The most shocking thing I've heard all week:
I was talking to a friend and she told me an old friend of hers is struggling with a 4th or 5th bout with cancer, and she has a huge inoperable tumor and is too ill for chemo and things look pretty grim.
My friend is upset because a mutual friend of theirs said to the ailing woman "You need to figure out why you keep inviting cancer back into your life."
Seriously?!!!
We've all got to make our way in this world and figure it out as we go along, and I can understand that at difficult moments it's easy for some folks to look to someone materially very successful and treat them as oracles for all the ages-- you know: people like Oprah. At least, that's who I'm blaming for bullshit of this stripe that seems to be cropping up like mushrooms after a rain these days.
People speak in admonishing, hushed tones of not joking about vile or dire things because you "create bad energy" and I simply must say poppycock! These are otherwise incredibly intelligent women. (Yes, to my chagrin, I admit that everyone who has spoken in this way to me has been female, alas.) If bad things only happen to a person because they pre-ordain it by joking or being naughty or through any action or inaction, then how does this explain the lesson a newborn with a birth defect is supposed to be learning? Yeah, one might argue it's a punishment for the parents, but it's just too pat to say it's the sins of the father visited upon the child - this whole paradigm of creating the energy to welcome what you desire in life and to starve out the bad things that scare you is childish at best, and a mass-psychotic-event of magical thinking at worst.
I say embrace reality. Yes, there is pain in life and the world, and into every life a little rain will fall, but the bad things can make the good things ever more sweet.
Or at least that's the energy I'm trying to create. *wink*
17 comments:
I've got a sister who is always coming up with that stuff. I came up with a name for it a while back. Post-industrial Paganism. People like that believe in things because they sound cool, or mystical. They missed out on the whole age of reason thing. Reality is too heavy for them. They think Lord of the Rings is a documentary.
I never realized it, but yes, it's always women saying things. When my friend Carol had the 3rd bout of cancer in 10+ years and it was spreading to her bones, a casual acquaintance insisted that I let my friend know about one or another of the self help books AND convert Carol into becoming Vegan. This is when Carol started seriously thinking about her Will and possession and stuff. It was scary how vehement this acquaintance was, too; she said I was cruel not to help Carol. As the August Phlegmmy would say, meh indeed!
I have never understood why some people can't just accept that shit happens. Often through no fault of the recipient. And plegmy, when you do hear a man talk like that, he's usually walking around on a stage in a leisure suit under bright lights thumpin' a bible sayin' shit like "rise up and walk, brother for Gawdalmighty has laid his healin' hands on you through me his faithful servant. All donations accepted."
fathairybastard - "They think Lord of the Rings is a documentary." Thanks for the giggle--I'm going to be quoting you for the rest of my life.
g bro - Truly! The "friend" was just begging for a dressing down at worst, and a serious bitch-slapping at best.
meg - what a smug jerk that person was. Sounds like she had a lot in common with that other famous vegetarian, Hitler. Because vegetarians never die.
myron - Yup - bad crap is super-random - just ask anyone who's won the lottery on who gets to be in the bank while it's being robbed or on a plane that crashes. It's shit, and it definitely happens. As for those faith-healer types, they seem in love with their own body-odor - it's embarrassing to think about what their thought processes must be: either they are intentionally deceitful and love fooling people, or they genuinely believe they've got a hot-line to the Divine. Distressing.
That sort of crap irritates the bejeebers out of me. It's bad enough when people spout off this gobbledygoop about mundane things, but to say such a thing to someone who is fighting for their life, well, words fail me - what an asshole.
Yeppers, I gotta go w/ gbro on this one. She is most definitely 'cruisin for a bruisin'.
That is one of the biggest loads of horses#i+ I've ever heard.
If someone had DARED say that to me when my Daddy [the closest person I had] was going thru his last battle w/ CA they'd have been pickin up teeth.
ARGHHHHH!
As usual, I'm left with nothing to say, since everyone else has made my point very eloquently!
This reminds me of taking a hot-stone massage class at a yoga center, and reading a sign over the toilet, asking users to put down the toilet lid "in interest of good feng shui".
Had a laugh over that.
This is why I reject all forms of religion including Oprahism.
Hitler was a vegetarian? Really? Gee, I imagined him eating thick steaks bleu!
barbara - Survey says: Asshole is the proper term! Insensitive, arrogant asshole.
holly b - You know, I'd PAY good money to see you put just such a person in their place. I know you could do it.
christina - Oh my goodness - feng-shui and toilet seat etiquette? Who knew? Now _I_ have had a laugh over it, too. Thanks!
zelda - it's amazing, innit?
meg - Yeah, I'm pretty sure he was. Yeah - you'd think he'd be a big meat-eater, but I guess he didn't believe in killing animals - just humans. Let this be a lesson - vegetarians = dictators!
I don't believe all that either, but I have to admitt that I kringe every time I hear the Lance Armstrong commercial where he literally mocks cancer. I don't think that's best to do.
Some folks simply need to have an old rag stuffed in their mouths.
That's all there is to it.
*wink* at my little baby sister that died at twenty seven, weeping all the time that she never married
*wink* at her older sister that died in a month from stomach cancer
*wink* at Oprah weeping to the bacteria man about how she *must* change her bed sheets every two days
they won't be crisp unless she does that, like she does it herself
I was Oprah Winfrey in a prefious lie.
I am I said
To no one there
And no one heard at all not even the chair
Neil Diamond is an name for an idiot.
mushy - I think a healthy respect is good, but fear and reverence? Not so much.
dick - yuppers.
caroline - you've said it all, right there. I'm said you learned firsthand about all this.
This character needs to be hunted down and smacked severely about the face and head. She can then ask herself what she has done to invite this into her life.
I haven't heard this uttered directly, but I have heard stories of this sort of thing. There seems to be this mysticism some possess about the big C that they actually want to believe someone could invite it, cause it, etc. By that logic they could, perhaps, get rid of it? For the love of shoes it's not a cold! It's vile. I don't know if we can attribute this back to Oprah but it's definitely likely since it's spread like...well..a disease.
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