These Thoughts on Those Thoughts

I've had an interesting thing happen just today ~ I looked at the blogs of two people I know personally but didn't know they blogged. Only they aren't just chatty, here's what's up in my life, pithy observation and witty insight blogs. These two blogs present themselves as...if not experts, definitely respectable sources of solid information.

So, I'm reading these two blogs and I'm thinking this is good information when it hits me: neither of these women actually and for real live like this. They want to live like this. They strive to live like this. But I know both of them IRL and truth is they don't live like this. They simply know the words and what we're all supposed to say and they happen to put the words together in a really compelling, convincing way. But bottom line is they are giving advice ~ and presenting it as a relatively easy thing to do ~ when I know for a fact that, at best, they struggle with it; at worst, by their own admission, away from public eyes, they fail.

I remember once I listened to Friend A (not-so) mockingly scold Friend B for Friend B's parenting choices. Only Friend A made the exact same choices with her own kids for the exact same reasons. Because we know what we're supposed to say and what we're supposed to do. And it's oh so damn easy to tell other people how easy it is to do. Yet somehow, our excuses are actually real reasons when everyone else's are, well, excuses.

There's a story about Ghandi and, while I don't know for certain it's true, I like to think it is. One day a woman came to him and explained she had been trying to get her son to stop eating sugar and he wouldn't listen to her. Please, please would Ghandi tell her son to stop eating sugar. Surely, her son would listen to Ghandi. Although she had brought her son with her, Ghandi told her to bring her son back in a month. So she did. A month later, she returned and brought her son up to Ghandi who looked at the boy and told him not to eat sugar, then sent him on his way. (I like to envision a pat on the head and a smile at this point, but that's just me.) A little confused and irritated that she'd had to make the trek twice, the mother asked Ghandi why he hadn't been willing to say those few words to her son a month ago. To which Ghandi replied "A month ago, I hadn't stopped eating sugar."

The truth is no one has The Truth. No one lives it perfectly every single day. Most of us are winging it, just trying to do the best we can in any given moment. And you know what? I'm okay with that.

Those are Pobble Thoughts. That and a buck fifty will get you coffee.