On Entitlement.

First of all, damn.

It has been over a month since I posted last, and in that month surprisingly enough not a lot has happened. I've moved up slowly at work, inching out of training and into the position of a full-fledged employee who might actually know what's going on. School for G has ended for the year and he doesn't seem to notice the difference; he spends his days with A at daycare having a lovely time with Miss J and her amazing three girls. They love it there, and while I know it's never as good as being home with me or Daddy, it's about as close as I'm going to get.

But that isn't what this is about.

This is about something that Hubby and I were discussing earlier, something that I - like most people - need desperately to work on. Something I don't often think about, and that one thing is pretty big for all of us: entitlement.

You see, no matter what you believe - that we die and that's the end, or that there's a Great Beyond, or that we go on to live many more lives - the one thing that none of us can argue with is that we only get to have THIS life one single time. Once. No matter how many times you believe we will or won't come back, you can't argue that much, and that's kind of a daunting fact sometimes. So much so that some of us - myself included - manage to con ourselves into believing that what we do in this life isn't really all that important; that we won't really make a dent in someone's memory or mind, that we won't somehow make a huge difference in anybody else's life. And that's what it is, really, a con. We con ourselves into thinking that we don't matter, or won't matter - maybe because we're depressed or sad or tired or even just want to think that nobody's watching or listening because being the person we want to be all the time seems so impossible, or so difficult - but the fact of the matter is that when we tell ourselves those things we're lying to ourselves and everybody around us. We're lying to our husbands, our wives, our boyfriends and girlfriends, our parents and children and friends and relatives and pretty much everybody. Sometimes some of us push that lie so far that even we start to believe it, and it goes from a very bad habit to a lifestyle. We make it a way of being, but in the end we're really only doing that - BEING, but not LIVING.

Right now, I am being. I'm here, and present, and scared of death and storms and wasps and am morbidly obese and unhappy and depressed and I tend to rely on food to make me feel better about myself. But I've conned myself into that line of thought, that in the end I'm not really important. And I forget my big ideas - the ChaserBox (which you don't know anything about) and my charity, Helping Hands Healing Homes (go like them on Facebook), and I forget about the fact that my kids are learning by example and they are expecting me to show them how to be a halfway decent human being, and I am showing them how to to do anything but.

Not to throw off anyone, but I believe in Fate, and I believe that she consistently works in mysterious ways. I believe that we are given opportunities - often to make ourselves better people - and it's up to us to see them and take advantage of them before they're gone. Sometimes they're positive, sometimes neutral, sometimes negative, and we have to choose (often quickly) how they will affect our lives. I believe that new doors open all the time, and that when one opens (like when the lovely Kitchen Witch's husband was offered an amazing job, simply by chance, and he took it) it is up to us to help or hinder the process that Fate begins. I have been hindering. I have been hindering on a huge level, one I am not proud of. I have been shown time and time again how my negativity and weight are affecting my life and one another. I have been shown their effects on my body and relationships and I have been told in no uncertain terms what will become of me if I can't remind myself what my purpose in life is.

The problem, of course, has been going back to that idea of meaning something, of living. I've been doing a lovely job of being but not a very good job of living, and it shows. It shows in the attitudes of my children and my actions and words toward them. It shows in my attitude in the morning, it shows in how I conduct myself and act. It shows in how I treat myself and my body, and how I constantly abuse my mentality and soul because today is just another day, and in my head I am immortal and there will be a million more days just like today where I can get that second or third or billionth chance because I messed today up too much by deciding it was easier and more convenient to simply BE instead of to LIVE.

I want to remind you, right here and now, that we have exactly ONE chance to get this life the way we want it. Mind you, I'm not by any means saying that if you push yourself to every imaginable limit you will be guaranteed to attain every single thing you've ever wanted and then some. But you can and will be happier, at least, which is a huge step in the right direction for a lot of us. Myself included. This is the only life where I get to be who I am right now, who I was born as. This is the only life where I will see the things I see every day, where I will know these people as they are right now. This is the only time I will get to be wife of Hubby and daughter of my mother and Mama to G and A and whatever other children we may have. This is the only time I will know these people as they stand right now, and either I can make sure I have made a positive lasting mark on them and their memories by living life and making it as amazing as possible, or make an awful negative mark by showing them that if you let things get you down far enough, you will spend the rest of your life in the valley wishing you were strong enough to climb that mountain.

Right now, I am climbing. I am climbing arm in arm with some amazing, beautiful people who make my life a million times more beautiful by being part of it. It's incredibly difficult and there are days I want to do nothing more than rest, but I know that if I rest one day I will convince myself I can rest for two, and I will go back to being and not living. I never want to just BE again.

I want to live. And I want you to live with me.