Tough choices: knowing what’s important
Life is really so incredible perfect when you are committed to something, and therefore you look at everything through that commitment.
Here is a quote I had attached to my kitchen cabinet for four years. When I moved it was impossible to save it: it crumbled… lol. It has an awful lot to do with who I am today, and the incredible results I was able to produce in those four years:
“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, the providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets:
Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!'”
The choices that have been coming up lately, both on the TV series I am watching, in my life, and in my students’ lives are all the same kind:
Choosing to support one and choosing to withdraw support, or maybe even kill another.
Sounds just like the type of thing that can drive you mad, right? After all our entire culture has a pretense of never killing anything, but it is a pretense… we kill all the time, we just choose other people to do the dirty job for us.
We kill entire forests, we kill life in the oceans, rivers, and lakes. We exterminate entire species of plants, and animals, bugs, etc. so it is cheaper to produce the stuff of life, the addictive wheat that makes you dumb as a doorknob, the addictive sugar that makes you hyper and crave, whether it is in your cookie or in your meat… oh yeah, meat.
So, after all, we are all killers, but we still feel like good people, because we don’t kill with our own hands… Or we kill nicely…
Here is a comment I found on one of the sites I have researched for home made mouse poison: I am having a hard time getting my house mouse-free because of the little forest in my backyard.
Autumn Swanton · Works at Self-Employed
I have quite a few tidbits to share here…. First of all, AMEN Maggie Rufo! Glue traps are the most disgusting, inhumane, horrifying invention and should be completely banned from being sold at all as this is clearly mistreatment and abuse of these poor defenseless little creatures that live, breathe, feel and suffer just the same as we do. Anyone who would do this has to be demented and/or enjoy making, watching and hearing living things suffer, which I would hope we all can agree is SIIIIIIIIICK and if you can’t I’ll see you on America’s Most Wanted one day being tracked down cuz you’re a psychopath serial killer.
1) To anyone who feels this is ok to do, this is what I would like to do to you if I got the chance… Make a giant glue trap YOUR SIZE and bait you onto it when YOU are starving and looking for a morsel to survive. Then YOU will have YOUR body and face stuck to it and YOU can sit there for days-WEEKS on in starving and struggling and screaming and begging and crying for YOUR very life, while slowly DROWNING in your own urine and feces. Then after YOU have lost all hope that anyone will have the decency or heart to help you, you can get so desperate that you CHEW YOUR OWN LIMBS OFF one by one just hoping that you can get free by some miracle and then when you realize that you can’t and there is NO hope for you, you can think about what you have done to deserve this treatment and how what goes around comes around, BIG OR SMALL.
2) To those who won’t shut up about mice and rats carrying diseases – Don’t try to blame mice and rats for giving you disease and sickness… The only thing making you sick/diseased is yourself and the certain “human beings” on this earth living like nasty, disgusting, revolting beasts spreading AIDS, HIV and all the many other diseases, germs, viruses, etc., going around the world today. Using an animal who doesn’t have a chance in hell and only does what it must to LIVE as an excuse for what human beings themselves CAUSE due to not taking care of this planet we live on is truly pathetic to say the least.
Keep you house clean (keep all foods in airtight containers, vacuum/sweep daily, clean all of your hard to reach areas weekly such as behind/around the fridge and stove, in and around sofa’s/chairs/loveseats/etc., empty trash daily and try to avoid leaving any food sitting out, etc.) and yard clean (free of debris, wood, brush, overgrown grass/trees, water/food sources and all other mice/rat attractants), clog up holes inviting the little guys into your house so you can murder them, put down the damn peppermint oil cotton balls anywhere you have seen or there may be mice (including in the walls wherever you can put them), spray a solution of 1/2 gallon apple cider vinegar and 2 gallons water all around your house and any places they may be getting in, and if there are a few stragglers left after taking these steps HUMANELY trap them and set them free in some woods far from your home. Everyone lives, no one dies and everybody can live happily ever after. I have also read that Bounce regular scent dryer sheets, specifically, work really well for repelling rodents.
3) Becky, caring about your child’s welfare is NO excuse for murdering animals under any circumstances. I am a mother myself and appreciate and understand wanting to care for your child and make sure they are not put in any danger but let’s be realistic… When you put them in the car your putting them in more danger, when you go to the park they are in more danger. etc. These tiny creatures are WAAAAY more scared of us than we are of them and they are not going to go out of their way to intentionally cause harm to us. Take responsibility for the fact that you should have remedied the problem before it got out of hand (they breed at rapid rates once they find a place with a constant food/water source) and now that it is out of hand after a WHOLE SEASON, it is going to be more difficult and time consuming to shoo the little guys out. After a whole season they think they have found a safe home for themselves… They don’t know any better, all they know is survival, they are just like babies. It would take time and effort, just like everything else, but if you do all of the recommendations to remedy the problem NATURALLY AND ALL AT THE SAME TIME they WILL LEAVE. If they have nothing to stay for (food, water, shelter, protection from predators) they are going to leave in search of somewhere that they can acquire these things. All they want to do is LIVE, and just like us they do what they have to to survive.
4) Rebecca, I hate to bust your ignorant, selfish, diluted bubble but if there are mice in your house, YOU INVITED THEM in one way or another. Just as I said above you have to keep your surrounding clean and free of what attracts other living things if you don’t want them there. You need to block off wherever they are getting in… if there are holes in your house, then you are INVITING THEM IN WITH OPEN ARMS to murder them, NOT COOL! Take preventative measures such as the ones listed above and you won’t have a problem, not only that but there will be no sadistic murdering necessary. Everyone can be happy :o).
I hope all works out well for everyone (especially the defenseless little furries!)
I am quoting it in its entirety, because I want you to see that people make choices. This woman, Autumn Swanton has made the choice: little mice eating up your books, your clothes, your food are more important to her than humans… That’s her choice.
There are a lot of people like her. But each decision, each choice is a choice of killing someone/something, taking away from them, sacrificing them, each choice is unchoosing the other.
The choice, often, is humanity vs. other species.
And sometimes, with one of my students, choosing one animal over the other.
In her case, she adopted two abandoned feral cats. One male kitten turned out to be friendly, the other, typical male cat, typical alley cat, is competitive, vindictive, power hungry.
The second cat does all he can to eliminate the friendly kitten. He is succeeding, by the way, that’s why I know about it. I am attempting to protect and heal the friendly one… but unless the physical threat is removed, he will die.
I had to make unpleasant choices a few years ago, and I have written about them: choosing my life over a cat’s life was difficult at the time, and a huge breakthrough. After all I was groomed to be self-sacrificial like all of you… Sacrificing my time, my space, my peace of mind, what’s important to me, my life’s purpose… I was groomed to live for another, and feel ashamed for what I felt was important to me.
We sacrifice what’s important to us to our animals, to do-gooding, to our families, to societal customs, like carrying our children to their soccer practice, etc.
I grew up in Hungary. I walked 30 minutes to the swimming pool every morning, I walked 45 minutes in the afternoons to my tennis practice, my violin or guitar lessons, no one gave up their lives to take me there.
I would have hated my life if it had come at the expense of the master degrees and satisfaction my mother had, or the prosperity, fame, and fortune my father had… all time consuming, all choices.
You choose to sacrifice what is important to you, because you don’t want to be responsible for what is YOUR job in life, what is YOUR life about. Living like a victim is easier.
But with great power comes great responsibility: you choosing to be no-one, inconsequential, putting your animals, and driving your children ahead of using your great power have consequences: you are miserable, and no amount of Heaven-on-Earth will wash that away.
Your soul’s job is to make you miserable if you don’t do your life’s work.
So you are always choosing. You are just not looking at the results of your choice far out enough.
Yes. And everyone behaves like this is OK.
Sophie, I came upon this article again and this time I saw it in a different light then back then.
I was thinking how much people are different in this day and age. It seems like this society makes us enslaved to other people, to children, pets… I remember growing up similar to what you described. At age 7 I would walk to the library, music school, activities by myself and it was several miles by bus and between 1 and 4 miles by foot. I walked miles doing shopping for my mom at 9 y.o. There was no fear of someone robbing you or kidnapping you.
Now I have kids and I can’t imagine letting them take a bus without someone raping them or kidnapping them but even if that weren’t the case, if someone saw my child walking a mile to his soccer practice at age 8 they would call child protective services to take my child away and arrest me.
Everything is controlled including people. The law states that I can’t leave my kid at home until 12 or older and I can’t let my child watch his younger sibling until he is 15! Crazy.
I remember my mom would leave my oldest brother who was 7 years old, my other brother 6. and me 5 by ourselves for a few hours to the whole day sometimes into the night. We were fine, didn’t know any different, played, ate whatever we could find and fell asleep. I remember once I fell and hit my head hard and was bleeding badly and my brothers used kitchen rags to stop my blood.
Even though now I have to drag my kids with me everywhere I go like they are disabled,
I use this time for growth I make them learn to do what I do and work along my side and we observe things and learn about them. And when I take them to their activities instead of sitting there and watching them I bring all my work with me and don’t waste a minute but read a book, study clients results, learn a new skill or exercise…
There is probably a different way to approach it that I haven’t looked at yet.