Sugar, Cream, or Cyanide?

Good Morning My Confidants

What a lovely morning.

I'm so grateful to be sitting on my front porch sipping my coffee, one of my dolls standing on the end table next to me, I'm listening to the birds, and this is all absolutely why I don't like winter. Cannot do this in the winter. Especially not....ah..... dressed the way I am right now.

RBear has really been inspired of late to clean the attic. It is needed it. Bad. For a long time. And it's amazing how basically, there's a bunch of trash up there. I mean not garbage, but certainly an awful lot of stuff that has turned into garbage somehow. I really don't understand. Lots and lots of cardboard and boxes and so he's been hauling it downstairs with Noah's help, and the porch just got stacked with crap and it was just this tiny little path going up the steps in the end of the front door and I haven't been able to enjoy the porch for a while.

And so, what a treasured blessing to be able to be doing it this morning.

It has been one of my weird social media mornings. While a lot of people read the newspaper in the morning, I read Facebook. And I have bit by bit by bit been working on either unfriending, or blocking people who post stuff that I don't want to be reading in the morning.

As a matter of fact, I've even had to unfollow people who for some strange reason that I will never understand like to post pictures of their bloody wounds, fresh surgeries, and things like tarantulas. I mean I realize that there are people that are far less squeamish than I. I get that! But surely, they are socially aware that they are in the minority and that probably most people don't want to see blood the first thing they get up in the morning. Or at any time as a matter of fact.

I will never tell people that they should post or not post something. It's their Facebook page.

I may send them a little text, or a soft comment, explaining how the general public might be upset by their post, especially if it's something controversial. But I always am careful to say "I'm not telling you what you can and cannot post."

Basically, I have a lot of good friends on Facebook who warn me when I've posted something that maybe could get me in hot water. And so, I pass that along.

This morning is one of those days where I have seen some asinine sh*t, stuff that just boggled my mind, people are never expected to post that kind of thing. I've commented, without attacking. Check their Facebook pages and had two more people that I had to unfriend. Real MAGA stuff, you know?

And in that old ignorant excuse of, "Why can't we all just have our own opinions and still be friends?", well, it depends. If you're spouting off something ignorant and uninformed or ugly or racist or phobic, I'm going to call you on it. And then either unfriend you or block you.

Period.

Thankfully, and I'm so grateful, that for every post I did not want to see this morning, I saw five or ten that made me smile and laugh. I'm making my feed something that enriches me rather than brings me down.

I had a Facebook friend, someone that I really love in real life even though I only get to see him rarely, that I had to unfollow. I actually blocked him for a while. I don't mind political posts at all, as long as they're not ugly. I make them myself. I don't mind posts or someone wants to warn them the world about things that are going on that we need to see. I can do that. But when it's every single post they make all day long? Nope.

You are free to post that kind of stuff if you wish. Your heart tells you that that's what you need to do, do it. Please. The world needs Larry Kramers. We need Harvey Milks.

But I will tell you, I prefer the Jimmy Kimmels. The Stephen Colberts. They let us know about the sh*t that's going on in the world that we should know about, but they coach it in a way that we can laugh as well. A spoonful of laughter helps the medicine go down.

But don't you find that just one little thing in the morning can affect your entire day? Perhaps you stub your toe really bad, and that gets you to cursing, and then this domino effect begins, with a day filled with different kinds of toe stubs. You're running late and you get out to your car and find the tire is low and you know you can't drive all the way to work that way and so you're going to have to stop and take care of it. On your way there's a street blocked and you have to find a different way and that slows you down more. You get to work and your boss is in a bad mood and yelling at everyone. You been have to start dealing with either cranky coworkers or b*tchy customers.

And somewhere along the line we say, "What the hell happened? What is wrong with this day? Where did it all go wrong?" And you get home and you tell your spouse or your roommate or your pet what a crappy awful day it was and you hope tomorrow is better.

What went wrong? Where did it all go wrong?

The toe stub?

Nope

I will tell you right now what I believe, you can laugh it off, or you can soak it in.

In the world suffering happens. Toes get stubbed. Tires get low. Traffic is blocked. We get to work late. That happens

But our suffering is how we react when those things happen.

That toe stub?

Who the hell has not stubbed their toe?

So, do you scream and curse and throw something at the dog and wonder why God did that to you? Do you say to yourself, "Great! What a way to start my day!"?

Or, when the spots cleared away from in front of your eyes, and you're limping to the bathroom to make sure it's okay, do you laugh at yourself? Do you ask yourself how in the world did I do that? Did you say to somebody else, "Hey! Clumsy me did it again! I can trip over the yellow line and parking lot!"?

I truly, truly believe two things. One, by going in a negative direction we're going to feel negative. You cannot argue with that. If life starts to spiral down emotionally and we let ourselves get caught up in that little whirlpool, we are going to go down the drain.

But if we catch ourselves, we stop, we say to ourselves, "No! I refuse to go there. I'm not going to do it. No. N-O! No!" then we can step back from the whirlpool and not go down the drain.

Some days are far easier than others. But if we say it's something that we cannot do, then guess what? We can't do it.

Now there are things we know that we cannot do. I cannot walk a tightrope between two skyscrapers. I cannot pick up, nor do I ever intend to pick up a tarantula. Not going to happen.

But there are many many other things that I can do.

For a good two years I was under the deepest deepest depression. There were days that I barely crawled through. When I refuse to give up to entropy. I found SOMETHING to smile about. SOMETHING to make me laugh. A video on YouTube of cute bunnies. A heartwarming YouTube video from Hope for Paws where they rescue a poor animal and by the end the animal is bouncing around happily and snuggling with people and giving them kisses. Oh, that makes me feel better every single solitary time. Or I read Bizzaro comics by the artist Dan Piraro. I start laughing and then naturally, this is not witchy-woo-woo, I start to feel better. Even my toe starts to feel better.

Here is the second thing I believe.

We are made of energy. We learned that in elementary school. We look solid, but we are not what we appear to be. We are energy and there's tremendous amounts of space between our molecules. And as energy, we send out waves of energy into the world around us. I don't think any of that can be argued with.

Now I also learned that energy waves for some reason attract like energy waves. I also know that our energy is affected by our mood. I am not going to take an hour to Google all this to give you links, but I have learned all that.

Now here's the part that some people consider witchy-woo-woo.

I believe that we attract things to us that we think about and feel about. So if we are smiling and laughing and happy we are sending out energy vibrations that are on a higher level than energy vibrations we emit when we are down or hurting or depressed.

So, if it's true that our energy attracts like energy, then high energy is going to attract high energy, and low frequency energy is going to attract low frequency energy.

And if this energy is coming from people or things, then that is what we will draw to us.

That is the Law of Attraction in a nutshell.

And that's why I control my feed on Facebook. If I don't have to look at bloody gory wounds, then I won't think about bloody gory things. When I don't think about bloody gory things, I feel better. If I don't have to look at a creepy crawling tarantula, then I won't think about creepy crawling tarantulas (and apologies to anyone that this caused to think about tarantulas!). I'll feel better if I'm not thinking about that.

If I see posts of sweet little puppies, or political cartoons told in a humorous way that makes it easier to take in, or funny memes, or photos of people's beloved collections, or even their grandchildren (I'm not a baby kind of person), I will feel good. And that will start the domino effect of feeling good.

And I believe that thinking on good things will send out a vibration into the world, that will then attract more good things.

And oh, my goodness, if I think of things I'm grateful for, I will draw to me more things to be grateful for.

Wow, today's ramblings sure went on for a while, didn't they?

But that is what my "Good Morning My Confidants" posts are all about. I always include some kind of meme about coffee, and you can just read that and laugh and go on, or you can sit in your morning (or whenever) and read what I have to say. It's up to you. Often, in the morning, we don't want to read something rambling and long. That's cool!

As journalist Michael in the movie The Big Chill said, and I paraphrase, most people won't read anything longer than the average person can read during the average crap. if you read Facebook while you're taking your morning...chores, I understand that.

I write my morning posts for me. I generally write them before I watch anything on television. Especially the news. I write my morning posts to set up my own domino effect. So that hopefully, everything that follows is affected by the mood I have tried to set in myself.

This morning it is about ignoring ignorant misinformed people who spout ignorant misinformed information. This morning its about things that make me happy.

This morning the breeze is kicked up and it is making my wind chimes make music, including my brand-new wind chime but I got for my birthday from my friend Deb Jenkins. It is very big. The noise it makes is something much more akin to what you might hear in a Buddhist monastery. Very Zen.

It makes me happy. Sitting on my front porch with my coffee and a state that I shall not describe with my new Ted Lasso doll standing next to me, wondering just who he is in my OtherPeople world, makes me happy.

I'm sending out those vibrations. And I'm hoping that not only will I draw things to me that make me happy, but I'm hoping that those happy ripples will ripple over other people and maybe make them smile.

I'm sending my happy ripples to everyone reading this.

And everyone who's not.

Namasté,

BG "Gentle Ben" Thomas