As I get older, I have become more reflective, and this includes various episodes of my life; my experiences. I am thankful for my blessings, and I have many. I have blessings that I take for granted and don't even notice on a day to day basis. It's only when I search my past with reflection and introspection, that I notice these things.
I have not led a charmed life. I never was the most popular kid, or even a member of a popular group of people. If anything, my friends seems to be the outcasts. I certainly did not lead the charmed life, and even into adulthood, I have been aware that I have to earn everything I have, including respect, and even when "earning" whatever it is, that doesn't always mean that I will get it. Life is not fair.
I remember things that I had hidden away in the back of my mind, because although trivial in the grand view of life, they were hurtful episodes. Lately, I have thought of a time not long after I married my wife. We had gotten a phonecall about a group of friends that were getting together for lunch and would we like to join them. We live 25 minutes south of Tulsa, but we got ready quickly and made it to the restaurant in less than an hour.
When we arrived at the restaurant, the bulk of the group of friends had already eaten, and in fact, and settled their bill and were leaving. We had just gotten there and hadn't even had a chance to order a meal. It felt like no one (of my friends) were going to stay there and talk to my wife and I. They were busy and were leaving.
Why did they invite us? They could've just had their lunch together and not included us, and that would've been better than this insult.
I remember how it always was with on of my friends and his wife. For the bulk of the time I knew him, any time we were going anywhere, we always had to wait on his wife. She was notoriously late, and she was slow to get ready. And yet, the group of us always waited. That's just the way it was.
But now I saw that these same friends would not give my wife the same patience that the other guy's wife had received over the years. It became another reminder to me that I was never like other people. Other people had friends, and I had mostly acquaintenaces that I thought of as friends. I believed that because it was necessary not to see it for what it was. I was never as good as everyone else; no matter how hard I tried.
This wasn't an isolated incident. It was just another in a long history of how things were for me growing up, and although you put these things away and move on, from time to time, life gives you another reason to remember that you're just not as good as everyone else.
Some might look at this and feel that it's a lack of forgiveness on my part, that I still hold on to these things. Part of that might even be true. The I feel like a lot of it is just a part of what has formed me into the person that I am today. I feel like I need to be the best person I can be; to be the best friend that I can be, but also know that the world is not fair; and that people will probably never treat me as well as I treat them. It's just how things are, and I have learned to live with it.
Most of the time, I just put these things in the back of my mind and look forward to good things in the future. But every now and then, I am reminded.
No comments:
Post a Comment