The other problem is I don't want to
bore you with everyday blah-blah stuff, I want you to want to come back and
read my babblings.
When I first saw my dad after years
of not talking, we were talking about all the things I have done in my life and
all the different jobs that I have had, he was blown away by all the stories I
had. On one hand it's probably not the greatest thing that my whole life has
absolutely no focus on anything. The general traditional path (with variations
of course) is to graduate from high school, go to college (trade school or
something), get a job in a field (stick with it), build a life, fall in love,
buy a house, work the same job (or not the various random ones I continue to
have), eventually retire, and be all comfy. Boy did I mess that up.
I'm swinging over here on the other
hand. I know I'm not completely alone over here, there are more of you crazy
try everything people. Variety is suppose to be the spice of life, we are over
here trying everything in the life buffet. ha ha I don't have regrets, I feel
like it has really enriched my life, I feel like it's made me a good
hardworking not afraid to dive head first into new things person. Not a very
financially stable person, and my job resume looks like a patch work quilt, but
if given a chance I can prove I can do it, because I have had to kind of wing
it and prove myself repeatedly.
What brought this all up is we have been helping a local rancher hay. Not the kind of haying like Ed's where we are on old equipment kind of hobby farm haying (which put Massey Ferguson tractor, side rake, and skid steer operator on my resume). This is big time, thousands of acres, bigger tractors, hours and hours of driving around the field haying. Something not a lot of people will ever get the chance to do. I felt so excited and blessed to have been a part of it. Depending on what part of the day you asked me, after about 8 hours of driving in circles and being jostled around from the same bumpy field I was ready to stop.
I am always in awe of hard working
people and what they do. Ranchers have to be some of the most patient steady
people there are. When it takes you days and days of sun up to sun down to grow
and harvest your crops, work and wait and work and wait with a prayer or two
thrown in that the end of the season will bring you good yields, you are a
patient dedicated person.
You should think of that with just about
everything you do. What did it take to get this product to me? Where did this
come from? Which is a soap box I get on a lot and leans towards my Buddhist
views, but I believe if you can really stop and look at things and yourself
deeper, it will make you a better more aware human. And those tiny little steps
are the steps that change this world. Think of the work it took to get the food
in your belly and the clothes on your back. Pretty amazing and we should be grateful.
So
now that I got that out. Lets venture over on the other side of my brain.
Last
Thursday Ed and I went to "Alive After 5" in Great Falls. I expected
something like the Farmers Market, which I totally recommend. But that isn't at
all what I got. The first half a block was (I don't know how to put this
politically correct) the STRANGEST looking people. Weird had crawled out of the
wood work and was dancing to the live band. I was thinking "Wow Butte Montana looks so mild." A lot of people would
of just left, but Ed and I are people watchers so we stuck around for the show.
At
one point Ed leaned towards me and told me that seeing this really made him
thankful for what he had, and the fact that he was a healthy (mentally and
physically) person. Looking out at the people you could tell there were people
with mental illness, some were battling addiction, some just had a combination
of factors that just made them kind of lost souls.
I
was reminded of the short time that I spent in Missoula where I lived out of my
truck. I spent a lot of time walking down by the river and quite a bit of time
talking to homeless people. Probably not the safest thing to do, but I'm a
listener and a sponge, if you're willing to tell your story I am drawn to that
and I listen. I remember the man who was a successful business man at one
point, you would never know it to look at him, he was filthy, his clothes were
tattered, all his belongings were in an old back pack, and the thing that
mattered most to him was how he was going to get more alcohol before his body
went into withdrawal. Through mental illness and addiction he had lost it
everything, he chose to be homeless. His family no longer talked to him and he
longed for some sort of contact with his son and granddaughter but his illness
and actions held him down.
I remember the guy trying to write a book about
homeless people and their stories, he had a notebook that he let me look at, it
was filled with scribbled notes and stories about different people. This guy
was one of those people who probably dreamed big but never accomplished
anything. Big and good ideas that just never went anywhere, he never followed
through with anything so his life just stayed in a limbo and became a victim of addiction.
Most of all I remember the lady I bought dog food for. She had spent a big part
of her life in prison for killing her father who had molested her and at different
points had raped her with a broom handle. She was a hurt and angry soul. She
too suffered from mental illness and addiction. She felt she had nowhere to
turn, no one was going to hire her, just to look at her most would turn their
noses. So she lived down by the river and slept on an old mattress she had drug
under some trees. Who knows if she is even alive now, who knows how many times
she has been raped living that life style.
Just
goes to show you really can't judge a book by the cover. We are all really the
same, we all have hopes and dreams. Our lives, our health, and our
circumstances have lead us all down a different path. Some of us, like those
drunk people dancing at the Alive After Five have just been drug down by their
circumstances, they are just lost souls. I'm not saying have pity on them, save
them, or make friends with them. There are people in this world that can pull
themselves out of that and become something, but there are a lot that cant and
never will. Be thankful for who you are.
I
was also reminded from this whole experience how much I like peoples stories,
and that I am a good listener. So I hope in the future (when haying season is
over) that I can bring that to my blog, interview some people, and get some
neat or inspiring stories for you to check out.
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