Life Rules

I have rules. I call them my life rules, though I do not impose them on anyone else. They are few and simple, and help me keep my direction in life. I propose to introduce you to one today.

Life Rule: I do not work harder at fixing someone else's life than they do.

I have had the experience when, in earlier days of messiahdom, I have worked very hard to help fix someone's situation, only to realize they are sitting on their butts throwing down a cold one while I make myself crazy trying to help them. It was very helpful for me to realize that this is more often the case than the exception, for out of it came my rule about helping others. I will go the extra mile (hell, an extra TWO miles) for someone who is really making an attempt to help themselves better their situation, but if it's too much bother for them, it's too much bother for me. There are better uses for my resources.

So, with this Life Rule in mind, I turn to the foreign policy of the US. Now I am not going to cite all kinds of statistics and all that because my mind generally doesn't work that way, but I am going to say that if the US were to adopt my rule with regard to foreign policy, we might have avoided some of the messes in which we currently find ourselves, such as Iraq.

We simply HAD to save those people from tyranny, right? Did we? Really? Um, did they ask us?

Please don't misunderstand. I was very upset to find out what living under Saddam Hussein's dictatorship meant to so many; however, I am not sure we really ARE the watchdogs of the world - at least not anymore. We need to fix our own ship before we go forth to mess up someone else's.

This leads me to my point (yes, darlings, there IS one!): Are the Iraqis working as hard to fix their own lives as we (the US in the form of the military) are? Really?