Blog 2299 – 02.07.2022

Life Can Be A Pain In The A…Neck

I am told that most of us have a tendency to feel the stress and the strain of life in a particular place in our bodies. And for all my efforts to see everything in the most positive light I am not ignorant of pain, disappointment, and the fact that life can at times make us want to scream, “Oh, my aching A…back, neck, head, whatever.”

Especially uptight people are sometimes referred to as anal because they have a tendency to hold on too tightly to shit and therefore are often constipated both figuratively and literally. Others of us are called stiff necked and later in life suffer a lot of neck pain from years of being slow to learn, to turn, and slower to change, even when we know we ought to.

Headaches, neck aches, back aches, even lower back, much as we may try to shift the blame to others or things outside ourselves are mostly self-inflicted. The comic strip character Pogo got that one right – “We have discovered the enemy and it is us.” Over the years I have shortened and modified that quote a bit, but I think the basic meaning is still obvious – “mea culpa, mea culpa, my fault, my fault” as even Scarlet O’Hara’s Catholic mother taught her and her sisters to pray.

We don’t need guilt religions to teach us to own our guilt for we are all guilty of the greatest sin of all – being or at least acting unloving to the one who needs our love most of all – our lower and least lovely self. Most of us find it easy to appreciate and even love our higher and best self, the one many refer to as the one true god. Jesus’ words often had hidden deeper meanings and I think “In that you did or did it not to the least of these, my family, you did or did it not to me” are some of them.

It is the one in the mirror, first thing in the morning without make-up, a shower, a shave, brushed teeth, the one who may need a comb raked through that sleep tussled thinning hair, the one who may never achieve that personal weight goal, that needs most to hear those most beloved three little words. And, No, I don’t mean, “Go hang yourself” but, “I love you.”

In the words of Dirty Harry, perhaps twisted from their original context, “Well, do ya, punk?” Well, you ought to, everybody who is anybody does.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uE8qP3jDtjBavSK3dVSbop-VF4csZR_6/view?usp=drivesdk

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