Chapter Fourteen

That's Life!

People are weird. There are no ands, ifs, or buts about it. Think about it.

When you encounter people, are they always a delight? Do you agree with their opinions and attitudes? Is it generally a nice time, or is it a hit-and-miss affair?

Why is that?

Are we all such "oddballs," or is there a more complex reason?

This thing about being — being alive, being human, being an individual—why is it so complicated?

I care not for people, to the extreme. If I could, I would almost be a hermit. But I can not. To my consternation, I find that I require "others" in my life. Yet, I care not for "others" on the whole. What should I do?

You see, for various reasons that were valid to society at the time, I grew up a social outcast. My parents broke society's rules big time. And so, the consequences of my parents' choices and behaviour created a very psychotic person. My choices in life allowed me to hide for a long time. I never joined the "regular" side of life until I was thirty. Before that, it was the "shady side," and that was good enough, for I had no knowledge.

I have discovered that I grew up with no thought. There was no TV or radio, only the last few years. We were never invited to birthday parties or social events. Children were not allowed to play with us because of our parents. Children are cruel creatures, and their parents' behaviour gave them the license to be as they were. It is a wonder that other than my sisters, "others" were not hurt.

The thought occurs as one is taught. If there is no teaching, one just sprouts, like a weed or a bush. It bears seeds but is not much use to the plant. Because we are taught nothing, we must learn everything. We must assimilate and learn the simplest understandings that "others" take for granted.

Pick a subject related to human behaviour: mind, emotion, physical, money, food, desire, sex, power, fame, pleasure, control, or artistic. Then imagine having no information on any of them. You are thrown into the world to deal with the world. What should you do?

Survive.

One must survive life. Not everyone has a nice beginning.

However, if one lives long enough, the "right of choice" becomes theirs. It does not matter where you come from. It comes with age.

On the shady side, I met every kind of con, lazy person, and dumb dreamer. I refuse to be them, not because of right or wrong but because they all come to a bad end—not my desire. That is not to say that I did not pick up some of their habits. You become what you surround yourself with. We read, we study, and we try to figure out what this thing called life is supposed to be. I threw in the garbage the first book I picked up on philosophy. It spoke of being but in your perception. Well, being a black-and-white thinker, I want facts and guarantees. What in our brain could we trust? Certainly not our perceptions, which had no information behind them.

YOUR PERCEPTIONS ARE BORN FROM YOUR CONCEPTS ON THAT SUBJECT

Society is a fickle creature. She dangles a carrot of gold tied by a string on a stick. She does not tell anyone that the gold is a plate, nor is the carrot rotten. Society is not a stable creature. Society changes as the wind. It is a reflection of the values and morals of the time. People's passions and desires are not all the same, yet all will value food, shelter, and clothing. The size, shape, colour, and degree of possession will not be the same.

Some live for a fancy house, others for food, and some live to attain position. These things change not from one century to the next. It is the manner acceptable in which things are acquired and who has the right to them that changes. When "Lords & Ladies" rule, no one denies them the right to live as they did, be they good or bad. A serf would not think of himself as having the right to his own life. That was life for the times. The fact that the "Lord" ate well and was sheltered while the serfs starved and froze was not considered. It was "the order" of life and accepted. It is society.

No matter what Western country, no one would accept medieval law or society now. It would not work in today's world, which is why society's values change. Life changes as man makes his world. It is universally understood that humans need food, shelter, and clothes—the basics for functioning. It is how these are given, worked for, and paid for. It is what is available to live in and what food is available to eat. It is how you socialize and who you are allowed to socialize with. It is society.

Society is the times — peace time, war time, depression time, famine time—and how people handle it and the rules they make to function. Sometimes, the rules have been hard and rigid, as in Puritan living, and other times, they are almost non-existent—Ceaser,Nero, Hitler. In all of this, how do you learn to live around others and be part of the world?

Again, if one must learn everything because one is taught nothing, how does one live? There is always an acquisition, but if understanding is not of practical use in acquiring knowledge, then what is the point? Knowledge is only useful in the doing of the knowledge, not in the knowing of it. The speaking of words is easy; the doing of words takes character.

When age alone gives me the "right of being," what is the point of the years before? Is it wasted living? Killing time? What is the "right of being?"

I am born; I am given the right to breathe. The rest depends on what country you are born in, who your parents are, and what status of life they hold. No matter what country, I must grow, survive childhood and become an adult. Once I am an adult, I have the "right of being."

As an adult, I am expected to provide for myself, take care of myself, and be responsible for myself. Easier said than done.

Why?

It depends on how you were loved, taught, nurtured, and grown. If you were loved, that is good. The best there can be, but if you were not taught in that love, the love won't seem sufficient. It can be easy to be angry. It is easy to shout and scream for the demand of justice. It is easy to sit in despair, bemoaning all that has been stolen from one's soul. It is easier to say someone should pay, someone else should heal you, and someone else should free you. It can become such an overwhelming cry that loudness can drown the answer.

The "right of being" I am given by simply attaining age is the right to choose. No longer do I have parents telling me what to do, and the government no longer considers me a child. I am an adult. As an adult, I can choose to see life how I have been trained, or I can grab a sense of adventure and see what else is out there.

I can seek truth, I can determine my thinking, and I can determine my actions. As an adult, I will believe what I wish, think as I wish, and do as I wish. Yet, when I seek truth, whose? When I determine the direction my thinking shall take, the foundations of which my thoughts are made out of what? What data are my reasonings and understandings drawn from? To what or whom do I look for my moral reasonings? How do I attain my definitions?

This may seem like a sidetrack, but how large a vocabulary do you think Adam had? Species of animals have been shown to change and evolve. You and I were not there, yet the basic animal category has not changed: horses, oxen, deer, antelope, snakes, rabbits, cats, dogs, and many more.

ALL NAMED FOR THE SAME CLOTH (ANIMAL, PLANT), JUST A VARIETY OF DIFFERENCES.

Words evolve, and plant and animal life can evolve. Man does not need to evolve; he has a mind, and he adapts. That is not to say that physical bodies do not adapt to the environment, food, and the physical life required. However, when man is cold, he builds a fire and a shelter. When man wears clothes, he makes them for the time. The age at which people have been considered an adult varies with the time in history and the culture they belonged to. In all of that, people may not have been able to choose who they married, when they married. Most could not choose a "career". They worked at what was available for what pay was available. All these things they could not choose, what is left to choose?

When "I", personally, realize that; the set to my mind, what I do with my emotions, what I do with my physical, determines my sense of life, then I am coming into "my right of being."

Life will do what life will do.

People will do what people want to do;
People will be what people want to be;
I just need to learn to be and do as god would have me to be and do.

To do that, I must learn not only if there is a design, a blueprint; once I find the blueprint, I must learn how to read it and then build from its instructions. My choice.

It is easy to say that one stands for something. Go ahead, live it.

The only way to live it is to read the instruction book and then learn to follow it. History is full of people who said they believed in something. These beliefs have been abandoned, compromised, and made into a veneer.

Take Cain, who kills his brother Able. Do you think he did not try to farm a piece of land after he was doubly cursed? Have you ever met a farmer who does not plant despite unfavourable conditions? Do you realize that Cain started a business? Cain was doubly cursed for the ground to bring forth fruit. When He takes a wife, like every man, he looks for a way to support his family. So, he builds a city called Enoch and charges\trades for its comforts. Markets start, rather than travelling here and there. Cain found a way to go around (or so he thought) the curse of God and still eat. The point of business is to make money and do as you wish. When you realize where the attitude comes from, it makes sense why business contains greed and its followers.

The Bible does not speak of the amount of time that Cane wandered. Like men will do, Cain found a wife. That alone would make him want a stable life. Someone else is depending on you for food and shelter. Then comes babies. Cain builds Enoch and obtains food and shelter. Cain was a farmer, and Cain started a business. Cain said, "I have a wife and children to support. Who cares if God curses me, I will make a living anyway." Man is not stupid, and neither was Cain. There is a mind that works better than a computer.

Man created the computer, which uses a portion of his brain capacity. God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit made the world for man. Man has a brain capacity that animals do not have. Why? Because we were created for more. We were created to live eternally, in the image of God, to have fellowship(friendship and more) with God.

If I look at my life for all it is and believe that this life is it, I would not be happy. There is no "catch up," just learning; I will always strike people as "eccentric." It is only because I believe and Know that there is more. How do I Know? Simple, I died almost.

Winnipeg General Hospital has it recorded. I am seventeen, pregnant and losing the child. Family Services of Manitoba decided that I should have it aborted. I do not yet know that I am a bleeder. Not a hemophiliac, just a bleeder. It was the third bottle of blood, and I was in surgery. Whether it was the blood or someone made a mistake. I died. I loved dying. Not because I hate living; it was just an easy slipping away. And this incredible, beautiful silence. It was the gentle floating of a feather down to the ground. Only there was no ground. The next thing I know, I am looking down at my body as doctors and nurses do frantic things. Trust me to be weird even when dying. My first thought is. I have feet! I had a sense of my feet, my body, and all that makes me - me. I had a sense of "me".

Yes, there was incredible light behind me, but I was too stunned to turn and look at it. I am too busy watching my body. It looked to me like the nurse pinched me in my armpit. I got mad. As soon as I got mad, I was back with the living. I do not care what explanation anyone wants to give. I know what I saw, felt, and thought. I know that the body may die, yet I do not die!

With that understanding, did I return to pursue a good life and look for "God?" No, I ran the complete opposite. The "mad" that caused me to end up back in my body was the prime force in my life. I was mad at life, everyone and everything. I understood nothing of people, life, expectations. I did not understand the need for boundaries, rules, or discipline. I was a ship on the water trying to deal with being unable to control where I was going.

It took a lot of violence to burn the mad out of me. Enough to realize that if I wished not to be shot as a "rabid" dog, I had to learn to live. It was not a choice made with great thought. Cornered like a rat, I had no choice but to choose. There was no life where I was at. Life was in a foreign land. Dare I visit?

I have discovered that there are many “me's” out there. It is what the world makes. It is sin. Pick up a history book and speak from its contents as facts. People will accept the facts presented because they are from a history book recognized as a “book of history.” Pick up a Bible and speak from its contents. People will not accept the facts from this “book of history.” Why? One is from man, and one is from God. One contains a portion of facts from the writer's point of view. The Bible contains all the facts presented by the Creator's ability to create all the facts. The portion of facts in a history book will be regarded as fact, while the Bible will be called fantasy.

WARPED: TO CAUSE TO DEVIATE FROM THE ORIGINAL DESIGN

As a person who became very warped from life, fantasy is not a thing I can indulge in. When I came to the point of life where I had to admit that “I” had no life, soul, or understanding. What little of life I could manage was worth nothing because it was ten percent, and life still required the living of the ninety percent. With such a gap, no matter how much you study and try to learn, there is no “catch-up.” That leaves learning. We learn to learn for learning, and we learn to seek for seeking.

The first life lesson worth everything and anything is getting to know our Heavenly Father through His Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit.

BUT SEEK FOR (AIM AT AND STRIVE AFTER) FIRST OF ALL HIS KINGDOM, AND HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS [HIS WAY OF DOING AND BEING RIGHT], AND THEN ALL THESE THINGS TAKEN TOGETHER WILL BE GIVEN YOU BESIDES. SO DO NOT WORRY OR BE ANXIOUS ABOUT TOMORROW, FOR TOMORROW WILL HAVE WORRIES AND ANXIETIES OF ITS OWN. SUFFICIENT FOR EACH DAY IS ITS OWN TROUBLE. (Mathew 6:33,34) Amp.

FOR GOD SO GREATLY LOVED AND DEARLY PRIZED THE WORLD THAT HE [EVEN] GAVE UP HIS ONLY-BEGOTTEN (UNIQUE) SON, SO THAT WHOEVER BELIEVES IN (TRUSTS, CLINGS TO, RELIES ON) HIM SHALL NOT PERISH - COME TO DESTRUCTION, BE LOST BUT HAVE ETERNAL (EVERLASTING) LIFE. (John3:16)Amp.

YOU HAVE SAID, SEEK YOU MY FACE- INQUIRE FOR AND REQUIRE MY PRESENCE [AS YOUR VITAL NEED]. MY HEART SAYS TO YOU, YOUR FACE [YOUR PRESENCE], LORD, WILL I SEEK, INQUIRE FOR AND REQUIRE [OF NECESSITY AND ON THE AUTHORITY OF YOUR WORD. (Psalm 27:8) Amp.

THE LOT IS CAST INTO THE LAP, BUT THE DECISION IS WHOLLY OF THE LORD- EVEN THE EVENTS [THAT SEEM ACCIDENTAL]ARE REALLY ORDERED BY HIM. (Prov.16:33) Amp.

AND HE MADE FROM ONE [COMMON ORIGIN, ONE SOURCE, ONE BLOOD] ALL NATIONS OF MEN TO SETTLE ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH, HAVING DEFINITELY DETERMINED [THEIR] ALLOTTED PERIODS OF TIME AND THE FIXED BOUNDARIES OF THEIR HABITATION- THEIR SETTLEMENTS, LANDS AND ABODES; SO THAT THEY SHOULD SEEK GOD, IN THE HOPE THAT THEY MIGHT FEEL AFTER HIM AND FIND HIM, ALTHOUGH HE IS NOT FAR FROM EACH ONE OF US. FOR IN HIM WE LIVE AND MOVE AND HAVE OUR BEING; AS EVEN SOME OF YOUR [OWN] POETS HAVE SAID, FOR WE ARE ALSO HIS OFFSPRING. SINCE THEN WE ARE GOD'S OFFSPRING, WE OUGHT NOT TO SUPPOSE THAT DEITY-THE GODHEAD- IS LIKE GOLD OR SILVER OR STAN, [THAT IS THE NATURE OF] A REPRESENTATION BY HUMAN ART AND IMAGINATION, OR ANYTHING CONSTRUCTED OR INVENTED. SUCH [FORMER] AGES OF IGNORANCE GOD, IT IS TRUE, IGNORED AND ALLOWED TO PASS UNNOTICED; BUT NOW HE CHARGES ALL PEOPLE EVERYWHERE TO REPENT-[THAT IS] TO CHANGE THEIR MINDS FOR THE BETTER AND HEARTILY TO AMEND THEIR WAYS, WITH ABHORRENCE FOR THEIR PAST SINS. BECAUSE HE HAS FIXED A DAY WHEN HE WILL JUDGE THE WORLD RIGHTEOUSLY (JUSTLY) BY A MAN WHOM HE HAS DESTINED AND APPOINTED FOR THAT TASK, AND HE HAS MADE THIS CREDIBLE AND GIVEN CONVICTION AND ASSURANCE AND EVIDENCE TO EVERYONE BY RAISING HIM FROM THE DEAD. (Acts 17:26-31)Amp.

ALTHOUGH MY FATHER AND MY MOTHER HAVE FORSAKEN ME, YET THE LORD WILL TAKE ME UP [ADOPT ME AS HIS CHILD]. TEACH ME YOUR WAY, O LORD, AND LEAD ME IN A PLAN AND EVEN PATH BECAUSE OF MY ENEMIES- THOSE WHO LIE IN WAIT FOR ME. GIVE ME NOT UP TO THE WILL OF MY ADVERSARIES, FOR FALSE WITNESSES HAVE RISEN UP AGAINST ME; THEY BREATHE OUT CRUELTY AND VIOLENCE. [WHAT WOULD HAVE BECOME OF ME] HAD I NOT BELIEVED TO SEE THE LORD'S GOODNESS IN THE LAND OF THE LIVING! WAIT AND HOPE FOR AND EXPECT THE LORD, BE BRAVE AND OF GOOD COURAGE, AND LET YOUR HEART BE STOUT AND ENDURING. YES, WAIT AND HORE FOR AND EXPECT THE LORD. (Psalm 27:10-14) Amp.

THE SECRET [OF THE SWEET, SATISFYING COMPANIONSHIP] OF THE LORD HAVE THEY WHO FEAR-REVER AND WORSHIP HIM, AND HE WILL SHOW THEM HIS COVENANT AND REVEAL TO THEM ITS [DEEP, INNER] MEANING. (Psalm 25:14)Amp.

You see, if people allow themselves to realize that because of sin, life can be a nightmare to some, a hard time for others and impossible for others. There is not a human who will not have trouble. Yet, we whine, complain and say, “This should not be happening or have happened to me.” It is as if everyone else should or can have bad times, but we should be an exception. NO, everyone pays, everyone becomes warped in one way or another.

For people like me, with “mental deviations,” there is no hope but in learning to trust God, believe in His Son, and, by His grace, be able today to be okay, useful, purposeful, and nice. There is no fixing yesterday, no controlling tomorrow. We can only live today, do today, and be today. Plant and animal life “be” have as they were created to be. It is what they do. As God's creation, when we come to know our creator, we will learn to “be” have as we should. In that is life. Why? Simple.

THAT'S LIFE!!!!!!!