Get What You Deserve

I realize I posted the same National song twice in a row. Clearly that song represented September well for me. Promise to vary my selection more from here on out.

Thinking about the phrase lately, "you get what you deserve". I think that phrase is crap. I know a lot of wonderful people that have had horrible things happen to them and then some pretty negative people in my life that everything seems to go just swimmingly for. I mean, I know we all go through tough times. I know everyone has stuff happen but I don't think anybody ever deserves for bad things to happen, but in thinking about my life and all that I've done or had done to me, and I don't think I'd change any of it.

I am a firm believer in the fact that everything we go through makes us who we are. I've been lucky not to have hit up against anything too terrible so it's maybe easy to say there's nothing I would change. But I do think some of the hard stuff that has happened to me has truly made me a better person and more able to confront the world because I've had practice in getting back up and taking things head on.

This past year has been a year for me of slowly pulling myself off of the ground after being thrown by the horse (so to speak). I wouldn't want to just carelessly hop back on, I knew that I needed to assess what went wrong so as not to be thrown again. And swinging my leg back into that saddle has felt heavier and hard at times. But I've gotten back in. Getting ready for the ride.

In class today I told the story of Romeo and Juliet to 20 captive 8th graders. They've never been so quiet and attentive all year. They were confused by the suicide. They couldn't understand why they would do it. It was hard to explain that it was really a series of miscommunications and complicated situations and events that led up to that point. That it was nothing they really wanted.

But I'm with them. I've never quite understood suicide. I mean I can sympathize and understand that the world can be hard to deal with. But I think I don't understand suicidal thoughts because I love life and I always see potential for growth. I know that loving life means loving the bad along with the good, because it's all part of the same ride. It's never going to stay shitty forever. Not if you don't want it to. No one gets what they deserve. We just get what we get.