One of the many peeves I have and maybe the biggest... folks who bitch about something but then do nothing to remedy it.
I've mentioned that before when talking about my friends, 30 & 40... unhappy and/or unsatisfying relationships but unending participation on their parts in the relationship with zero effort to change anything.
I can't wrap my brain around it, really... but here are some of my favorites:
I have a friend. Very young. Beautiful. Smart! 2 small kids. GED. No further schooling. No money coming in. Nothing of her own of value beyond the kids. No pot to piss in, no window to throw it out of. Complains ad nauseum about her lot in life. I've steered her in the direction of vocational training she could complete in a relatively short amount of time and quickly improve her income potential, I've told her about the financial aid she'd undoubtedly qualify for, I've advised her on Valley Metro bus schedules for transportation, I've even offered to babysit.
One short-lived school effort until the previously easy babysitting scheduling got problematic for a short period and she quit school. Since then?
Nothing.
She's too tired with the kids. Or she doesn't have a ride. Or the sky is blue, or it's Wednesday, or... well... you get the idea... and the thing is, in her eyes, it's always something outside... always some extraneous cause that keeps her from making anything of her life. Not her lack of effort, not her lack of motivation or drive.
I have another friend, single for 4-5 years, dates men who're either jobless and looking for a ride or who're 5-10 years younger than she is (no, it's not 30) and who are Jersey Shore tanning bed, gym dwellling models with frat-boy maturity levels. Either way she has "fun" but says she wants to find that one "normal" guy who she'll have life similarities with and who will share her likes/dislikes, activities and dreams, etc.... a guy she can make a life with... but then she never changes the type of guy she accepts invitations from.
She recently broke the mold when she met a "normal guy", very nice, antithesis of the high shine guidos she's been out with... she talked about how smart he was, how well he treated her, how much fun they had when they were together, how he made it clear she was his priority by rearranging his personal plans whenever she told him she was available to go out, was generous with time and what money he had with her, complimentary of her, shared a good many of her interests and life experience, did small personal things, thoughtful things for her whenever they were together... and bottom line, they clicked so well everyone saw it and commented...
and she quit seeing him.
Whaaa? She liked him, saw "potential", but never really let him "in" or shared herself with him to any depth... evidently, he assumed she wasn't "in" to him and started to I guess "drift", so she decided it wasn't working and accepted a date with a "cook" at a local downtown "cafe" (bar) and found an excuse to drop him. Brilliant.
Another friend has a long term marriage, 4 high achieving kids, a great job, travels extensively, has a beautiful home, great friends and a wonderful husband.
She's miserable.
Hates her life because despite all the good in her world, her husband essentially ignores her. They are friendly when they interact but he otherwise doesn't seem to know she exists. It leaves her angry and hurt and depressed and insecure and almost every conversation we have ends up coming down to how unhappy she is and has been. She hasn't been to counseling because she doesn't feel like the problem is hers, they haven't been to joint counseling because she says the husband won't do it, but when I ask if she's insisted she says "I haven't asked because I know he won't." Wait... what?
In each case, there's dissatisfaction and unhappiness with life as it is, but no effort whatsoever to change it. And in each case, I think it's fear that prevents change and has each "subject" fooling themselves into thinking it's everything around them preventing improvement...
I did that for a long time. For probably the first 20 years of my adult life - I was depressed and everything else around me was crap. It wasn't my fault I didn't go to college, I got married and had kids, I couldn't. It wasn't my fault I was in a dead-end job. It was a decent paying job so I shouldn't complain. It wasn't my fault my life wasn't what I'd hoped or dreamed, I was too tired with the kids. Or I didn't have a ride. Or the sky was blue, or it was Wednesday, or... well... you get the idea...
It was fear.
The defining moment when life quit living me and I started living life with less fear? When I "found religion". Now I have believer and non-believer friends and loved ones and frankly, I fall in religion where I fall in politics... I'm a centrist. Uh huh, uh huh, I know, you'll say you can't be - you gotta be one or the other... but that's really not the point to this so I'm not even going to address it...
The point is this...
I had a friend invite me to her "movie church". And it fit. I rolled in dressed in jeans and a tee, Starbucks in hand, and proceeded to hear a message that wasn't preachy but was instead geared to EXACTLY what I had going on in life in a PRACTICAL way... I was greeted by folks who looked like me and were warm and inviting rather than judgmental over my dress or tongue stud or pregnant daughter... the messages, whether I was a believer or not, were applicable to today's world and my life... it just fit.
The first series I heard? What would Jesus say to... Rush Limbaugh, Paris Hilton, etc. And it wasn't what I expected... instead of uplifting conservative Limbaugh or lambasting bimbo Hilton... it was about the tolerance Limbaugh should show and the compassion Hilton should be given. Holy crap - wasn't ready for that! LOL
And the music hit me too... first "movie church" band song I heard? Depeche Mode's Personal Jesus. Great googly moogly, one of my all time favs... TOTALLY not what I was prepared to hear.
So I was hooked.
And over 6 years later, I'm still there. Maybe not every Sunday like I was for so long, but enough to still say "movie church" is my church. :)
And the point to all THAT...
I realized from the things I was hearing each Sunday... from the act of joining something that gave me practical messages on things actually happening in my life and therefore made me listen up... was that I had to get up and get out and make things happen 'cause it wasn't going to without me.
So I did. I told my daughter who was pregnant for the second time after I'd tried to support her and her first-born while she went to school that it was time for her to be a big girl and go live her big girl life; I told my husband - a truly great guy and one of the best friends I'd ever had to that point but someone I never should have married - it was time for us to go our separate ways (scary for me after 10 years together); I went to a temp agency and emailed every contact I could think of and landed a job I loved within a couple of weeks that led up a very good ladder; I went back to counseling to shore up my prior sessions so I didn't "back-slide"... and I kept hitting up "movie church".
Now before anyone worries this is a bible thumping sermon to get ye to church, it's not. It's simply to illustrate that I found something that galvanized me... I found something that spoke to me... and I got up and made changes to my life. The life I was so desperately unhappy with. The life that seemed to always have something bad going on interrupted by spurts of good.
And the point to all THAT...
It doesn't matter what moves you... the important thing is you look for and find that thing that galvanizes you - counseling, sports, church, etc. - and know that hard as it is, you HAVE to make the actual effort to find reasons to DO instead of excuses not to, to physically get up off your butt, make your list and start checking things off as you do them... and you have to know that it's very easy to be complacent and/or afraid but that when you are, it can literally come down to visualizing yourself taking that first little step, then another, and another, and another...
So in the weeks, months and now years since I first put one foot in front of the other, it's hard for me to understand when someone is dissatisfied or unhappy with something in their worlds, blame it on anything but themselves and won't do anything about it...
Because my universe since taking those beginner baby steps and learning to live, conversely always seems to have good going on, interrupted by only occasional spurts of bad. And that's amazing. :)
