Who Decides?

When is enough, enough?  And who decides what this random number is and when it is reached?

I watched a short video yesterday about "normal."  What is normal and again, who decides what normal is?

In my world.  I'm normal.  This is my normal.

In my world.  I make the decisions.

In the past, I've been known to let "others" and "them" decide for me.  Make my decisions.  Define my normal.  Define when my enough had been reached.

This isn't the case any more.  When it comes to my decisions, I make them.  When I am given information, I think it over, I allow time to process and I make a decision. I make a decision on what is best for me at that moment.

That doesn't mean that tomorrow, a year from now, or sometime in the future, I might change my mind.  I might even gather more information that I then process and based on that point in time, I might stay with my previous decision or I might see that it is in my best interest to move in another direction.

What is currently on my mind is death and grieving, but there is also relationships, mental illness, physical illness, emotional, spiritual illness that come to mind when I consider this.  There are so many aspects of our life, so many times that I've heard someone say to me or to someone else, "you just need to get over that" or "it is time for you to move on" or something along that vein.  And really who are they to say that it is time?

There are many people that deal on a daily, moment by moment basis, with mental illness, pain and suffering of many kinds.  Some days these illness's take over their mind and they are unable to function the way they'd like to function.

Even with grief.  I was talking to someone recently that had lost someone in their life and someone else said to them "it is time to clean out their room, the closet and get rid of everything."  And the person I was speaking to got really upset over the thought of this.  They simply were not ready to spend that emotional time, in the room, going through all of those memories.  They weren't ready.  They had not reached the time to do this.  They were still going through the grieving and knew they were not ready.  They had not reached their "enough."

I have friends that have emotional and mental illness, they text and call and message and email the many people in their lives.  When they are able, they reach out when they need to make contact.  Sometimes they aren't able to do that.  And when I don't hear from them, I reach out.

When they reach out I do my best to respond to them.  Why?  Because that is their normal.  They haven't reached their enough in that moment.  Why?  Because that is their normal.

I guess the bottom line that I'm getting to today is to be kind, be patient, be compassionate, be love.  For we are all dancing as fast as we can, doing the best we can do, and being the best that we can be in this moment.  In this moment, this is our normal.