How a handful of bloggers have restored my faith in humanity and may do the same for you.

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As a small girl, I was known as the sensitive one in the family, as my Ma proclaimed, “Your bladder’s near your eye.” It seems the older I get, the more I think I’m just too sensitive for this world. I guess some would call me a snowflake, though I never understood that dig…I mean snowflakes are beautiful, unique, no two the same. What’s so bad about that?

It seems like cruelty is so common place these days. I know there is the theory that we are so much more connected via the internet than ever before, nothing has changed….perhaps. I can tell you this. When I was growing up in the 60’s and 70’s, even though there was a war going on, political strife, protests in the streets, assassinations…..I could still get on a bus on Wisconsin Avenue to head downtown and have an African American bus driver say to me, a little white girl, “Heh, aren’t you Mrs. Carroll’s Granddaughter? Haven’t seen her in a while….how’s she doing?”

That wasn’t a small town, that was the Nation’s Capitol people. While Grandma was a bit of a busy body who sat on her front porch daily, keeping watch over Beecher Street with the vigilance of a hawk, she was always someone whose behavior was predictable. She ate at certain times, mostly the same handful of recipes in rapid rotation. She believed in wearing “undie shirts,” under your clothes, or you’ll catch a cold. She scrubbed her tub out after each use. Cleaned the house everyday. Rinsed her mouth with unflavored Listerine. Had all sorts of home remedies to cure just about anything that ailed you…mustard plasters for colds, hot oil for ear aches, enemas for just about everything. Her words still ring in my head: “Raise crows, they pick out your eyes. It wouldn’t be medicine if it tasted good (as I sat on a kitchen stool, while she held my nose until I opened my mouth and she shoved a big spoon of nasty down my throat.)” Then, there was, “That’s a lazy man’s load,” she’d holler at us, if we tried to carry too many grocery bags in at once. Then, there is the infamous, “That fella’s crazier then a three dollar bill,” and “No point in doing the job, if you ain’t gonna do it right the first time”….among other pearls.

That’s what I miss. Not that you have to like everyone the same, or that you agree with their politics, just that certain degree of predictability about the world, a certain degree of civility that held our worse inclinations at bay. I miss those old adages, hearing them, a foreshadowing of danger, a roadmap on the journey of life to keep your offspring outta trouble. It seems like today is just one crap shoot after another, people doing unpredictable things, not caring about the consequences, or effects upon their fellow humans.

What I just can’t get over (and maybe that’s a good thing) is the Capitol insurrection. It was a tipping point for me. As a native Washingtonian, watching it from Maui, I just was in total shock over it. It seemed like a Zombie apocalypse or something. It offended me on so many levels: as a Washingtonian; as the Granddaughter of a DC police officer; as the Great Granddaughter of the first President of the Republic of Cuba (a man who gave up multi-generational wealth/prestige to work in the pro-Democracy movement in Cuba, went to jail in Spain for his revolutionary activities and spent almost a lifetime in exile, angling for the island’s freedom from Spain); as an American; and, as a citizen of the world, a world where so many do not have the right to Vote, do not live in a Democratic Society, with the rights and liberties we enjoy and don’t appreciate it. I don’t know, after like the second or third news report this week, of another passenger throwing a fit on an airplane and having to be hogtied and dragged off it…..I just had to find something here in the blogosphere that might bring me back from the veritable edge. And so….

Here are some blogs and bloggers that have restored my faith in humanity.

1. Mary Smith’s Place: This is a Cancer Diary, among other things. As a cancer survivor myself, I know what a profound sense of loss cancer can create, whether it is loss of a life without thinking about your mortality everyday, or loss body parts, loss of comfort in your own body, among other things. She wrote about the loss of an earring she loved, so poignantly and the efforts her fellow human beings made to grant her their time, effort, creativity to bring her earring back to her. https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/77123981/posts/3292631020
2. The Kindness Blog: Read anything on this blog and it’ll make you believe in humanity, or teach you what real kindness is. Read the post called, “What is True Kindness.”-https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/50588095/posts/524538
3. The Positive Side of the Coin: The author writes – “Human beings are considered the smartest species on planet earth, then why is it that our children take the longest to become independent? “This blogger has guest authors too it seems and I really like a post called “The Importance of Raising a Responsible Child.” Something about it reminded me of my Grandmother, how she imparted to us life lessons, to not make excuses and ways to behave that helped us to succeed in the world. https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/112581209/posts/3331211877
4. Poetry for Healing: I’m an old English major from way back. A reader. A Collector of books. And it’s been sooooo many years since I wrote anything resembling poetry. I’m so amazed that poetry is still a thing (a thing that was once so much a part of my daily life)….yes, for those of you who think poetry is dead, that blogging is dead, um, no, it is not. Check out anything on this blog (https://poetryforhealing.com) and realize that poetry can heal and it is still a great balm to whatever ails you. The author writes: “This site is for those searching for some medicine for the heart and soul.  I share my thoughts and poems in the hope you will find some comfort knowing that you are not alone in your pain and perhaps you too will be inspired to write out your thoughts and begin to heal.” – Christine Bolton.
5. And finally, there is Boundless Blessings (https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/51776057/posts/3351773416). This is a blog about “Spirituality and Beautiful Musings”. Now why didn’t I think of that?! What an amazing idea. In it, I was reminded of and re-read the poem that I needed to read today, the poem “Anyway”, that hangs in Mother Theresa’s Children’s Home in Calcutta. It goes like this:

Anyway

–People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered; ‘FORGIVE THEM’ anyway.

–If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; ‘BE KIND’ anyway.

–If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; ‘SUCCEED‘ anyway.

–If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; ‘BE HONEST & FRANK’ anyway.

–What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; ‘BUILD’ anyway.

–If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; ‘BE HAPPY’ anyway.

–The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; ‘DO GOOD’ anyway.

–Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; ‘GIVE THE WORLD THE BEST YOU HAVE’ anyway.

–You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God; ‘IT WAS NEVER BETWEEN YOU AND THEM’ anyway.

Let us all not be worried or fearful of what is happening right now in our World but move forward with perseverance, faith and gratefulness that anyways, ALL THIS SHALL SOON PASS and we will all live a happy and joyful life once again on this beautiful Planet of ours.

Spread the love people. This is Mrs. Sassy Pants, writing to you from an island in the middle of nowhere, in search of a Nordstrom’s and a decent cup of coffee, dreaming of a life beyond these pandemic days.

Mucho amor,

XOXO

Mrs. Sassy Pants