Serve Others

That's been my mantra of late. Well, it's my attempted mantra. It's hard to "serve" the jackass who's swerving like an idiot on the highway, or the customer who's being ignorant to a coworker. People are shit. How the hell did Jesus do it? I mean, the man didn't just die for the people he liked; he died for assholes and ignoramouses alike. (Okay, YOU spell ignoramouses...) I reckon that's why he's God, and I'm not. Lol if I were god, there'd be a lot of sudden, unexplained deaths happening during rush-hour traffic. But taking that phrase as a mantra is my effort to get back to the compassionate person that I have a distinct memory of once being, before my experiences with others of my race began to harden and jade me. At some point, I developed a pretty short fuse when it comes to dealing with people that are douchebags, and I need to get over that, 'cause the short fuse is gradually spreading to all areas of my life.

On a similar topic is, despite having been in a relationship for coming up on a year and a half, I still have difficulty finding the middle ground between serving the love of my life, and being true to myself. Recent example is that I want so much to make her happy, to absolve her life of whatever difficulties it may contain, that I almost did something that I really didn't want to do; something that, really, would have been a pretty ignorant thing. Where is the line between wanting to take care of the one you love, versus maintaining your individuality? I haven't gotten my brain around that yet. I mean, I must be doing an okay job of walking that line, though, because for the most part I feel like I'm still the same person I was when I started dating her (perhaps more willing to share my life now though), and she certainly seems happy enough with how I treat her. Maybe there is no precise "here" point between the two extremes? Maybe the best you can do is take situations as the come, and decide individually if they're "sacrifice for the other" situations or if they're "stick to my guns" situations. I'll let you know if I figure it out.