If you count a week as starting on any given day (not necessarily a Saturday or Sunday) and continuing for seven contiguous days, I can very easily say that this has been one of the worst weeks I’ve ever had in my life. The absolute worst is very easily the week when my mom unexpectedly died. After that was when I slipped on our carpeted stairs while holding my, then, 9-month-old daughter. I was perfectly fine but her leg was broken. And then there is this week.
It has been a week of people breaking trust with me in extreme ways – something which I find I don’t take very lightly. It turns out I am a person who values both integrity and common courtesy quite highly and I expect people with whom I associate to exhibit at least a little bit of these characteristics. So when they blatantly don’t, it feels like an extreme betrayal, a ‘slap in the face,’ a complete let-down. In other words, it makes me feel extremely hurt and monumentally sad.
Today I found myself dwelling on the people who have hurt me during this past week and I started to get really depressed. So I did what I always do when I’m feeling down; I went for a bike ride. Ben ALWAYS makes me feel better. Given the beautiful day and the physical exertion pumping adrenalin into my system, I stopped thinking about the people who are negative forces in my life and started to think about the people who are positive forces, instead. I realized that there are WAY more people in my life who love and support me than those who are thoughtless and self-serving.
For instance, I have a friend who knew that this past Wednesday would be an extremely difficult day for me and invited me, and some other folks who really care about me, to her house for burgers because she knew I would need support and friendship. Or my other friend who was planning to give me a very special T-shirt on his deck after a future bike ride but decided, instead, that I needed to feel loved now so he gave it to me on Thursday. All of these friends actively thought about me. I was important enough to them that they went out of their way to do something to show me they cared. One made me a burger, one gave me a T-shirt, a couple gave up there night to spend giving me support. My guess is all of these people would say that it ‘wasn’t much’ to do for a friend, however it meant EVERYTHING to me!!!
And there are others, too. Thankfully . . . many others! A friend who gave me a key to her house, her daughter who told me to call at ANY time if I need anything, a friend who made me dinner and invited one of my friends who she had never met before, another friend who has offered to color my hair because she believes it will make me feel better about myself while I’m down and out, and the list continues - a list too long to go into detail here.
On my ride I realized that I have some of the best friends on the planet - people who will love and support me no matter what. So, I can waste my time thinking about the insignificant few who don’t care about me to the point of being thoughtless and hurtful or I can think about the many people who love me, including those who gave me a burger and a T-shirt. An easy choice!!!!!
