You Will Never Get The Credit

I remember when my husband’s mother, may she rest in peace, spent some months in the Hebrew Home for the Aged before she passed.

We would visit her every Sunday.

I remember that she was in agonizing pain. Agonizing. There really are no words to describe it.

Looking at her crying out in pain, and I do mean literally crying, I wanted to shrink into the wall. Or maybe run away.

It was that hard to tolerate the sight of her suffering.

Many times I have asked myself how it is fair that God made her suffer so much.

When I think about all the things she did for me, personally, I know I did not thank her enough. I know I was not there for her in her final days the way I should have been.

In the nursing home I noticed that each resident decorated a special glass box with photos and other memorabilia from their lives.

Nobody ever seemed to look at those.

One woman, a Veteran, had her entire door decorated with items related to her service.

It was beautiful and impressive. But I didn’t ever stop to examine it closely. And I never saw anybody else look at her door, either.

I thought of all this as I was watching the news this morning.

If you were an alien and only got your information from the media, you would think that we were a quarrelsome species indeed.

With rare exception (let’s say weddings and Good Samaritan rescues) all us human beings seem to do is criticize, and fight!

We certainly don’t celebrate the daily, ordinary, humdrum things that ordinary, humdrum people do.

Things that keep our society moving.

Things that keep ordinary, humdrum people alive.

And doing your job brings with it a double whammy.

For one thing, most of the time, you don’t get appreciation on the job, for simply doing your job.

For another, when you go home, the family just does not want to hear it.

At dinner time, you’re not the big executive — “just Mom.”

In the end, all of us get older, and nearly all of us are forgotten — like a speck of dust in the desert, or a molecule of water in the sea.

So it’s futile to spend even one second thinking about what other people think, and whether they appreciate you.

What does make sense is to focus on the quantity and quality of your own personal journey.

Are you trying?

Are you learning?

Are you helping?

You were put on this Earth to grow.

So what makes you valuable is the now.

What makes your life meaningful is the process by which you live it.

_________________

Posted August 1, 2017 by Dannielle (Dossy) Blumenthal, Ph.D. This content is released into the public domain. Photo credit: Alexis Nyal/Flickr.

– By Dannielle Blumenthal, Ph.D.