I play mahjong on the computer.
It just occurred to me that the program I prefer has a feature that I love. It ends the game and tells me when it is hopeless to go on. Oh, if only life offered such surety! To know when to give up, what a boon that would be. I don’t give up. I will probably never give up. I know how to cut my losses, which is a completely different kettle of fish than giving up.
I remember when I chose my kids over my career. It was a choice forced upon me by circumstances beyond my control. A person can put themselves at risk to accomplish a goal, but it is quite another thing to put innocent children at risk for the same. I had stayed the course until the last few disastrous months, where others had fallen by the wayside. Then a cluster of events piled on me like a head on collision with a freight train, and my children were at risk. The choice was clear to me, I chose my kids. Not that the children knew or cared, they didn’t, they still don’t. Would I make the same choice again, sure I would. Would I like it, hell no.
When the disastrous circumstances were crashing through my door, I was told by a few people to “not give up”, referring to my career. What on earth were they thinking! (That is not a real question, their mindset is not one I want to spend any time trying to understand. I didn’t respect them then, and I don’t respect them now.) There was nothing on earth that was worth sacrificing my children for, nothing.
But wouldn’t it have been wonderful if I had known before investing 14 years of hard work and sacrifice, that it would come down to a simple, sudden choice. Also, success and failure are not black and white or binary, they are prone to grey scale and to parallax.
My children survived, and now thrive.
Sometimes I think a kind and reliable “you can give up now fairy” would have come in handy. Ah, but would I have listened? Very likely not.
I really enjoy this mahjong game.
Worldly Distractions
Weather
2°C
Date: 3:00 PM EDT Saturday 7 April 2018
Condition: Partly Cloudy
Pressure: 101.2 kPa
Tendency: Falling
Temperature: 2.0°C
Dew point: -10.7°C
Humidity: 39%
Wind: SW 25 gust 38 km/h
Visibility: 24 km
Quote
“For you to be successful, sacrifices must be made. It’s better that they are made by others but failing that, you’ll have to make them yourself.”
Rita Mae Brown
Movie, Ghost
Ah, Maggie, we keep wanting life to be tidy, but if it were, we’d be bored.
Wendy I sure think I want life to be tidy… 🙂
It hasn’t been tidy, and it hasn’t been boring, certainly not boring, has it!
So true. So very true.
Hey Birdie! Boredom isn’t one of our problems!
No boredom here, either!
I cannot remember ever being bored. Even when I am just sitting still and not doing anything, for some reason I am not bored. I am at repose. Happily.
My neighbor plays mahjong down at the Senior Center in town and she loves it. I looked it up online and could not make any sense out of it so never tried it. The most I do for “games” is one nightly Solitaire game on the tablet when I get in bed. I always win. Well, I lied. Sometimes I give up and turn it off but over the last 5 years or so that I’ve been doing it every single night, that has only happened maybe 4 times.
Joan, busy minds and bodies!
Bex, I was bored during the seven months I spent lying on my back during my third pregnancy. The doctors said my baby, now my youngest daughter, was not a “viable” fetus. To hell with them, I lay down and didn’t get up until I gave birth, several weeks overdue. Man, that kid is a lot more than viable!!! Feisty doesn’t half cover it. But lying there alone all day during the week, unwilling to sit or stand and risk losing the baby, I did get bored from time to time. Reading is hard when you have to hold the book over your head! TV is OK, but it could be very, very boring, even back in the 80s.