'I' read more

Lucky Little

'I' Continued

I. Not the Roman numeral but the letter ‘I’. The ‘self’ word. The selfish word. Self-consumed, self-absorbed, of one’s self, of one. ‘I’. Not a bad word or at its least, letter. Not a bad word at all or should it ever be. Without adding thinking, without adding doing, without adding believing, it is not bad at all. In fact it is in essence the beginning of all of us. ‘I’. Before any, before anything else in our existence, is the birth of ‘I’. Your ‘I’ is given to you by God. Who can take away something given to you by God? Nobody, unless you let them. I searched the definition in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. I use Merriam-Webster because the last time I used another dictionary that was at the top of the list online my computer got bugged, damn bugs! Anyway, from Merriam-Webster the most expressive definition of ‘I’ to me was: someone aware of possessing a personal individuality: SELF. Right away, as soon as we recognize that we are first ‘I’ we do possess. We have. We have hold of. We, in a sense, own ‘I’. We own ‘I’. It sounds simple enough, however, it is so quickly given away. It was for me anyway. I didn’t own my ‘I’ but came to think it could only be obtained by the clues I was given by others. Sometimes they were correct and I obtained correct ownership of ‘I’ and sometimes they were far from true. “You are our son”, my parents would say. From that I gathered, rightfully so, I am a son. “You are my brother”, my brother Boyd would say. Yes it was true, I am a brother. I overheard a girl say when I was about 6, “he’s a throw away baby”. Unfortunately, that became part of my ‘I’. I am a throw away baby. Adoption can be very confusing. Another definition is: the one who is speaking or writing as I am doing now. Next to that in the dictionary it says – compare ME, MINE, MY, WE. So fast it includes WE. There is still so much to learn about ‘I’ without adding the also as deep WE. It seems premature to jump right to WE when there is so much to dwell on in the individuality of ‘I’. I wish I would have put more thought into ‘I’ when I was younger. It is the first thing we possess and should be recognized as the first responsibility. Even before any word can follow ‘I’ we should have a firm understanding of the importance of ‘I’. It is not to be given away or given up. It is not to be negotiated. There will be an entire life of others trying to determine our ‘I’, others trying to form our ‘I’ and trying their best to even steal our ‘I’. It is up to us whether we are 4 years old, 18, 32, 46, 71 or any given day in our lives to own our ‘I’. No matter where you are in life, who you are, what you are or what you believe, you possess, or better yet, you own ‘I’. You should say it out loud now, I possess ‘I’. I am in possession of ‘I’. I have, I am, I control, I am responsible first and foremost for ‘I’. Now protect it, protect your ‘I’. I just went in for my yearly physical and a dear friend of mine, like a sister, runs the admin department. I sold her a house about 9 years ago. Since coming to Texas from New York she has been beat down by her husband, beat down by this town and is now being beat down by her three oldest kids. She raised six kids! She works 70 hours every week and still gets beat down by her employer. She comes home after busting her tail on the job just to have her kids start in on her like they’re her mother. Keep in mind they ALL live in her house. Husband is finally out of the picture after years of abuse. The older kids even have their husbands living there and their toddlers! She is by all means the definition of Superwoman, and has always been until it slipped away by others defining her. She is planning to move back to New York to her roots and to some friends that she can lean on. She told me how one of friends back in New York that she has known since tenth grade could not even picture the woman he knew putting up with all she puts up with. I told her Helen, you have lost your ‘I’. Not the ‘I am thinking’ or the ‘I am doing’ or the ‘I am putting up with’, she has plenty of that. She has lost her ‘I’. I told her it’s time you got your ‘I’ back. That’s who you always were before any husband or job or kids or grandchildren. The ‘I’ that WAS who you were. It made perfect sense to her. Your ‘I’ is still gonna have to bust your tail and even take lip off your employer but at the end of the day you walk, talk and breathe your ‘I’. I am Helen. I am a rock and a mighty wave. I am independent and welcome a tough ride but I will never again lose my ‘I’ again. I toil so at the end of it I can step back and state ‘I’. Determine who you are before someone else takes hold of your ‘I’ and turns you into a ‘their’. Helen is pumped. She has a vision now that starts at the beginning, at her ‘I’. Look out kids because when she comes home today she is going to be the Helen she was long before she started taking lip off a bunch of ‘youz’! I saw today, after too long a time, the Helen I came to love in our first email when she found me while searching the internet for her Sugar Land realtor. We were like brother and sister immediately. Gentle and accommodating but with an underlying power to move mountains. Today Helen got her ‘I’ back! I love you Helen!