Her boyfriend Mike (not his
actual name either) would babysit for the two hours and then her mother would
take care of the children while Annie worked her fast food shift. On the short take, Annie sounds like a
typical struggling single mom, trying to improve life for her little ones and
herself, and she is. But, the long take
tells the full story.
While the Annie
focused on work, school, and boyfriend, the small apartment where she lived got
neglected. It was neglected to the point
of becoming a roach infested health hazard for the children or anyone
else. Mike, instead of properly caring
for the children, was evidently attending his own enterprise from her
apartment. He so well attended his
business that the attention of the police was attracted. A search warrant was served on Annie’s
apartment, and marijuana was discovered.
Annie’s children being in the squalid conditions elicited reports to
children’s protective services, and police informed the landlord of the
conditions and substance found. The landlord moved to evict.
From the
first knock on the door by the police, this single mom’s life became very
complicated, and very unpleasant. Now Annie
faces the potential of losing custody of her children, and her housing. Her misplaced trust in her boyfriend Mike, and
her neglect of her home and conditions in which her children lived came
crashing in all very suddenly. But, this
situation didn’t begin with a knock on the door. It began for Annie with all of the good intentions that
a single mom could have, to improve life for her babies and herself. But, through a series of bad choices and
neglects, compounded by more neglect and settling for what should have been
unacceptable, Annie’s circumstances grew increasingly tenuous until, one day,
the knock came at the door. Now her life
has changed dramatically and for probably a lot longer than it took to get it
there.
At one time or another we all get caught up in
focusing on one or two facets while we neglect the others. This inevitably leads to dysfunction, or
malfunction, that catastrophically disrupts life as we knew it. The longer this unbalanced attention runs on,
the worse the outcomes. Technically, I would classify these disruptions as
critical events. Privately, we all know
these events simply as personal disasters that are always profoundly
unpleasant. If our lives were gem mines,
we would call these events cave-ins.
So, what can
we do to avoid these cave-ins?
Approaches for this will be addressed in the coming weeks and months
through this blog. I hope you will
continue to come back and explore them with me.
The short run advice that can be summed up here is this: Identify the
major facets of life and be sure we give due attention to each, keeping
consistency with our values across all facets.
Secondly, we must have an established set of values that we follow, and
hold to, without wavering to circumstances.
Thirdly, according to our individual life situations, and that of our
loved ones around us, we must establish priorities, and apply our resources,
actions, and attention, in accordance with those priorities. Forth, we must understand that there are
tools available for us to learn, implement, and use, to leverage advantage in
pursuing our goals for all the facets in our lives. By applying these tools and techniques we
significantly improve our probability, and opportunity, for maintaining a
balance that bridges between our various life facets.
Those four
steps could work miracles for us if we were capable of perfectly implementing
them. But, we are human and can only
hope to become somewhat proficient at implementing them. However, proficient will do. If we become proficient at applying our
tools, with our values, across our priorities, in a coordinated manner, to all
key life facets, we can excel to high sustainable levels. We can become more than we, or anyone else,
ever thought we could be, without the catastrophic cave-ins.
To put it even more simply; life gets complicated because we fail to filter out what doesn’t
matter and fail to properly manage what does matter. When we don’t know what really matters to us,
well that really complicates it, doesn’t it?
But, by filtering and managing, not only can we sustain a higher quality
of life for ourselves and our loved ones, but our lives can mean more to the
lives of so many others than can be imagined.
If we get it anywhere close to right, we will set a positive life wave
in motion that will live on for many generations long after we are gone. We’ll continue the discussion here next Tuesday.
Surround yourself with people who love you,
work that you love, and a cause that you believe in.
Your
comments, "likes", "twitters" and "pins" are
welcome!
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