why can’t people do what they say and say what they mean? Why can’t they seem to…
“Just let your word Yes mean Yes, your No, No…” Matt 5:37
The cumulative effect of all of this seemingly innocuous, funny ha-ha mendacity is that it slowly, insidiously, transforms the Hearer/Receiver of the lie into a victim. Victimization leads to frustration. Frustration leads to anger.
“Please don’t make me angry. You won’t like me when I’m angry.” Bill Bixby as Dr. David Banner | The Incredible Hulk
The caveat to that? The psychological and emotional energy it takes damping it all down and reigning it all in. You’re the victim, see? First, you have to do all the work. No one must ever know you’re angry, annoyed, disappointed, hurt or even a tad miffed. Second, remember, you are made of iron. Failing to understand how victimization works means– Poof! All of a sudden you’re not only a problem, you’re the one with the problem. You’re the difficult person, the malcontent, the complainer, the irritating source of all the friction. You don’t know how to “go with the flow.” You are INFLEXIBLE!
”How does it feel to be a problem?”*
I’ll bet’cha Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold know knew. Seung-Hui Cho. I bet he knew. Megan Meier. Umm… hmm. John Hinkley,Jr., Jeffrey Weise, Perry Smith, John Merlin Taylor, Joseph M. Harris, Aileen Wournos, Thomas McIlvane, Mark Richard Hilbun, Bruce William Clark, Travis Bickle, Jennifer San Marco, Mark David Chapman, Willie Loman.., just a few of the former members in the sad and tragic fratorities of the walking wounded and the living dead–“How does it feel to be a problem?”
When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You’re invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?**
Problem for them was they only knew one or two ways to articulate their pain. It didn’t involve a whole lot of talking, but the results were far reaching and devastating. Could one kind word have averted any or all of these disasters? One tiny apology? One small gesture of empathy? One olive branch extended, one promise kept? One lie not told?
You want a friend you- can rely on
One who will never fade away
And if you’re searching for an answer
Stick around. I say It’s coming up, it’s coming up
Its coming up like a flower
Its coming up. Yeah***
It’s neither fun nor funny to deliberately and maliciously make another human being feel like a victim. When someone physically assaults you, or steals your property, or you lose a limb as a result of medical incompetence or malpractice, the law’s the remedy for you. But when someone hurts, or assaults, or maims, or lacerates your feelings, who you gonna call? The police?
Society says you need to act like an adult, shake it off, grow up, be a man, turn the other cheek, give it to God. But when mean people and their lies interfere with your ability to sustain or even have a quality of life itself, it’s a tad harder to just shake it off. And it takes soo long, requires soo much energy. It’s soo exhausting.
That’s the wonderful, insidious, paradoxical beauty of the lie. At first glance the lie looks so innocuous, so inconsequential, so small. It’s nothing, no big deal. And yet the lie is responsible for all these people and all their murders and all their victims, and all our collective pain.
It’s easy for you to dismiss these people. After all, they’re invisible. They don’t exist. Not really. Why? ‘Cause you don’t know them. You sit in your living rooms feeling smug and above it all. You’re in the world, not of it. Everyone knows you’re better than they are. You have your brag-a-day blogs to prove it. “There but for the grace of God…” Right?
Look at them. What’s wrong with them? Why can’t they keep a job, get a man, pay their bills on time? Why are they always so serious? There’s just something about them, something not quite right, you say. Why don’t they just believe what we say when we say what we don’t mean just like everybody else? They just don’t get it. “…not all are of our sort.” 1John 2:19
Right. You just keep proving what we already know.
We all know sometimes life hates and troubles
Can make you wish you were born in another time and space
But you can bet your lifetimes that and twice it’s double
That God knew exactly where he wanted you to be placedSo make sure when you say you’re in it, but not of it+
You’re not helpin’ to make this earth
A place some might call hell
Change your words into truths
And then change that truth into love
And maybe our children’s grandchildren
And their great grandchildren will tell****
*W.E.B Du Bois | The Souls of Black Folk| see Sidebar Feed Your Head
**Like A Rolling Stone | Bob Dylan | 1965 | see Mz4Mz Playlist | see Page 3 What’s It All About
***Coming Up | Paul McCartney and Wings |1979 | see Mz4Mz Playlist
****As | Stevie Wonder | 1976 | see Mz4Mz Playlist
Note: Liar | Three Dog Night | 1970 | see Mz4Mz Playlist
+John 17:11, 14, 16
