Monday, April 1, 2024

Many times it is hard to explain your life experiences to others who did not experience what you experienced

For example, everyone has their own particular brand of what one might call PTSD. I don't believe anyone is born without the trauma of birth for example. Whether you were an easy birth or a hard birth there is trauma (even if only going from a safe warm place to a colder not so warm place and crying at the changes and missing your mother. From then on we all have much different experiences.

So, when I try to explain my experiences to people who didn't share the exact same experiences I did it is going to be hard for them to understand.

For example, I found that having whooping cough and a concussion with seizures at night from age 10 to 15 took away my possibly "Normal?" Ambition in life and gave me instead the mind set of a "Survivor" instead.

What is the main difference of an Ambitious person and a "Survivor". From the outside they both might look the same by someone looking in.

However, the Survivor is more about "looking for opportunities to survive" than anything else. For example, looking for a career where you do just one thing the rest of your life might not be what a "Survivor" is interested in. Instead, not being sure of anything in life because of one's illnesses that one "Barely" survived makes one less silly even though one might still be playful at times they are no longer silly about anything because of what has happened to them.

A Survivor is maybe more practical and less connected to idealism and more looking like I said for "Opportunities to survive". They might also be interested in things more ambitious people might not be.

My experience of life as a baby and child and young adult was "Overwhelming" in an extreme way. It's not that other people don't feel this way too, it's that by the time I was 21 I was exhausted already from just trying to survive to even live to be 21 years old.

So, psychologically I was ready to retire in many ways by age 21.

First I had been working part time since I was 10 years old when I got my first Newspaper route that I delivered on my bicycle.

Next I remember working as an electrician's helper with my father starting around age 10  on weekends. By age 12 I remember working whole summers with my father in his Electrical Contracting business in Los Angeles County. By age 16 or 17 I drove one of my father's truck with an electrical utility body to work. After my first stint in College I remember driving as an electrician a big 2 ton Electrical Contracting Truck with a floor shift all over Los Angeles. I can remember driving through the heat without air conditioning then in 1969 with my shirt off because it was so hot with the windows down then on Los Angeles Freeways.

Then I remember wanting to move away from the big City of Los Angeles where you can drive 100 miles and still be in one of the cities joined to each other in Los Angeles County and Orange County all the way out to San Bernadino County and Riverside County.

So, the point I'm trying to make is that I was trying to survive my life usually and not necessarily interested in Getting rich. I wasn't really interested in that at all until my 40s and by 50 I almost died from a heart virus.

So, even thinking about getting rich not until my 40s was about thinking about "How am I going to survive after my 40s and 50s?"

But, all of these things are hard for others sometimes to understand I find if they were raised in an easier life than mine.

I'm not saying I had a hard life in many ways I was very fortunate.

But, the biggest problem I always faced was: "Is it worth it to stay alive through anymore suffering?"

And the answer was: "Yes. If I'm married with children it's worth it to live through all this stuff for them."

By God's Grace

No comments: