You could also say “Wounded people, wound people”. I thought about this while having coffee with a friend this morning. We were talking about a center for veterans in town and other places that “provide help” for veterans who are struggling. I told him I remember a few years ago when I went to this particular center. He said he had also gone there and usually walked away more upset than when he arrived. I told him I had the same experience. During our conversation I told him “Hurt people, hurt people”. I like that saying because it’s deep and it’s true. When you have people, in what ever profession, trying to help someone and those people need help themselves, it’s totally counterproductive. I remember visiting with the counselor up there and he would let me speak for a bit then start down this dark road of how he felt. He would start reliving his past right there in front of me. I was like, “Uh, dude. You’re kinda making me feel like I should be counseling you”. I’ve experienced this with other places. I was told, once, that the reason many folks who go into the field of psychiatry and psychology do it to help themselves. I was also told that many in that profession see a counselor of their own. There’s a difference between a mentor and a counselor.
Last night I had a epiphany of how many people in our communities are really negative minded. All the hub bub about what went on with the football games. First of all, I could care less. I’m not a big sports fan. I used to be but as time has gone by I’ve realized and that it’s all simply entertainment. Did you know that Super Bowl tickets start at just over $3400.00? My life’s experiences have taken me down a different road, I suppose. I’m thinking, “DUDE!!! Water filters on the Amazon are $100 a piece. That’s 34 families that could stop drinking water straight from the river and have clean water to drink”. But that’s just me. I think about bigger picture things. Back to football. I made a couple posts on Facebook about the Chiefs and Patriots game. Traditionally speaking, that Chiefs blow it in the end. They’ve been that way as far back as I can remember. They haven’t been to the Superbowl since 1969, if memory serves. I grew up being a big Chiefs fan. Had the coat, shirts, stocking caps, etc. I quit being a fan because they always blow it. Kind of lost hope. At that same time I quit watching football for the most part. Again, it’s entertainment and not life or death. The replies to my post just blew me away. You’d think I called someone’s wife ugly. “F-bombs” started flying my way. I gotta say I was a bit shocked that people took it this seriously. Some of these people are also people who tend to offer friendly advice. Again, hurt people hurting people. Here was my first post. Keep in mind, I live in southwest Missouri, so it went over like a fart in church.
As you can imagine, I started to get blasted. I was just basing my thoughts off of over 40 years of track record. After the game was over, someone had posted the following meme so I shared it. You gotta admit, it’s pretty funny. Again, I’m a duck and let stuff roll off and what happens in pro sports affects me 0%.
The following was my final post after the firestorm had begun.
Thinking about this past weekend in football. People spend too much of their time complaining about what went wrong and what’s not fair for them instead of praising and congratulating what went right for others. That’s the “Scarcity Mentality” and it’s extremely negative and poor of mind. It inhibits others the ability to have joy in positive things. Referring back to what Stephen Covey talks about in his book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change“, a lot of people get caught up losing sorely and complaining, making excuses, blaming something when their life would be radically changed if they flipped that and started congratulating and praising others. We call that, “Losing Honorably”. Remember when we were kids and we were forced to make a line after losing a game and high five the winning team repeating, “Good game, good game, good game, etc”? The reason for that lesson was to teach us to lose with honor knowing we can go back afterward and look at what was supposed to happen, what did happen and what we can do to become better next time. We do that in the military and we call those AARs (After Action Reviews).
Life isn’t fair. We going to get bad calls and we are going to lose at things. Does that mean we sit around and complain about it and blame others for our circumstances? Perhaps we should also look inside ourselves and find where the hitch in our giddy up is. Before jumping on board to be helpful determine if we don’t need help ourself. I will admit, however, the missed call at the end of the Saints/Rams game was really bad! So, what can the Chiefs learn from their loss? Next time, absolutely decimate the enemy. Give them absolutely no possibility of success. As for the bad call in the Saints game? The receiver could work on becoming faster and perfect his moves to evade the defensive back covering him. See where I’m going? Take that loss and make it a win by becoming better.
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Go Pats!!! Ha!!
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