2003-07-29 11:36 a.m.

I mean honestly.... Life is Hard. It's not fair & the world is filled with stupid people or mean people and heartache and dissapointment. Then there's always the wild card of stuff that just happens like flat tires and bad weather and accidents and injuries. And lots of people just seem to end up in Poor Me mode. Not that there isn't a time for that. We all need the down time & the days where we just feel sad or angry. Because we need to feel. Then when you have the great days when we feel happy or excited or just plain good.

And you see so many people get stuck in the bad place. And its sad. It's so easy to sit back and blame others for your problems. Hey, I'm fat, I should go sue McDonalds! I don't need to change my eating habits and maybe exercise once in a blue moon, cause it's McDonalds fault! Hey Mr. X doesn't like me because Ms. Skinny was standing there. How dare she be skinny? It has nothing to do with the fact that I'm pushy and obnoxious and belittle others publicly to make myself feel better! It's all because She was there. Please!!

Introspection is hard. Change is hard. And no one should be immune because NO ONE is perfect. We all have faults. We all say and do things we shouldn't. We all have habits we should change. Myself included. I've been reading Moe's diary lately about her Grandma having cancer. And Moe's an adament anti-smoker. And it would be easy for me to be defensive or get mad at Moe. But that would just be displaced anger. Because I'm actually angry at ME. Smoking is horrible and I know better. I need to quit and I haven't. You know why? Because it's hard. I'll have withdrawl with headaches and crankiness. So instead I stick with the greater of two evils. And when I get cancer I'll have only me to blame.

So by me ranting in all of this I'm not trying to say that I'm better than anyone else, because nobody is. We're all responsible for our own lives and people are just people. The color of someone's skin? Unimportant. The culture they were raised in? Very important because it influences who they are, but it's not something to joke about or make fun of just because you don't understand it. It's an opportunity to learn more about the vastness that is life. Cultures, moralities, speech patterns, food preferences, all these differences might be scary and overwhelming but they're what makes the world go round. And someone's waist size, be it 20 inches or 40, doesn't mean jack squat about who they are as a person.

That ended up in a much different place than it started out in. So I'll just end with a quote, written by Joss, spoken by Buffy to Angel when he was ready to committ suicide, from "Amends" - Season 3:

"Strong is fighting. It's hard and it's painful and it's every day. It's what we have to do and we can do it together..."