In speaking with a dear friend I’d say as of the end of December
2024, we would know each other for 26.2 years—that’s marathoner-talk for you
that don’t know. But we’ve been ultrarunners. So, I cannot not claim a
friendship until it’s 26.3 years or so. For those hardcore ultrarunners it’s 50
kilometers or equal to about 31 years, that’s in ultra years.
However, I digress into such subject matter currently on the
docket. Speaking of dockets, I treat most conversations with friends and acquaintances
as if they were clients in business. I apply a form of HIPPA regulations to
most of our conversations. For the most part they remain confidential. That being
said, it seems that many get the vibe that I won’t repeat any personal
information, even if it were considered innocuous. Including turning off my
phone, or not having it around me at all as we speak. Yes, that is the paranoia
of how I usually operate.
I sense most things that are said to me are sensitive in
nature. Even if I reveal much, I make certain I reveal what I think you might
at least think about, if not repeat it. Because I believe others don’t have the
same constraints in their thinking and moral code as I do. And I know nor can I
expect them to.
Over the years I’ve had people tell me only what they wanted
me to hear and that is also why I don’t repeat it, due to the fact there might
be an untruth to it. Again, there have been people even in law enforcement
stating things to me in secret as I’d nodded as if I totally believe everything
they’d said. Yet, deep down I knew once again something was being left out or
what they were telling me was a complete fabrication to cover up something else
they’d just stated. Or perhaps a belief they’d known and had that was incorrect
that they’d refused to change.
Yet, all this I accept to a degree—and it was not because it
takes one to know one. It was because I see how people act. Which was at times
disheartening. Many times, till I was in my late thirties I didn’t want to
believe that most people lied. It got to the point I asked a trauma-specialist
about the psyche of lying and why someone would lie. Like, what would they get
out of lying? I seriously could not and cannot wrap my mind around it all. That
was in all the lying I’d witnessed. Reason being, is that at the end of the day
your life becomes a mess with lying. It’s idolatry in a sense. Yes, someone
lying is partially about idolatry. They fear what someone else would think. So,
they give an excuse and convince themselves of their lie as a truth. And besides
they think, ‘Who would know?’ I’ll answer that, I most likely would know.
Now with all this seriousness there is a comedic side. There’s
always a humorous anecdote to the seriousness in life. So, I have found. There
was an expression many decades ago that I’d heard as a Christian child. “Idleness
is the devil’s workshop.” As my parents were two different Christian religions.
Yet, it was my mother who’d said that expression. Which I couldn’t stand it,
and would rotate the saying around in my head in a comedic satirical format, to
the point I’d nearly giggle out loud to myself those times. Swearing off that I’d
ever repeat it.
As a child my goal was to be close to divinity, yet to know
the truth. The one book I could read, due to my reading comprehension issues
that back then many didn’t understand was a children’s bible. The book had pictures
in it every so often. And it held only the New Testament. At age seven I found
that to be a severely flawed book. I’ll explain.
So, back then as far as I’d known no one read the bible in
my family including our extended family members. Maybe half or so of all our
families went to church with any regularity. And that was back in the 1960s
going into the 1970s. The flaws in the bible I’d read I recognized immediately,
were the depictions of Christ and that bible lacked the Old Testament, never
mind the Apocrypha. The Old Testament being excluded truly did matter and still
does, that’s if you want to practice Christianity correctly.
However, all that I still read that children’s bible quite a
bit. I’d begun to understand faith in general. I began to realize that if you
thought positive hard enough that good things could happen. Yet I also realized
there were flaws to being human and that I must be vigilante in thought and action.
I had Sunday school lessons once a week till I was age nine. After that age my
mom, my brother and I went to church about once a month. My dad apparently
stopped going to church by the time I was age five or before then. He was busy
expecting the world to beckon to his existence, because he felt life was hard
for only him and only through his eyes. He’d felt this through his nicotine
addiction, his alcohol consumption and eventually adding marijuana intake. He
had a ‘fuck it’ attitude.
I wondered many years later one day, as a psychologist entered
my office stressed. I asked him how he was doing. We began a conversation and
what arose was that he’d despised nicotine addicted attitudes from people to
the point he’d stopped treating them. I agreed and a few years later did the
same to a point. I was exhausted from those nicotine addict’s anger brought
into my office. But now you see, they are just like there are dry drunks. There
are people who haven’t smoked, or who have now vaped or have and then quit who
still hold that ‘fuck-it’ angry attitude when they enter a room. The energy is
exhausting. If one had ever experienced a depressive parent who refused to get
treatment for their depression, it’s a similar exhaustion that arises when you’re
around them. It makes you want to run the other way from them. Their passive aggression
and controlling attitude might at times be confusing when you’re living in it. It
can also draw people in, as the addict gains power. But it is not the addiction,
nor the depression that makes them do the things they do that confuse people and
harm people. It is their idolatry, or their idleness.
Yes, idleness. That was the something my mother would state
when my brother and I would argue as small children. She’d stated, “Idleness is
the devil’s workshop.” And then add, “Go read a book.” My brother would go read
“Tom Sawyer”, “The Hardy Boys” or something to that effect. And I would go to
my room daydream, playing with my old matchbox cars and trucks or write.
And as I’d stated just before, it was the one thing I
despised as a saying as a child. Because I knew it was a sin to worship
idolatry, and to be idle. Both didn’t bold well for humanity. And this brings
me to today’s situation with our government and the POTUS currently pretending
he’s king. I asked a friend the other day, “What are we seeing? This ultimate
level of greed. Why? What is the benefit about becoming so all powerful?” He
stated, “It’s not about greed. It’s a possession.” Mind you, this person is not
religious and has the quite Buddhist level of faith in their living.
The last time he’d spoken of possession was in 2005, when my
brother suddenly went into a coma from a terminal illness, that he apparently
was unaware of having. It’s not something any of us throw around, for it is a serious
opinion. As we’d finished our conversation, I realized he was correct. Our 47th
POTUS and his side kick Musk are possessed. How did this come about? I
wondered. And as well, how was it not greed?
I began to realize what I’d repeated to our daughters one day ten years
ago. They were arguing, getting in one another’s business. My husband was
reading quietly, and I was busy cooking. It was a Sunday as I called out to
them, “Stop now! Idleness is the devil’s workshop!” my Jewish husband yelled, “Amen!
That is right Jody.” Our daughters stopped, as they heard me hike upstairs to
give them the eye. I was stunned on how powerful that saying was. Too, my
husband a different religion, totally agreed on the line that I thought was
only a Catholic-Mom one. I can state it was quite the good feeling of proper
control to get our daughters to reason with inhibiting their pettiness in their
bickering.
So now, to the destruction of our democracy. As I reflected
on this yesterday, I realized that the possession of our democracy was from
idleness. Two men who have all the time in the world and have been ‘do-nothings’.
Yes, they are bored and boring men. Who’ve been spoiled sorts, given whatever
they’ve wanted. What they both need is hard labor in prison every day. To the
point that they don’t have idle time. Their idle time will be when they go to
sleep from exhaustion from their work, wear and tear on their bodies to the
point they cannot think outside of the prison that we make certain we put them
in.---Jody-Lynn Reicher
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