YouTube – Queen-We Will Rock You.

YouTube – Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody.

I found this song going through my head… not sure why… but a prominent tag in the song is, “’cause nothing really matters…”

But what came to mind first was, “shivers down my spine, body’s achin’ all the time,” which was my experience today!

I fell ill today in the late morning… I believe that it was either exhaustion or a bug that was triggered by exhaustion.

Not that I’m complaining too terribly much about the work, but it doesn’t look like my body can handle the sort of schedule I had yesterday–or, at the very least, I was not prepared for it.

Next time–if there is a next time–I’ll be sure to take a significant break so that I don’t experience this again, because this was thoroughly unenjoyable.

This is just a ping to let my friends know I’m OK; we had a very late code push at work and I wasn’t able to validate until half past midnight (which took me all of five minutes to complete).

I got a lot of work-work done in the meantime but I am really quite tired at the moment, so you’ll forgive me if this stays short.

I’ve never seen this movie before… but there are so many deliciously absurd moments in this movie–one of the greatest lines:
“Gentlemen! You can’t fight in here, this is the war room!”

So, here’s an experiment using made-up numbers, but not completely unreasonable ones:

Let’s say that my average income over the rest of my life if I live to 80 is $50k/year. I am 30, so that’s $2.5m in income. If I continue to make the same decisions about food, my life can easily be cut short to–say–55. So that’s $1.25m in lost wages (this applies even if I retire because I will not be able to spend the money that I would have saved).

So, poor decisions about food are costing me at least $1.25m (this is not including the cost of this food, which is usually drive-through or take-out). When you break this down per meal, this comes out to $50k/year, $137/day, or $45.67/meal.

(Of course, the dynamics would change if I were to improve my diet.)

I don’t ever think I’ve had a burger I would now say was worth $50.

New Trusted Content: Why Did I Move to New Hampshire?

I highly recommend logging in to read this!

I am certain you have heard–and almost certainly participated (100% if you’re a libertarian)–in a discussion of the form:

A: Such-and-such is bad
B: Well sure, but this-and-that came out of it

These discussions (at least, when it comes to libertarians) are usually limited to political and economic topics, especially when it comes to taxation and war.

However, I can certainly say that I have heard this same form in other areas of life:

A: My parents were bad
B: Well sure, but they fed you, clothed you, housed you…
or
B: Well, you’re alive today, aren’t you?
or
B: Whatever does not kill you makes you stronger.

Bad actions are, sort of by definition, a net negative to the world. They require repair (or else whatever they break remains broken) and restitution (though this is not always possible). One may attempt to make up for a bad action, but the time and resources lost cannot be discounted compared to the initial avoidance of the bad action.

Now, we are human beings. We will make mistakes. It would be insanity to believe otherwise. However, it is also symptomatic of a deep psychic illness that the vast majority not only believes that good can come from bad (more accurate: good happens despite the bad), but that the bad is absolutely necessary for the good.

Again, this comes up in the abstractions of government, taxation, and war, but it is ever so prevalent in our personal lives as well.

“I wouldn’t be who I am today “–a good–” if my parents didn’t discipline me”–if it involved bullying, assault, or neglect (NOT an exhaustive list), it was bad.

This is usually said by people who have not done the self-work to explore their histories and how it impacts their present and future, but those that have are so few in number that we who clamor that child abuse is EVIL are but a whisper in a sandstorm.

However…

The whisper is getting louder…

The storm is beginning to break…

The effects of evil are almost too plain to ignore…

Evil cannot be balanced. It can only be mitigated or avoided.

The good does not exist in an eternal, dualistic struggle with evil… except within ourselves.

The amazing thing about all of this is that child abuse could end in a day if people were to just stop and think…

Why am I doing what I am doing?

I used to post a lot more on my blog about my childhood and my immediate family… and then, I’m totally fogging on this, but I stopped posting about that, and… well, I barely posted anything at all after that.

I would rarely get any responses to my blog posts, but when I did, they would be one of two kinds:

• praise
• attack

Of those that praised me, it was often private, sometimes public, and they would often express appreciation or gratitude at my willingness to post about such difficult topics. I would be praised for my openness, my courage, my vulnerability, my honesty…

Of those that attacked me–and there were more of these, though not as many as others receive–it was far more often private, rarely public… and I would be called cowardly, weak, childish, spineless, unforgiving, capricious, immature, selfish, judgmental…

The members of my family fell squarely into the second camp. In their attacks, they also called me crazy, said I was lying and making things up, making matters worse than they were, holding on to the past…

But I have never struck a child–at least not since I myself was a child.
I have never yelled at a child and frightened them past the point of tears.
I have never forced a child to eat when he wasn’t hungry and refused to feed him when he was.
I have never refused to let a child use the bathroom and then forced him to sit in his own urine for lord knows how long, and then beat him afterwards for wetting himself.
I have never refused to seek medical attention for a child when he was sick or in pain.
I have never yelled at a child for getting lost.
I have never yelled at a child for not doing schoolwork.
I have never deliberately and systematically mutilated a child.
I have never used a child to talk about my own adult issues.
I have never yelled at or beaten a child for urinating in his bed.

I have been brutal to myself–but I never would have been so if I had not experienced the above.

All I did was talk about it… and I only did that when those same family members that are now attacking me refused to talk about it with me.

Of course… for them to treat me with the respect I deserved so very many years ago now would be a sick and sad sort of joke, a farce… because now that they can’t really hurt me anymore, but that I can hurt them… now they’re all about the tolerance and forgiveness.

Now that I have power… they counsel caution and restraint.

Now that I can hurt them…

“Where was your fucking tolerance when I wet the bed?”
“Where was your fucking restraint when I brought home those teachers’ notes?”

Compared to what?

What am I doing that is so horribly egregious compared to what they did?

Compared to WHAT?

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