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Thursday, July 19, 2012

Blue in the Face


Let’s play a game! It’s called Who’s Blues are Bluer? It’s an easy game to play, just tell your story and let the other person tell theirs. The winner is the one who has it worse. The one with the bluest blues or the hardest hard luck story wins!

Blacks vs. Hispanics, Jews vs Christians, Men vs. Women, me vs. you, there are a variety of ways to play this game. You can do it on a macro level and break it down by race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. You can also take it to a micro level and play it based on your own personal history when compared to someone else’s.
Any way you chose to play it, it is a losing game.

Some games you play for fun. Other games teach a lesson or a skill. This game does nothing positive. Even if you win, what exactly have you won? Fighting over who is the biggest victim serves no purpose.

All of us have suffered our share of setbacks, failures and disappointments. I maintain that it isn’t those hindrances but how we respond to them that make a difference. It is how we bounce back from those obstacles that creates character and ultimately determines the direction of our lives.

I find that people who play The Blues are usually not very happy people, even if they manage to find success. They are too wrapped up in their victim status to be happy and people who see themselves as victims (and therefore at the whim and control of others) can never truly be happy. They constantly seek the negative and ‘proof’ of how bad they have it.

Blues players are usually not grateful for what they have because what they have is never enough and never good enough. They always feel they deserve more and living from the perspective of lack is a recipe for dissatisfaction.

I’m not saying that individual people and specific groups have not had it hard, or been dealt a raw deal. We all have and, I’ll admit some worse than others. To deny that truth would be to deny a very painful reality. I am saying that staying in that place and refusing to see beyond it, perpetuates the pain and almost guarantees that the player will not get over it, through it or ever put it behind him.

If the end game is happiness, contentment or satisfaction, then you will never get it playing The Blues.

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