Cycling

I have another working theory, and this one should not piss you off any conservatives. Well ... hopefully it won't. I repeat, this is a working theory only. It's just sort of been playing around in my head.

Some people go through life and can completely live in denial or whatever and cope with it. Like a lifetime alcoholic or a girl that stays in troubled relationships all her life because it's too much work to get out. Others, can't. They live in almost a dichotomy as they know something is leaving them unsatisfied but can't seem to put their finger on what. I think it's a search for their own inner peace. Often, I believe, the period after a breakup is a very good time for introspection and self-analysis, but few take advantage of this opportunity as it is easier to substitute. It's easier to not have to deal with the hurt and the pain and the rest. It's easier to avoid. I know because I do it a lot.

I think everyone has the potential to learn and grow and I think there are road signs along the way that say, "Hey look" but I think it's a question of desire, and an ability to recognize what you are seeing. A person has to see the road signs in order for them to actually have an impact. I knew a woman that could claim, and genuinely believe, that her husband never beat her children while not 100 feet away, her husband was beating her children. There has to be a recognition of a problem before anything can possibly ever change, and even once the problem is recognized and the person decides to start down a new path, it's easy to turn back around, often easier than continuing down this path less traveled, as you know the other path much better than the new one.

Safety is a confusing concept. We find safety and comfort in those things that are familiar. Even the things that may be better for us may prove initially unacceptable because they are different and feel uncomfortable, like new shoes. Avoiding an intimate relationship with a person you are in love with can, for some, be much less comfortable than to be in a relationship with someone you only half-way care about. The stakes are lower. To ask a person to do something entirely different, can be about the equivalent of asking someone to never use their left arm again.

Everyone is individual and unique. All will be touched by different events in different ways, and will cope with such occurrences in different ways. Perspective is the fundamental key to understanding. So long as person does not believe that anything is wrong, nothing is wrong. The woman that didn't believe her husband beat her children, my friend who convinces herself everyday that her significant other no longer uses - even when he's lied about repeatedly in the last month, the alcoholic on his fifth bottle of scotch that night, and the battered woman who has just endured and accepted the third punch of the evening, are all walking down their paths and perceive things as ok or they feel that there is just no other way, and so long as one believes this, they are right because it's their reality.