"Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority ... the Constitution was made to guard against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters." - Noah Webster


"There is no worse tyranny than forcing a man to pay for what he does not want just because you think it would be good for him."
-- Robert A. Heinlein

Friday, September 19, 2014

Drama

In a recent personal exchange, this concept came to me and I reproduce it here.

 
"All the world is a stage.  [yes, credit to Shakespeare]   All of life is drama.  There's no escaping it.  Question is what script are you going to choose?  What play do you want to be in?  What character are you?"
 
No doubt we've got people in our lives who protest to the high heavens that they don't want any drama in their lives.
 
I'll bet ten dollars against a donut that such people watch "Survivor" or "The Walking Dead" or any number of shows full of tense drama.  Which exposes the lie that they don't want drama.  People love drama. Billions and billions of dollars are freely given up by a populace that can't get enough drama.  What they really want is drama that they can turn on or shut off at a moment's notice. They want to experience drama vicariously through other people without the actual consequences that will remain after the programming hour is done.
 
Life is drama.  Stuff happens.  We can deal with it well or we can deal with it poorly.  When people talk about not wanting drama in their lives, it typically means they don't want to put up with the poor ways that other people react to stuff that happens. Or, they don't want to put up with the different ways that other people react to stuff that happens. In a nutshell, they don't want to deal with YOUR drama.
 
We each have enough of our own drama.  Another way to think of it is our own stress.  Every day is a new challenge with all kinds of stress.  We think of our struggles every day as our own stress, but we don't think of it as drama.  Your stress and the way you don't handle it well according to my judgment is your drama.  We each want others to cut us some slack because of all the difficulties we are dealing with, while at the same time we want others to take their drama someplace else and leave us the hell alone.
 
God, please help me to remember these words from day to day as I live through the drama, and remember that other people are going through some drama as well.

4 comments:

  1. We each want others to cut us some slack because of all the difficulties we are dealing with, while at the same time we want others to take their drama someplace else and leave us the hell alone.

    Ha! You nailed that one. Kinda takes a bit of the complacent luster off one's sparkling self-image. Not mine, of course.
    ------------------

    A son of Abraham sojourning in rural America.

    I spent 3 years wandering about rural and small-town America, mostly in the western states, living out of a tiny, fiberglass travel-trailer. Is that the kind of thing you're up to? Do you know what you're searching for?

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  2. I think I'm going to answer your questions in the form of a post.

    Moshe Ben-David

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  3. I think I'm going to answer your questions in the form of a post.

    Looking forward to it.

    Please excuse the unintended impertenence of my concluding question.

    As a devout Jew, I suspect you have less to go searching for than I did. And although I've only read a few pages of your blog, you seem to have more than enough self-awareness to make the "Do you know..." part inapplicable.

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  4. No apologies necessary. I guess it all comes down to a matter of how much information about myself I should reveal.
    I am not really devout towards Judaism, especially rabbinic Judaism. What I am devout towards is Yeshua and the Bible. I have more in common with Karaite Judaism. If you care to find some information on it, my two greatest mentors would be Michael Rood and Dr. Russ "Pappy" Houck.
    This makes me a very black sheep in the eyes of Anti-Christian Jews, Messianic Jews, and a lot of Christians. It's a very lonely choice.
    My hesitation for writing about more personal details has somewhat to do with my record with the government.

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Please don't make me disable comments because you couldn't maintain decorum and civil discourse. You can disagree all you want to, just don't get nasty.