Yesterdays quote was by Howard Thurman. He was an influential author and the first minister of a fully integrated church in the American South. He was a descendant of slaves in the U.S.
About his his quote "Spending your days on the ends of strings somebody else is pulling"; this is something that I have done for a lot of my life, probably a lot of us have. We all do it as children, we really don't have a lot of choice and during those young years we need someone to meet our needs and keep us safe. As life goes on we do it with schools, teachers, peer groups and the entire social system.
After that a lot of us do it for our employers. We justify and rationalize our actions and our boring, repetitive days while we make enough money to keep our families. We become part of our communities through Church's and other organizations. We adopt these policies and beliefs, even when we disagree with the dogma of these organizations we usually don't voice our own beliefs. We don't "rock the boat". Rocking the boat can have serious, scary consequences; we can be ostracized and shunned by the peer group we have embraced.
As someone who has rocked the boat quite often, but not nearly as often as I should have; I know the feeling of being shunned and avoided by others. One of the advantages of being A 70 Something Woman is that it really doesn't matter that much anymore, not that it ever mattered that much to me, but I played nice most of the time and conformed when it felt like I had no choice.
I spent to much time: "Spending My Days On The End Of Strings Someone Else Was Pulling".
Thank you Karen for sending me this quote.
Afternoon Thoughts
Friday, May 4th, 2012....1:08 p.m.
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