(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Potpourri Of Possibility: Don't seek the misery, stop and note the good things... [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-04-01 To herald the beginning of renewal, spring crocus appear... Wherever you are, stop and note what you like about that place. This is where I’m beginning because I want you to make it through a world of potential misery with a sense of realism. But I also want you to have moments of joy in your pocket. Life brings us both joy and misery. Often, the joy is fleeting. Misery seems to be perpetual. We can’t get away from it because it craves the joyous moments in our existence to sustain itself. How we see that misery determines whether our joy will be diminished or preserved. Today, I’ll write from a personal perspective. There’s misery present, because of how I carry it around. It does not make me angry, or sad. It is simply there. It is not a big, black dog of depression. It is just reality. Learning how to let it exist, learning how to place it in its proper context, learning how to let it go and be its own animal has been a life’s work. The joy of seeing the crocus come up last week, the pleasure of seeing them open and noting that I did not plant most of them fills me with a childlike wonder and a sense of awe about the power of renewal. We all can benefit from taking moments to see the joy of our world. More often than not, if it is possible, I dwell in the pleasant moments. I soak it all in, so-to-speak. This week more misery was dropped off for all of us to take note of. Donald Trump, a former president of these United States, was indicted by a grand jury in New York. In the run-up to his indictment, he succeeded in fleecing his followers out of $4 million. Governor DeSantis said he won’t aid in any extradition. Again, the misery continues. But those crocus provided me with plenty of joy to offset that misery. My friend and longtime fellow union activist Carlos Rodriguez re-posted the Tweet, allegedly from Mr. Trump, after the indictment was handed down. I respect Carlos. He does good work and has made many friends around the globe. The Tweet is nothing more than a reminder of a long-standing presence of misery we’ve all had to look at, day after day, ad infinitum, often to our detriment. Here’s the Tweet, for those who need the reminder: Donald is the person in our national family with significant behavioral disorder and inability to edit himself or restrain himself. Donald is the sociopath who, upon being accused, plays to the crowd, gathers sympathy, keeps running his confidence scheme, and keeps going to the microphone. Donald is the victim. He’s always picked on, poked at, hurt, wounded, he’s always the guy who has been bullied, he’s never the bully. At least, that’s how he sees things. He shares that with other criminally-leaning persons. It is never their fault. Someone else was always to blame. All of this is very hard to watch unfold. The reason is very simple, yet not so. Growing up, I had a number of mentally ill persons in my family. Each phase of Donald’s evolution and development to this point has touched on those mentally ill people from my life, and has reminded me of how incredibly distracting, time-consuming, physically tiring and emotionally draining mental unwellness is. His niece, psychologist Mary Trump, paints a powerful picture for all of us of that reality in her book, “Too Much and Never Enough” We can empathize, but we should never assume her story is the same one we’ve endured. Each family muddles its way through the misery of the mentally unwell in its midst. But at some point, family must make very difficult decisions about continued daily involvement with the unwell. When you find yourself reaching for oversimplified, cruel and narrow answers, when you reach for addictive substances, when everything creates anxiety, argument, anger, stress, and when simple baby steps cannot walk you out of the corner you are painted into, you are unwell. When the solutions that many, most, if not all of us, have at our fingertips won't help your day, you are unwell. Often, the help we ask for is the wrong kind of help. We reach toward others who are similarly afflicted, and struggling. The danger for healthy persons who have their shit together, working at helping the unwell, is that there are so many unwell, and their needs are very high. Helping them once life has sunk its teeth into them is challenging, and again, fully depleting for the caregivers. Donald is a symptom, not the whole problem. How the Manhattan District Attorney’s office has handled this has been a master class in not getting sucked into a crazy person's vortex. The unwell try to control everything and they do it very badly. They create chaos, and in that creationism, appear to thrive and excel. It is a mirage. Reality is that they're floundering, but by grappling and stepping on the heads and shoulders of others caught in their chaotic maelstrom, they keep their head above water. Others drown for their benefit. This indictment, or indication, as he put it, is really just an impaneled body of folks who looked at evidence, considered aspects, facets, viewpoints, thought about what law offers us, thought about what we'd really like to know more about, thought about how one man's behaviors and dalliances and continued misadventures akin to a Mr. Toad's Wild Ride have sucked the life out of a nation of already beleaguered people, thought about how they've been made to feel awkward, insulted, belittled, mocked and toyed with, and more than any other thing, repeatedly lied to until the lie and the truth are all besmeared with feces. These impaneled grand jurors had to put their bare hands in unimaginable filth and crawl those three hundred yards to help us escape the hellscape of Donald's private Shawshank Prison and get our freedom back, if such a thing is possible. Insanity - provoked, elicited, drawn forth from a wellspring of undrinkable water - has been the stock and trade of what the media have been feeding us daily. They have to keep looking at this person of interest, but what drives us to distraction is the inability to tune it out and turn it off. When one person has that much power, and the ability to make us all crazy, we have to say, "STOP!" We have to say, "Just SHUT THE F#@K UP!" Everything this idiot child has been ranting about is all too familiar to those of us who have dealt with moderately to severely mentally ill people in our lives. It is time. It is time for us to enforce a treatment plan of sorts, and get ourselves on the road to recovery. Donald needs to take a back seat on this ride. He needs to be the child who is put in his place. His misery needs to stop, and the misery of his gang of many, his cronies, his goodfellas, also needs to come to a grinding halt. We need to begin noticing crocus blooming again. We need to work toward wellness. We'll have to do it without him. He's chosen his institutionalization. It should not become ours, and we should not be the sacrificial lambs for his delight in slaughtering. As you take time to stop, see beauty, note good things in your life, consider this response to misery : The sooner we all stop looking and paying attention to his misery and that of his acolytes, the better off we will all be. Even in this moment, he thrives, because he is still receiving our undivided attention. THAT ONE THING is what he craves and requires most. Wanna get rid of him? Deny him the attention, notoriety and constant presence in your life. This is how you take your life back from this thief. It is time for that to become a reality... 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