Dad here; another Sunday morning at the Casa. The rest of the inmates are wandering around doing whatever the inmates do when they’re not annoying me, and Charlie’s feeling a little more “licky” than normal. This makes it difficult to poke digits into a smartphone, as Charlie licks are measured on the Lichter scale, as they can be downright seismic.
I’m sure that many of followers of this page have reached the point, maybe more than once where you have been happy and productive in a career for many years. Then a new manager comes in, a family business is ungulfed by a corporate merger, or some other similar gut clenching nonsense. Then, for some inexplicable reason, you go from hero to zero overnight. You keep telling yourself, “give it time; I can make them like me”, only to find job satisfaction replaced by anxiety and befuddlement; what am I doing wrong? I used to have value!
How did the years of faithful service and sacrifice suddenly vanish in a swirl of muddy water?
Or, instead of place of employment, the situation may involve a church, maybe a relationship, or even much larger than that, a seismic societal change such as the one where we currently find ourselves. One where we are constantly being told that we are somehow “less than” for holding true to the beliefs and actions of what, for better or worse, got us to where we are today.
There is an old saying, “dance with who brung ya”. Bur sometimes the music abruptly changes in tempo and style, and the transition can cause us to trip up on the dance floor; what’s up with all these new steps I’m suddenly being forced to learn, right out here in front of everyone?
Change is inevitable, and resisting change is futile, but change merely for the sake of change should never make one feel that the old paths are somehow less worthy. No matter where you are at on your particular path, you still have tremendous value; don’t stay where you are tolerated, go where you are appreciated.
But what if the place where you are being ostracized is the society that we all must inhabit together? The one that uses the propaganda of the media to constantly tell us that only what they continously feed us is what we should “be” and what we should believe? You are what you eat, and only you can push the plate away. The place where you can be appreciated is in your own soul; never let anyone, that snarky middle manager who’s just peeing on his or her side of the tree, that new pastor who’s pulpit is of the bully variety, or even the state sponsored media who learned their craft directly from the actions of the Nazis, dictate to you your own value in the universe. You mattered before, you still matter now, and you will continue mattering on down the road.
We be of one blood, ye and I.
