Tag: Help!

Not For Us to Understand … But to Help

~ humoringthegoddess ~ 4 Comments

 

Yesterday I had a musical video montage on in the background while I did some busy work both on and off the computer. I found a playlist that contained Michael Jackson videos. I love his music — I love his movements. And it was perfect pick-me-up music.

As I worked I kept peeking at the videos, and found myself watching one called Smooth Criminal from his album Bad (1987).  As I watched his phenomenal performance, his singing and dancing and marvelous moves, I wondered …

What happened?

I have no idea what led up to that fateful day where Michael Jackson died of cardiac arrest due to too many drugs in his system.

None of us do.

But I always wonder when someone of great talent ends their own life …

Why?

Michael Jackson was a superstar. He was a teacher, influencer, father. He could be anything he wanted to be. Do anything he wanted to do. Help the poor, influence younger artists, play with his kids.

And yet he chose not to do so.

There are other celebrity deaths that dance in that same haunted circle.

Ernest Hemingway

Robin Williams

Prince

Whitney Houston

Philip Seymour Hoffman

Anthony Bourdain

The list goes on. Artists from all fields of art. Creative, real people who loved what they were doing. People who had, one way or another, contributed to the Artistic Culture of the World.

We don’t know what led them to take one too many pills. What led them to walk into the woods and shoot themselves. What led them to hang themselves.

I don’t mean to be a downer about all of this — but suicide is a downer.

Translate that to someone you know. Someone you’ve heard of. Young kids. Old people. Successful business people. Housewives. College kids. People commit suicide every day. Their pain, their trials, their confusion, become too much to handle. To understand. There seems to be no way out.

I don’t even pretend to understand what’s in the head of those who choose to leave this world. With most of us fighting to stay here one more day, to give up even one more hour than necessary is something I will never understand.

Perhaps it’s something that’s not meant to be understood by everyone.

But it’s meant to be addressed.

If you, or anyone you know, is inordinately depressed, lost, or in trouble, cross the personal boundaries and call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.  Or text HOME to 741741 for free.

If you yourself are feeling overwhelmed, help is just a phone call or text away.

Don’t waste your wonderful artistic talent. Don’t let go. 

Don’t leave the rest of us not understanding.

 

 

 

Knee-Jerk Response

~ humoringthegoddess ~ 10 Comments

Today was a step into the Twilight Zone. Between being spacey from pain meds for my dental work yesterday to trying to finish up cleaning a house in another city to driving to the DNV to find it closed two days in a row, I have been feeling quite disjointed.

Then today happened.

Walking into the police department (where the DNV was), a van was honking at me. I ignored it and went inside. Closed. Came back outside and the van was pulled into the parking lot across the street. I pulled my car out of the parking spot and noticed the man from that van heading towards me.

There was nobody else around. This middle-aged, balding man with a mask was walking towards my car. 

I, in my infinite wisdom, thought, “Oh no. Here comes a terrorist coming to kill me.”

“Did you honk at me?” I asked. Flight or fight. Flight or fight. I am too chicken to fight, too self-conscious to drive away. The man came up to my car. My window was wide open (I have no A/C in this car.)

“Can you help me please? I cannot find this place,” he said in a heavy foreign accent. More terrorist feed, like tempting a kid with candy before snatching them up and disappearing. 

I put my car into park. He held out his phone to me. On it was a picture of a business card of a financial

something-or-other. The address was one I wasn’t familiar with. I should have said sorry, no, and took off.

But instead I said, “I’m from a different town. But let me check my GPS on my phone and see where this is.” So I did just that. 

Turns out he was just on the wrong side of Main Street. “It’s over next to the library,” I offered. 

“You know where that is?” he asked. I nodded. “Then will you take me there? Please?”

So now what do I do? What do you think I did?

“Sure,” I said.

This man thanked me and blessed me and blessed my family. He wished me long life and blessings. He followed my car down the street, across Main Street, and, turning in from of the library, I pulled over, pointing him to the building across the street. He thanked me and blessed me and blessed my family again. I blessed him too.

And I felt like such a heel.

I hate that knee-jerk reaction when someone different than you talks/looks/approaches you. It’s a generational thing, to be sure. From our parents to us, racial discrimination and judgment is real. We don’t necessarily feel that prejudice, but somewhere in our past we’ve been exposed to it and our automatic flight or fight instinct turns on. And the news and social media and events of the past few days hasn’t helped.

I was ashamed I was afraid of this man. Yes, people do get murdered or attacked in small towns everywhere. But the actual percentage of it being you is so small that the odds of someone attacking you in particular are practically nill. 

And it’s more important to help than to run. At least it is to me. I can’t be afraid of the whole world my whole life. What will be is what will be. 

I am glad I helped the man find his building. I am glad he blessed me and my family. I blessed him and his family, too.

I wish the rest of the world could learn a lesson from this.

But for the Grace of God (Go I)

~ humoringthegoddess ~ 13 Comments

This has been an emotionally charged and confusing time in my life, triggering memories of other past situations that I can do little about.

The trigger this past week has been Hurricane Harvey and the devastation it wreaked upon an unsuspecting public. Deaths, destruction, desolation. Every day it’s another heartbreaking story.

But like so many others, I am settled safely in the Midwest, far from the water and the grief. And that makes me feel like a slacker. I have sent money to help the victims, but I am employed full-time and have family and financial responsibilities, so I can’t go and help those in need. And even if I did go down to Houston, I am in no shape physically to help out.

This feeling of helplessness is the same feeling I got when Katrina hit. Or the Twin Towers. Massive devastation thousands of miles away from me. It’s almost surrealistic, because in all cases I have not known one person who was affected by these tragedies. I feel like I’m a cheater — reading the stories of the victims and the survivors, then turning around and making a grilled cheese sandwich like it’s nothing special. It is a shameful feeling.

Do you ever feel like you’re reading a fiction novel instead of really grasping the truth?

Yet around me are situations that can (and have) taken turns for the worse. Not only my cancer (which has not returned, thank goodness), but cancer in friends, triple bypass surgery, arthritis throughout one’s body, mothers and fathers and wives and husbands passing away, ill health and bankruptcy and all kinds of situations that hurt the heart as well as the body. Are these any more important than what is going on in Houston?

Are we any less of a feeling, emoting human being if we keep on working on our side of the window?

On the other end of the scale is the decadence of the wealthy. A world I cannot even imagine. Beyonce once spent $100,000 on a Balanciaga bra and leggings and $4 million for a Bugatti Veyron Grand Sports Car. The Beckams spent $240,000 on a nursery for their son, while Elton John bought the apartment next door for  $2 million so his son could have a place to play in.

People are starving. People are dying. People’s homes have been washed away. Their children will have nightmares the rest of their lives. Yet there is a section of society that can buy a teacup sized Pomeranian for $10,000 (Paris Hilton) or a $250,000 bottle of champagne (JayZ) or a $2 million dollar bath tub (Mike Tyson).

What is wrong with the world?

I know I know — kings and queens and popes and oil monguls have been spending buko bucks for centuries while the poor ate potatoes and worse. There has never been a balance in the world’s economy. It’s just the nature of human beings.

I don’t know why I feel like I’m ignoring the woes of the world.

We are all caught in the middle, lost somewhere between tragedy and comedy. The only thing we can do is acknowledge where we are, what we have done, and be prepared to handle the best of times and the worst of times.