Daily Mood Quote
Day 227 – January 1, 2012
Bitterness imprisons life; love releases it.
~Harry Emerson Fosdick
It is better to live in peace than in bitterness and strife.
~Confucius
So many things to cover today. First, it's a new year, 2012. My family and I would like to wish everyone a Happy New Year, may this year bring you peace, joy, good health, success and happiness.
Secondly, I would like to say thank you to everyone for the condolences and prayers for my father. My father passed away peacefully shortly before Christmas day. I will forever be grateful for the short amount of time I got to spend with him before he was called home. I am also relieved that my father did not suffer for a long period of time; that was grace from above.
I choose these quotes today, because after spending a week back home, I saw so much angst, anger and bitterness and heard too many stories about family disputes, which in my opinion, shouldn't matter. Nor should these disputes be given the weight many family members have ascribed to them. We only have one life to live and my husband says, “You have a choice; to be bitter, or to be better.” holding on to anger only creates a bitterness, which can become the controlling factor of one's life. And the biggest mistake people make is passing that anger and bitterness onto the next generation. They carry it forward, without any good reason, but a disposition of “my parents were angry about this and so I too should be angry.” Anger carried forward, is the great failing of mankind. Louis L'Amour said, “Anger is a killing thing, it kills the man who angers, for each rage leaves him less than had been before - it takes something from him.” And so we “take” from the next generation with every “anger” that we pass along. This leave us all a little worse off. Mohandas Gandhi is remembered for saying “ An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.” I agree.
Let me explain with two stories. I have a sister with whom I was once close to as child. I saw her at Christmas and again at our father's funeral. She too was adopted by him, her biological father had passed away years earlier. Anyway, many years ago my mother told her a lie. She said, I made negative comments about the man she was marrying. Instead of coming to me and asking me if I made those comments, she chose to believe the lie and she stopped talking to me and disinvited me to her wedding. Years went by before I found out the reason why my sister didn't want me at her wedding and why she had stopped talking to me. In earlier blogs I shared the difficulties I had with my mother; this was just one of her ways of controlling the family, by division. She lied and because of her lies, again...my sister has had this anger, which has grown into a bitterness for more than 25 years. This to me is sad, that a parent would create such sibling discord, for no reason. The saddest part to this story is, now that our parents are gone, I have no real reason to go home again, or to even be a part of anyones life. All because of the lies that were told by mom, carried forward by family members and now told to the next generation. Sometimes, I wish we could be a more mature family and ask the questions to find out the truth; rather than to build on speculation, which can cause years of anger and bitterness and eventually turns into unfounded hatred.
The next story comes from my husband's side of the family. We have been estranged from his family for ten years and this trip back home was bittersweet. It was the first time my husband saw his father in ten years. My husband's mother had passed away in October. Unfortunately, his family is still as crazy as ever, except it would seem that they have turned it up a notch. My husband's bother-in-law coined the phrase for them “The Dysfunction” as in “why would you go back and engage “The Dysfunction?” He is 100% correct. They seem psychologically unable to grasp the concept that we are grown-ups and have our own lives and responsibilities. And that unbidden meddling in their siblings' lives is a bad thing. They leapt to the conclusion that we were moving, or had moved back and were in desperate need of their help and guidance, neither of which is even remotely true (you've had heard of the old saying, “with friends (family) like that, who needs enemies”). My husband was happy to see his father and he and his dad had the opportunity to resolve and close the book on many things. That was good. But, we were delighted to put as many miles between us and them as humanly possible, as soon as possible. We wonder if it is far enough? Probably not. Anyway, that's last year, and I'm sure this year we may have to endure more interference and wild assumptions from his family. As my husband says, “God bless them, I feel sorry for them; but I can't have anything to do with them.”
On are trip back to where we call home, my husband and I observed many similarities with few distinctions between the families. The parts seem almost interchangeable at this point, there is almost a sibling for sibling parallel in behavior, with the exception that I have one more sibling. We have the crazies (literally), the controlling, the manipulators and the bare-faced liars; most of which seem angry all the time. That said, it was an interesting Christmas and funeral. So, in respect to our families my husband and I agree with Charles (played by Hugh Grant) in the movie Four Weddings and a Funeral, “Excuse me. I think I had better be where other people are not.”
By contrast and too our great relief, our cousins, aunts, uncles, etc. (from my husband's side of the family) “from the other side of the street” or “town” provided a welcome breeze of sanity and some very good food. We are thankful for that. They have put aside the petty rivalries, disagreements and other family nonsense to move forward with their lives. They have chosen well. The choice is as my husband said to be bitter, or to be better. To quote my cousin-in-law, "your life would make a great Lifetime movie, you should write it." Maybe, we'll see.
Let us all hope for and resolve toward “better” in the new year.
What will you choose this year, "bitter" or "better?"
Tune in tomorrow to read the daily mood quote
Thank you for reading
