(#5367) I wish I was as strong as the Ukrainian people

      For all my will and determination I am less able to be a vigilant warrior like the Ukrainian people. They don't need to escape their dull and dreary lives as I do at times. They are not allowed a dull and dreary life instead they are under constant threat of being not alive. If I was as strong as the Ukrainians I would embrace my dull and dreary life with a gusto that underlied a thankfulness. Instead I have to occasionally slip out of reality and let myself become immersed in daydreaming about what could have been. Recapturing moments of joy and happiness that remind me of the worth of our species and its complexities as some kind of salve for my soul.
     There is no changing the past but there is some little worth in learning from different choices not made. That is what I tell myself as I try to justify a lapse from being aware of all around me when I am not sleeping. I feel like I owe it to the specialness of life to not distract myself from any part of it that is happening. Maybe I expect too much of myself but that is who I have always been so why would I think it was not appropriate for me? I know that making reality a safe harbor for all of us is what needs to be done so when that is true the time for escaping into a dream world of my imagination is an acceptable pause from all that is going on around us. Yet we are not all living in a safe harbor so my disappointment with myself is real.
     I know that we should try to find some happiness in a world that is otherwise unkind and cruel to others is a compromise we seem to have made allowable as a society but I am heartsick at the thought of it. So when I find myself adhering to a less than honorable stance for myself even if socially acceptable it makes me feel the lesser of who I am. Nothing changes that, not even the most ardent argument. I often mention how amazing our species is but in truth we don't act amazing in the most fundamental ways when it comes to too many of our virtues of honor and noble intent. There is room for the arts in life even when the struggle for life is at a knife's edge. I know this but somehow the Ukrainian people are not granted even the arts and for that I am head down and kicking dirt sorrowful.