May 8, 2014 We now return to our regularly scheduled blog-gram.

After yesterday's quasi-rant, I feel I've set the record straight and have had some wonderful discussions as a result.  I am no longer alone in having had my eyes opened, and in seeing that, as is probably usual, there is more to the latest political/emotional hot ticket than meets the eye. 

Awareness of man's continuing inhumanity to man (and woman), and the fact that no nation is either perfect or immune from this inhumanity is the first step to making it better.  But, let me add a cautionary note.  Fighting it is not the answer.  Fighting involves putting energy into something and when you put energy into it, it grows.  So while I will continue to educate myself, I will not fight the problem but will, instead, endeavor to find a way to offer love and kind thoughts, silently, to those who perpetrate and either condone or turn a blind eye to such behavior.  They will receive neither my attention nor my energy. 

I am again reminded of the story which I'm only paraphrasing here:  A young boy was speaking to his grandfather who told him:  "you have two wolves living inside of you.  One is good and one is evil."  The young boy asked his grandfather:  "Which one wins?"  The grandfather replied "The one you feed."

The same is true of love and hate, peace and war, or any other set of opposites you might come up with.  Everything is energy.  If you add more energy to something, it will become larger.  It's simple science.

In years past, I, too, was guilty of feeding the Drama Machine.  Though I still fall back into old ways on occasion, more often than not, my response to drama and to those who propagate it is to just walk away, leaving little love tendrils trailing behind me.  Admittedly, part of my solution involves only interacting with other humans in places and situations which feed my joy.  Aside from errands, I only interact with other humans when I'm dancing or doing some other social activity.  On occasion, I'll interact with others at the gym, but for the most part, I go there to get my workouts in, and typically block out their noises with my earbuds and Pandora, and focus on performing the exercises as close to correctly as possible.  I am not a "gym rat".  The gym isn't my social outlet.  It's a necessary activity for my health.  Dancing, hiking, catching a movie, sharing a meal...those are activities I consider to be social.  But before anyone takes offense, I don't see anything wrong with the gym being a social outlet, simply that it isn't right for me.

Funny, I was talking to a friend tonight about how we'd both left the people who thrive on drama behind, and spend our time with those who don't need the drama to make their world interesting.  It's such a relief to be able to converse or dance with friends and not worry about jealous girlfriends or wives, because those who are part of a couple have each other's complete trust, and those of us who are single have an abiding respect for the relationships of others.  Shortly thereafter, one of the gentlemen who dances at the club regularly showed up and proceeded to tell us that he was with a woman who came dancing because she wanted to make her boyfriend jealous.  He introduced us to his date for the evening, and after she excused herself to go to the bathroom, I looked at my friend and said "weren't we just talking about people who need to create drama?"  Believe me, we both got a good laugh out of that one!!!

By the end of the evening, in spite of being rather distracted and spacey, I had gotten plenty of dancing in, a lot of chatting and socializing, tentative plans to hike on Sunday and a full table for Saturday.  It seems my concern about sitting alone now that Heather is down south was completely unfounded.  I've had at least one person sharing my table every night, and sometimes, we've even had to pull over an extra chair!  I truly believe that this forced separation was exactly what Heather and I needed.  She's making new friends and engaging in a variety of activities and I'm getting closer to some of the people I've known for awhile, and starting to do exactly what I was wishing for:  getting together with people outside of dancing to do different things!  Funny how that works!

My gratitudes tonight are:
1. I am grateful for a circle of friends who doesn't need to create drama to have a good time.
2. I am grateful for difficult situations which turn out to expand our journey.
3. I am grateful for having learned to feed my joy, my love, my positivity, my Good, and allow evil, hate, drama and such to starve to death.
4. I am grateful for my furry companions who keep me from feeling lonely in the somewhat solitary life I've chosen.
5. I am grateful for new days, new challenges and new successes.

Love and light.