To Meek or Not To Meek?

"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."  -Jesus

I try to be a man of honor.  Do I always succeed?  No, of course not.  Actually, I really suck at the things I try to accomplish.  My most egregious failures will haunt me for the rest of my days, but for most of my life, I've tried to be a person who does things right.  I've tried to treat people with respect and listen to those wiser than me, put forth my best effort at school and on the job, and be courteous to people who don't always treat me well. People criticized me for giving my ex-wife pretty much everything in the divorce settlement.  "Why?" they would ask.  "It's not like you owed her anything.  You had already paid for her college and bought her cars and everything else."

Yet when she demanded everything I had, I gave most of it to her.  Because it was the right thing to do.

Jesus said that when a man hits you, you turn the other cheek.  When he asks you to walk with him a mile, you walk with him two miles.  And when he asks you for a coat, give him your cloak also.  When someone made a mistake, as in the case of the adulterous woman, he didn't let the people pass judgment on her; instead, he told her to get up and do things better.

Jesus was really a meek guy.  He willingly allowed people to walk over him there at the end, but that wasn't all there was to it.  There was also the time that he saw the money changers taking advantage of people in the temple...  so he braided a whip, turned over their tables, and ran them out of the place.  He could be a really butt kicking guy when he wanted to be.

I seem to be continually faced with people who try to take advantage of me as well.  I'm never quite sure if I should be emulating regular Jesus or butt kicking Jesus.  Do I roll over and give up, or do I fight the good fight?  The two contradictory versions of me say different things.  I just want to do something that won't destroy me in the present while not eating me up with guilt or regret in the future.  Hard times, hard decisions.

Greetings and Salutations

"You can never go home again.  But the truth is, you can never leave home, so it's all right."  -Maya Angelou

Well now...  it's been awhile.  A little over a year, to be exact.  I think it's time that I returned home.  Inevitably, I end up writing when I'm down, and I figure I'll be doing a lot more writing over the coming years.  I don't know that it really accomplishes anything.  Reading back over my old blog, I was either utterly stupid or unintentionally hilarious, depending on the day.  Oh bipolar disorder, you're so much fun.  I get all philosophical when I'm low, yet my creativity comes when my mood is on the way up.  So basically, I end up writing lots of contradictory things.  I can't wait to get back into the swing of it!

I'll expound on how shitty everything is later.  We'll just say that, on a scale of 1 to 10, we've reached negative numbers.  Let's get this party started.