Angry Wookies, Waves and Ballast

It's terrible to be mad at someone; it feels awful.  Anger starts out righteous and blooms into action which are sometimes regrettable.  I was angry when I wrote my last blog post - could you tell?  I used that anger, for the first time in decades, to reason out an argument and face my indignation with reason and traction.  I have gained not only  a stronger understanding in the mind of my aggressor, but also his respect; about time too.

I have a tendency to back down in arguments.  I hit and then waffle, seething inside. Then things go wrong, and I am personally wounded, while I fix a situation to regain what I should have demanded in the first place. In addition, I feel badly since I should have stood up for what I knew to be right, and because my temper and cowardice have prevented the outcome required.  I railed in my blog post Friday, instead of arguing my point with an individual.

That said, there are some people with whom arguing is a waste of time or dangerous.  In those cases "let the wookie win" prevails.  I know a few wookies.  Mostly I try to avoid unreasonable people; they bore me. Occasionally I am one and then I bore myself too.

Loving a person does not mean "...never having to say you're sorry,"  but it does often mean loving them when they have totally lost it; as least I certainly hope it does! Those hours, days, months of time when loved ones are out of sync or out of their minds can be desperately long.  As Gordon Lightfoot said in The Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald  "Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?"  When some one you love is in that kind of emotional turmoil, which like storm waters comes in waves, or when I myself am in such a state, time moves arduously slowly. However, also like storm waters to a ship, the water remains the only way to complete the journey to safety and to port.  Love is the ballast, but it can get knocked around a lot on the journey.

 Keep floating.