Be better than you ever have to be.

What if I told you that the problem was 100% you?

Land mine marker, side of the road driving in Ukraine.

Could you accept it? Or swallow it?

What about start to process and digest it?

How capable are you of rising above and introspection?

Deworming puppies in Ukraine

It's called adulting. You will learn it at some point. Or, die bitter still stuck on the silly, petty, bullshit that takes up the first 40 years of most peoples lives. Move on, chin up, be kind, let it go. It's really never worth the effort. People either love you for who you are, accept you for what you haven't yet mastered, and wish you well regardless of the differences, or, they just don't. How is that your problem? Why does it bother you? Or, matter, at all?

Maybe it is all you? Maybe it is all your responsibility to improve your own life? Maybe, even, just maybe you have the power to improve someone else's along the way too? Maybe you just need to forgive yourself for not being perfect, try to grow kinder, and wish others luck in doing the same? Maybe it's all about perspective, independent self assurance, and living the example that makes the world a better place to be in?

Start there. Be better than you ever have to be. Kinder than you ever imagined anyone could be. And just be happy with that.

The note left with two bunnies abandoned at the clinic this week.
There are always people struggling more than you can see on the outside.

oh,, and go hug your cat.

It is impossible for me to come back from a war where everyone is afraid, suffering and unsure of what tomorrow holds, and see the staff at the clinic fighting, crying, and despairing over clean up duties. I know I am supposed to empathize, talk it all out, and find a calm peaceful resolve to the petty ridiculous juvenile puling,,, but I can't. I just can't. I can't lower my worries to include the bullying being tolerated by empowered, privileged white women who are apparently so immature it is important enough to cry over. 

Maybe I will pay for it down the road? This inability to see problems that manifest out of air from perceptions that aren't worthy of the time it takes to address it? But, then again, it was war. Maybe they all need to set foot on Ukrainian soil to remember what life might look like if you weren't so caught up in the mopping injustices of closing time?

Found in Ukraine. Broken back, poor use of her back legs, and afraid.
After two days of calm, gentle support she melted. She is the sweetest, most grateful girl. 
She is one we could save. 

... I guess the parting thought is that life is full of so many challenges. Think outside of yourself. Remember how lucky you are and how little anyone else's opinion matters.

For more on Ukraine please see my previous blogs.

P.S. I find it implausible that anyone thinks this blog is specific to them.. it is not. It is as much an internal dialogue with myself,, as it is an external discussion with the way I know see things differently. I am not the same person I was before going to Ukraine. I will never be the same. I left grateful for all we have here, all of the incredible wealth, freedoms, and access to,, well, anything here, but I came back not more grateful, but instead less tolerant. Less tolerant to other people's real problems and my ability to empathize with them. I just can't see the little problems as big problems. Isn't life all about perceptions? And isn't the answer to hardship empathy? Why is it then that I don't want them back?