Love Thy Neighbour

I think I remember this. Charles Templeton in his break with Billy Graham and organized religion (date yourself much, Kathryn?) said while he couldn't love everybody, he could care about people. I appreciated his sentiment at the time and still do. It's one of those gems I've tucked away to help me navigate our mortal constructs in a divine universe.❤

I had planned to write a book about being president of our housing association, but writers plan to write all sorts of books we never do. It's part of the not writing process. I think I could do it but I'm not sure I should. It's been a few years and I'm finally starting to feel better about people. I'd hate to set myself back writing about a volunteer position that I swear to Gord gave me a kidney stone.😬

It's not just me. You'll never meet anyone who was on a condo or coop board who won't say "never again" once out of office. It's a thankless job even for those who get a gratuity for doing it. People are whiny horrible complainers and care more about somehow magically securing non-existent parking for their second car than they do their neighbours.💩

I'm putting my health before my ambitions now. Until listening to Gabor Mate I thought I had to achieve fame and fortune for people to really care about me. Why? Because I wasn't enough.🙎

Imagine. I have three children and love them entirely for themselves. I know my love is unconditional. Their ambitions have nothing to do with my love for them. So I've been fortunate enough in this life to hit the motherlode of love and yet managed to miss the most important lesson in it. I'm enough. I've always been enough. You're enough. You've always been enough. Ferfuckssake we're all enough already.💗

Maybe I should write about all my temp jobs, most of them in the government, provincial when I lived in Toronto, federal in Ottawa.💁

Boyfriends?👫

Humiliating moments as lived by me personally and/or as told to me by boyfriends, friends, family or colleagues while temping in the government?🙅

So I'm at the living and letting live stage of life with regard to my neighbour, focusing on his positives, and accepting his total disregard for anyone and anything in the way of his routine, which revolves around his postage stamp sized lawn and the perfection thereof.😒

Gord give me strength.🙏

I have to admit, for someone who considers herself an empathetic person, I could stand to put it into practice more often, starting with my neighbour. After all, I'm a control freak, too. Empathy for him is empathy for me. And he at least is knowledgeable about what he's trying to control, if lacking insight into why. He clearly, and I only just now realized this, believes he has to blow dry each individual blade of grass at 8:00 on a Saturday morning to be worthy.❤

He's had a tough life. I've had a privileged one. But his beautiful little lawn gets him what he needs, validation. And in fairness, he does a lot more than I do to maintain order in our "between the tracks" 'hood. He doesn't just maintain order as a hired hand, he helps out for free, too. I keep planning to wear a pair of gardening gloves and take a green garbage bag on our dog walk and pick up litter but have I? No. And yet it offends my need for order every day.😡

All this to say the more I resolve to empathize with my neighbour, instead of being mad at him, and focus on the good he does, instead of how annoying he is, the better I feel about myself and the closer I get to actually putting on those gardening gloves and taking a green garbage bag with me on the dog walk.😍