Street cleaning

Greetings all,

We had our first real taste of winter weather, which wouldn't have been bad if they had treated the roads.  Alas I was sliding along on my way in to the store last week.  We're all thawed out now, but another storm approaches in a day or so.  My horizons shrink so much during the winter, and now with our regional climate changing for icier snowier winters they have shrunk even more.  Hemmed in I tend to reach out to those I care for, sometimes too much.

I'm a busybody.  It comes with the territory of reading for people.  I've peaked in through the windows of people's lives for decades now.  That and the fact that I just naturally pick up emotions from people tends to make me interested in what's going on with them.  (If only so I can get a little peace myself).  So I sometimes take my level of concern about my circle of friends and love ones to extremes.  I've been known to meddle in the past or talk out of turn.  I am aware of this pattern.

I think I over focus on those around me as a distraction from what I've got going on.  I mean it is just so much easier to manage other people's problems.  Who has time to deal with your own stuff when you are tackling half a dozen life issues for your social circle.  The more over wrought I get about these problems the less attention I pay to my own affairs.  Sometimes I get so indifferent to my own stuff that it blows up in my face.  I have to come back to the basics and remember before I go worrying about other people's challenges I need to keep my side of the street clean. I've got to handle my own issues, when I don't at best I'm just running from my troubles, and at worst I'm projecting them onto others.  I'm looking at their lives through the warped lens of my own un shoveled bull shit.

It is a pattern I seem to fall into again and again, rinse and repeat.  These days I'd like to think I come to my senses before it becomes critical.  Now there is nothing wrong with taking your mind off your troubles by doing service.  You just have to make sure when you do service for others you aren't running away from your own shadow.  If you do it will cast a longer and longer one, until it finally catches you at the most inopportune time.  (Or opportune from its perspective).

So how about you?  Do you lose yourself in lives of others?  Are you the eternal counselor to those poor unfortunate souls in you social network?  Do you remember to take time to work through some of your own problems?  Well if not, don't worry fate shall conspire to create a situation you can't run from.  So perhaps you might just want to take a little time to keep your side of the street clean.

Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle