From Pro-life to Wearing Your Own Shoes

New name for my blog as mostly I think it is going to be a record of my thoughts on everything. For example, at the moment I am no longer thinking about family that no longer speaks to me, (okay I am but it is in the back of my mind) but rather I find myself thinking about why I feel the way I do about certain things and how I came to feel that way.

I used to be pro-life, pro-capital punishment and anti-assisted suicide as part of my religious beliefs, I am now pro-choice everything and was in fact, pro-choice during my second foray into the trappings of the Jehovah's Witnesses. They did not know that, of course. (There are a number of things they did not know and which they would have used to remove me from their ranks much sooner had they known.) I think personal experience is what leads people to change their minds about these types of things. It is fine to be anti-abortion right up until you are placed in a situation in which you have to choose between your own life and that of an unborn pea in your uterus. It is fine to be anti-assisted suicide for the terminally ill right up until you or someone you love is terminally ill. It is fine to be pro-death penalty until you glean an understanding as to how a person's childhood environment frames their future actions and how easy it is to send innocent people to prison because of legal technicalities, human error and investigative bias. It is often easier to hold tight to an ideal than it is to research and explore both sides of the question AND the reasons you hold that ideal in the first place. Exploring the reasons why you feel a certain way is a first step to growing self-awareness. Once I started down that road there was no turning back. No going back into the isolated shell of my childhood religion. No fitting into any mould. I was the proverbial square peg and in fact, always had been. I never seemed to fit in anywhere ...we'll get to that later.

I am of the opinion that as long as one maintains isolation from the rest of the world, regardless as to the form of that isolation, they lack the ability to see beyond their very own horizons. While this is necessary to an extent to maintain a semblance of sanity, it renders one powerless to understand and properly empathize with others situations. I can think back to a bible study and prayer circle (not JW) I was engaged in at one point, after an act of disloyalty had been admitted to, and how insulted I was that one of the persons in the circle kept referring to my actions as "appalling" as if she had never heard of such actions prior to mine. Well, yes, the actions were wrong, but it was not as if I consciously said to myself..."self, today we must embark on an act of disloyalty. I must hunt down the first husband that is not mine to ..." etc. Surely you can see where I am going with that... No that is not how these things happen. First you wind up in an abusive marriage with someone who thinks it perfectly acceptable to bring home girlfriends of their choosing and inform their wife that they are going to have a mistress and you should be happy about it. (How we got there must be explored in order to avoid that in the future.) Or your husband works long hours at the office with the beautiful secretary ... whatever the situation is, it is never what someone from the outside looking in thinks it is and it is never as simple as one thinks. Because they NEVER have the full story no matter how much they may think they do. My point is it is pretty easy to sit back and pass judgement on others and determine how they should be acting, doing or not doing when you are not them. Trying to live up to the expectations of others when you are unable for whatever reason is a fruitless effort primarily because THEY have no idea what it is like to be in your shoes and you do not have to nor have the ability to fit comfortably into theirs. Why try? Just wear your own damn shoes... and make them as pretty as you are able for your own sake not the sake of others.