Double Standards Round 2

Did I post that blog title before? I feel like I did. Regardless, something needs to be said here. Lately, I've been getting more and more annoyed which in return causes me to get more negative. I hate that I'm being influenced like that. I want to stay positive. But here's the thing...

By no means is this all inclusive ie. don't take it as a direct attack but rather a topic to use in self-reflection. Thank you.

Healthy people. Very often I hear complaint after complaint. You hate your job. You wish you made more money. How bad the economy is. You can't afford this or that. The cost of groceries went up. How stupid so and so is. The new policy put into affect. You have to pay more for insurance. The weather is horrible. You wish you could live somewhere else. You are soooo stressed. You have a cold. You have to sit and wait at the doctor's office. So on and so forth... it never ends.

Healthy people are "allowed" to speak negatively about whatever they please, and they aren't typically judged for it. It's seen as normal. Any of the above that happens seems to put such a horrible dent in their life, hey why not complain about it. Complain about everything. Life sucks right? Talk behind people's backs. Totally acceptable. Why not?

I'm being sarcastic if you haven't noticed.

Now, the chronically ill. Complaint. What? What's that? Were allowed to complain? News to us. We rarely even talk about any of the things mentioned above. Why? Because either 1. we don't have the privilege to experience it such as having a job, getting to go outside to even see what the weather is like, or going to the grocery store. or 2. we realize those things that most people complain about are absolutely useless to complain about. We only have so much energy and to direct it to something so pointless is well, pointless.

But what we do sometimes complain about, or rather, let's use the word vent... maybe our health, how we feel trapped inside a house or apartment or worse- one bedroom living with parents as an adult because we can't do things ourselves in order to live alone, our lost relationships because people abandon the chronically ill, how we almost or could have died due to a surgery, procedure or complication, and maybe about how we are expected to be oh so positive in an oh so negative situation while those in such positive situations are allowed to chronically be negative.

Double standard.

Those with chronic illness have so much more reason to complain than those who are healthy, putting all other circumstances aside for the moment. Furthermore, like I said if you replace complain with vent, those with chronic illness NEED to and SHOULD vent. Bottling things up inside is not good for anyone. So when we vent, don't see it as us being negative. See it as we are going through one heck of a lot, chronically, non-stop, never-ending. Just like perhaps the life of the healthy is focused on worldly things that we don't give as much energy to... our life is focused on, well, our life, because that's pretty much all we are given at times.

So if you are healthy, next time you start ranting or complaining about this or that... making fun of someone... how nothingggg goes right for you... how your above average income isn't enough... how you feel sick for a couple days... how you don't agree with someone or something... any of it... Why don't you instead see it as a blessing? Look at what you have. Look at what you are able to do. Look at how you can focus your attention on these things that really don't matter because you aren't forced to focus your attention on something more serious, like your life on the line. And then do some self-reflection and figure out if complaining about such pointless things is really worth your breath. Is it worth your breath if you knew you only had such amount of breaths left? After all we all only have such amount of breaths left... and we don't know what that number is. All I know is if my last one is coming, I want to make sure what I did leading up to that wasn't complaining.

And so I digress in my "complaining" which rather is actually venting... Let us vent in the midst of being so positive about something so negative.

We become a product of our environment. Make your environment a positive one, especially if you have someone with chronic illness living with you. They need that optimistic attitude surrounding them. Let them vent. But take your complaining elsewhere, and then keep it there. And realize how oh so blessed you really are to have oh so much to complain about.

The end.