What's in my suitcase?

Have I ever told you that I can’t stay mad? I can stay hurt, I can stay insulted, heck I can even stay with the opinion that someone is a damn fool but I can’t stay mad. I just can’t. I’ve tried but it’s impossible for me to stay mad.

Grossed out, impatient, upset, scared of, full of pity…those aren’t a problem. Outrage…yes for a perceived injustice or slight but I’m unable to hang on to the momentum for very long when it comes to a person. Mad? Oh don’t kid yourself, I can get there I just can’t stay there.

I can blow up so quick you’d swear you’d lit a match in a fireworks factory but I can’t hold on to it. It’s almost like once I speak it its gone. Once I take the emotion and put legs under it …it strolls off somewhere never to be seen or worse, it comes back all starry eyes and in love. Many, many times I have decided someone is a total waste of my time and that I won’t devote one more second putting up with their crap. Then later I find out something about them that forces me to like them again. I hate it when that happens…no, not really, I’m thankful.

I’m thankful that I can feel things or understand things in a totally separate part of my brain…heart..er, maybe my gut, who knows. But it’s true, I can be so mad and then my wheels start turning and I start thinking about why this thing was done, why it seemed important to them and why it seemed important to me. I can choose to express myself or remove myself knowing that in the final analysis the world will keep turning no matter what.

There are a small handful of people, very small, that I choose to not interact with. I choose to not let them influence me any more, or hurt me, or suck the life out of me but that doesn’t mean that I hate them. I don’t. I have tried to think whether or not I could say I hate anyone. I honestly don’t think so.

This has been interpreted by some as being wishy-washy or disloyal because I couldn’t make their enemy my enemy but it really isn’t that. It’s a choice to not hold on to venom. That’s what anger and hatred are you know, poison.

And I have mentioned before that even those I do not embrace have played their role in my life. They have been a part of my growth and education and I like who I have come to be so I owe them a debt also, right?

So with the passing of Patrick Swazye this week and all of the talk about his now famous line from the movie “Ghost” I count myself so blessed to have never been able to hang on to the anger, because if there’s a shred of truth in the line…that the love you have inside goes with you…then I am very happy to pay the extra baggage fee at the final terminal.

Peace and Love - Cara