Our Very Hearts

First off, Happy Feast of St Monica (mother to St. Augustine)-praying for her intercession in my current and future family.

There's poison about in my work.
I guess that's what happens when you work with human life so closely, things get petty because to see things as they actually are is not easy.

Gossip, it's been a killer to my soul lately. It happens all around me and from my very mouth as well. The "Pick a little talk a little" song from the Music Man is the anthem to my floor. Pick pick pick all day long. Not something I super mind IF it's being done in a charitable way. A way that builds someone up, not tear someone down. Sadly, not the case. I start my shift with every good intention of being my chipper joyful self, only to find the coworkers before had every intention of tearing me down. Dreadful, but hey, it happens. So it started off my day bad to which my day ended as well. I don't mind criticism, but when it's done as a personal attack against my character (whether intentional or not) yeah...I take it personal.

So it's hard when I brought this up to a coworker about intentionality and being charitable when we're correcting each other (again, we deal with human life when it's vulnerable so we do need to he HELPING each other be better). This coworker's reply: "well you should start with night shift".

Well great comebacks always come later for me when I've had time to think. My comeback (could I live it all over) "No, actually change begins with our very selves". You can't change anyone but yourself. Victor Frankl has the best quotes about this:

When we are no longer able to change a situation - we are challenged to change ourselves.

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

This man should know, he lived in one of history's darkest times, the Holocaust. He found a way to be happy, he found a way to reflect on this same human condition in which I am reflecting.

And then there's the frivolous things that get talked about (when coworkers aren't the ones being bad mouthed). I mean this: http://themattwalshblog.com/2013/08/26/offensive-absurd-and-pornographic-on-mtv-you-say-i-cant-believe-it/ (kudos to my fiance for showing me this).

This Matt guy has a point, we have brought this culture on ourselves by the choices we make. Choices that begin in our very heart. My coworker's reaction "man, she's not even hot what makes her think she can dance like that?!" Well, not the reaction I was hoping for, my fiance says it best when "someone's looks don't determine the moral right, if it's wrong it wrong. Physical attributes don't give a person license to be crude".

Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.

So...what's the destiny you choose?

yup...annoying isn't it