The Times, They Are a-Changin’

While I understand people encounter writer’s block, I often laugh it off, like I’m knocking on wood. It doesn’t affect me, I won’t give it power.

Every time I have thought of picking up the laptop to write, post traumatic brain injury (TBI): my wife’s, not mine, I shudder. The last three posts were related to it, and I can’t seem to get beyond that. It was traumatic, not just to her, but also to me. I struggle to take/make time for myself and get out of constant caregiving [hibernation] mode. The injury made me hypersensitive to her needs, and getting out of that mode is more difficult an adjustment that I would have believed possible. Maybe it’s just age and an empty-nest syndrome without ever having had kids.

I’ve also resisted believing things are better. I feel if I acknowledge how much better she is, and she’s practically all better, something will slide and my expectations will be let down, instead of constantly amazed like they are now. The migraines are almost non-existent at this point; they were almost constant for 3 years. I can’t even imagine a world where my head hurt that much for that long. She’s starting to be able to handle places with people: coffee shops, restaurants; this is a gradual re-introduction. She can’t drive yet.

Religious Intolerance

Respect is something I strive for in other people’s belief systems: if they’re different than my own or even within my own faith. I try to respect those of different faiths, as well as those who seem to have no faith, whether they be atheist or agnostic (it seems a growing number of people are).

Lately I’ve been bombarded by postings where people seem to degrade those who have faith in a religion or belief system. The underlying tone is people of faith are stupid (paraphrasing the inference). I have trouble with this. To me stupidity comes in degrading someone else’s beliefs, not from a person who believes something you don’t.

I understand there is a tremendous movement going on in backlash to the religious [often Christian] right (at least in the images being thrown at me). Maybe you find these belief systems oppressive to women, the poor, the lower classes. Maybe you think mankind has been fooled into belief systems through man-made power structures or in some way taking advantage of a human need to believe or belong to something. Maybe you believe in nothing but science.

Denigrating others however is not the way to live a life.

Superstition

What are you superstitious about? Do you have any idea why you are that way?

I have a confession. I’m the one with the black cat; his name is Sabbath. He’s a good little guy. He isn’t one of those house cats, but a full-fledged working barn cat. He’s our mouser and he takes his job seriously. He also lives in one of the nicest bachelor pads a cat could dream of: our heated tack room. He circles and rubs against my legs vying for a pet, rub or scratch. A black cat crossing my path is not one of my superstitions – he crosses my path every day. He might have crossed yours.

That’s not to say I don’t ever have my own superstitions. I find myself occasionally knocking on wood to avoid messing up my fate after saying something. (If no wood is nearby, we strangely knock on our own foreheads and say “knock on wood.”) I don’t worry about hair loss, because I believe if I worry about it, it will come true.