greatness

How to recognize a weasel–part two.

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This is not really a continuation of my Beauty and the Beast review, it’s more a commentary on films in general.

I said when I reviewed The Hunger Games that the movie was trying to make you think it was good, but it really had no strong message.

It turns out there’s a lot of that going around. I just saw La La Land and it was the same thing. It seemed good because it was trying to be like an old fashioned romance, but it totally lacked morals. I’m actually surprised that many good people thought it was great.

I get why, I wanted to like it. But I kept waiting for a moment where the characters did something I could really admire, but they didn’t.

I think my Grandmother thinks I’m just predisposed to dislike every movie that recently (in the last five years) came out.

But I liked “Hidden Figures” and “The Intern.” And heck, I like “Guardians of the Galaxy.” I liked the new Cinderella movie.

I’m not impossible to please.

I am hard to please. I missed the memo when pleasing the more difficult audience suddenly became not what movie writers were supposed to go for.

Which is not to say I should just get to say any movie is bad because I personally didn’t like it. I didn’t like Hacksaw Ridge over much, but it’s not a bad movie. Some things are just taste.

But some aren’t. Like caring what a movie is actually trying to say. And if it’s not trying to say anything, then it’s smoke and mirrors, because no one can come up with a decent creation if they don’t have a goal in mind.

My sister is a painter and drawer, she never paints a picture of nothing in particular. I know some artists do to express freedom, but even they are trying to express something. I write, I never write a story or  post about nothing. My other sibling crafts, she never makes nothing in particular.

Whether you’re a good or bad artist, you can’t be an artist without a goal or a point in mind.

And a film without a real point is just trimmings and trappings over a bare framework.

But we’ve gotten really good at those trimmings.

We have realistic looking CGI to the point where most of us have seen more vibrant landscapes on TV than we have in real life.

We have actors who can be airbrushed to perfection.

We have locations to die for, almost.

We have surroud sound. We have cool scores. We have promotional ads!

What we don’t seem to have is stories. Everyone is talking about how unoriginal Hollywood is getting. I guess the directors figure if you can’t make up a new idea, you have to dress up an old one.

But lest we be too copycat-ish, we’ll throw out all the old morals the plot used to entail. Let’s have more sex, shooting, explosions, and dumb throwaway lines that will become t-shirts and memes and be forgotten a few years hence. That’s what people want to see.

Well, unfortunately, I’m starting to wonder if that is what people want to see.

I can still remember the feeling I used to get when I finished watching a really good movie. I felt braver, better, and like life was more beautiful because of that film’s ideas. I felt like I had a glimpse into something I wouldn’t normally see or think about. Every now and then I get that feeling again.

But not form these big hits that have recently come out. They just don’t do it for me. I could look every recent superhero film I’ve seen in the eyes and tell it “The Incredibles was still better than you.” And forget the romantic comedies.

Well, I digress.

I read in one book that since the Fall we’ve gotten really good at covering up our shame with fig leaves Whether they be ordinary fig leaves or designer fig leaves.

Or as Shakespeare put it “All that glitters is not gold.”

Shakespeare tells us that if we are “young in limb, in judgement old,” we will not stake our happiness on things that are shiny and seem valuable on the surface, but inside contain dead men’s bones. (Merchant of Venice.)

The fig leaves represent the way we try to cover up our shame. And our current shame as a culture is how little we understand right and wrong. A lot of us feel confused about a lot of things, so we cover it up by making movies and other things that sound good, and sound profound, but if we were to really examine them they would be as fragile as leaves and one yank would destroy the facade.

The words of Shakespeare warn us not to value things that are dead inside just because they satisfy our senses.

I look for life in a movie. Some movies are just too foolish, others are deliberate garbage, others are the result of poor writing.

We need to be able to tell, because if we can’t, we’ll admire all the wrong things. And you can’t admire garbage on a screen, and then appreciate gold in real life.

Let’s just say that anyone who takes fool’s gold for the real thing will never recognize actual gold when they see it. They don’t look the same when you’ve seen both.

And can I just point out that the people who are telling us it doesn’t matter and to just enjoy the garbage are usually the ones making it… don’t you think they have a slight agenda?

I’m basically giving you all permission to dislike popular films for good reasons. And to like good films with all the enthusiasm the youth are showing for the bad ones. That’s where the “young in limb” part comes in.

Wisdom and Passion are the two great helpers of life, and they have to be forged the right way.

That’s all for now, until next time–Natasha.

In defense of friendship.

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So, I’ve been reading The Lord of the Rings, finally, I’m almost done with “The Fellowship of the Ring.”

And so far my favorite character is without a doubt, Samwise Gamgee.

Though Aragorn and Legolas and Gimli would all be close behind.

They were my favorites in the movie, along with Eowyn, but I’m definitely not alone in that.

But Sam is the best, he’s the comic relief as well as the heat of the group. Kind of like The Flash. you ever notice how often those heart characters are also the funny ones, it’s like the heart has to make sure people don’t get too sad or discouraged along the way. This is another reason I like Spiderman.

Anyway, there’s some controversy with Sam and Frodo that’s pretty messed up.

I’ m bringing this up not to have a political axe to grind, but to address another problem with this mindset of our culture.

People interpret certain words and actions as pertaining to certain feelings. You know what I mean. A kiss means one thing, holding hands means another.

To my astonishment, I’ve discovered that something as simple as expressing a great wish for your friend to come back alive, or to survive, can be perceived as sexual.

First of all, even if this is between a man and a woman, I’d still say it was messed up to look at it that way.

Things are pretty desperate when a man can’t want a woman to come back alive without being in love with her. I. e. Sexually attracted to her.

Is that all we’re good for to each other? Meeting some sexual need? Is that the only goo reason to care about each other’s well being. Because it seems thoroughly selfish to me.

I know some kinds of love can be selfish like that. No doubt you’ve experienced that kind of love, either in yourself, or in someone else, and it’s not always the romantic kind anyway. Familial love can be just as selfish. And so can friendship love.

My concern is that we don’t know what friendship is anymore.

I’ve had friends of both genders whom I’d be very upset about if something happened to them. I’d take steps to prevent that too. That doesn’t mean I want to be with either of them. It just means that I (shock) happen to care about other human beings besides myself.

And my guess is I don’t need to explain this to you folks who are reading this, but it sure as heck seems like it needs to be explained to a lot of folks who are spouting off their opinions every where I turn.

There’s nothing wrong with having an opinion of course, just so long as it’s a healthy one.

But if you can’t even believe in affectionate relationships out side of romantic ones, that’s not healthy.

Because the amount of people any one person can have romantic feelings for is limited, but the amount of people they can have affection for is almost limitless. You can get fond of almost anyone if you know them long enough and they don’t drive you crazy, in some cases even if they do drive you crazy.

And there’s a big difference between Sam wanting to protect Frodo and save his life, and Sam not being able to go on without Frodo. (I do think Frodo could not have gone on without Sam, but for a very different reason, the Ring would certainly have possessed him if he had been left alone with it.)

It’s a very natural thing to protect your friends. If you don’t, you aren’t much of a friend, that’s why gossiping about your friends is the best way to lose them. You exposed them instead of defending them.

In fact, friendship starts from a willingness to help another person not be lonely, a lot of the best friendships come from two people who had only each other, and were hated by everyone else, or just ignored. My own parents started out in such a relationship.

And between a man and woman, that often turns into love. But it’s not because friendship is inherently romantic, just immaturely so; it’s because companionship is the best foundation for a romantic relationship to grow on. But it doesn’t happen that way every time. And it doesn’t have to happen that way for it to be a healthy relationship. I think men and women can be lifelong friends and never need to take it further than that.

In a perfect world, we could all be like that and no one would be suspicious of it.

In the Bible, King David, a man with over seven wives if I remember right, had a friend named Jonathan, and they had a bond of souls.

David said at a later time that Johnathan’s love to him was better than women’s love.

This does not mean it was homosexual at all. There’s actually a distinction David is making between friendship and sexual love. He found the one with women, but he never seemed to have a wife he really was friends with.

David is simply recognizing here that friendship love is more sweet and loyal than romantic love often is, romantic love is famously fickle and inconsistent. And a guy with seven or more wives would certainly know that.

C. S. Lewis wrote that he’d rather have friendship with his wife, forever, than be romantically attracted to her forever. Because friendship was a better thing to have.

Now, just to be clear, friendship does not mean a feeling in this case. It means a certain unselfish way of acting, putting your friend first before you. Like Johnathan did for David. It also means having someone else who is passionate about the same things as you are. As Lewis says in “The Four Loves.” IT also means willingness even to lay down your life for someone else, as Jesus himself says is the greatest love of all.

All this can be in a romantic relationship, but it does not make it one.

In fact, this kind of friendship is really the kind of love we should have toward all people.

I think stigmatizing it is a huge mistake, and part of the reason people find it difficult now to make connections with each other in any way that’s not over a screen, where misinterpretation is a lot harder.

And until we let go of this stereotype, we can’t really be inspired by characters like Sam to be noble, loyal, and self-sacrificing; which is certainly what Tolkien intended when he wrote the story.

That’s my food for thought, until next time–Natasha.

Thoughts on The Spiderman Trilogy.

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Hey folks, so the Solar eclipse is happening right now. Pretty cool right?

Of course no one will read this until it’s over, probably.

I don’t have any real thought provoking observations about it, there’s plenty of those out there, I’m sure.

It is funny to think I haven’t lived to see one of these yet, and I’ll probably live to see only one more. Of course form where I am, I can’t see it fully.

But I digress.

I really like the old Spiderman movies, with Tobey Maguire. They’re a bit old fashioned, but then so am I.

And I only just saw 1 and 2 this year. So it’s new to me.

I know they aren’t the most epic of superhero movies, but I think that’s part of their charm.

Whoever wrote those films, (Raimer wasn’t it?) knew how to use superheroes. I think the themes of all three are pretty great, even if the third one is notoriously inferior. (I haven’t seen it yet, but I ‘m not convinced I would hate it.)

The trilogy is dealing always with the question of power. with power comes responsibility. But many people don’t live up to that responsibility.

There’s the Green Goblin, Osborne, who misuses first his business power to do a dangerous experiment, and then gets corrupted by the effect that experiment had on him. He ends up going completely insane.

Then there’s Dr. Octopus, who was definitely less desperate to begin with, but was over confident about a power source he couldn’t really control or understand, he gets turned into a monster by it, but in the end his better self is able to overcome it and he saves the day. Only after he is willing to let that power go.

In the third movie there’s three villains. Harry Osborne, who is following in his father’s footsteps. The Sandman, who I know the least about, but is given power by an accident if I remember right. And Venom, who is the worst of all.

In the third movie, Spiderman is also abusing power. In the first two, his struggle was leaning what to use it for, and whether he really should use it all, this time around he is struggling with wanting more. The struggle his first two foes were falling to has finally come around to him.

Which is important to note, you will always be tested on the same things your greatest enemies are, your greatest enemies are always the ones who had the opportunity to be heroes  and chose the wrong thing. That’s why so often the good guy is the better version of the bad guy. With similar skills and personality traits, but with a stronger character. Because it’s always hardest to fight yourself.

In the end of the third film, two of the villains give up on villainy; one forgives Peter, the other just decided to stop, (I think, I’ve seen bits and pieces only) like Dr, Octopus. The third one decides to embrace the monstrous power, and enjoys being bad. Some villains do. The others all denied really being evil, but this guy got a kick out of the thrills of it. No rules, and all that.

Peter Parker finally rejects the power of the weird alien goop because he realizes it’s making him into the wrong kind of person.

This seems like a decent way to cap off the first two films to me, I think the complaint is it was too choppy and spread out over three separate stories. IT wouldn’t be the first movie like that.

but the idea at least was good. Thought the mud always freaked me out and still does, but I think it’s like The Ring of Power. IT’s supposed to scare you so you know hwy it has to be resisted. (Where did that instinct go? Now it seems like people embrace the fear and want more of what’s causing it, instead of knowing to run from it.)

Tobey MAguire’s PEter Parker had charm becuase he was really just a normal guy, with extraordinary character, given extraordinary powers at a confusing time of his life.

But it’s like it was planned. With the exception of Harry’s Hobgoblin persona, none of Spiderman’s villains are born because of something he did. Not like Ultron, or even Loki, or Hydra’s reoccurring villains. All of them would have risen up whether or not there was a Spiderman. But Spider man was given his power at just the right time to stop the Green Goblin, and later all the rest.

Actually, you could see special planning in how he stopped Dr. Octopus. Spiderman had no cause to know Otto Octavious, but by sheer luck it seems, Peter got to meet him before he went bonkers, and so was able to talk him back into himself.

And Harry was his friend. So was Venom, briefly, but not really a good one.

There’s really a Supernatural aspect to the three films. And I don’t say that just because I look for it, it was glaringly obvious form the first one.

Here’s why I think that makes them better.

If Superheroes were in fact real (and the Bible has at least one, if not more, that were real;) then I would expect their powers to be a gift from God, to protect His people from some great threat that ordinary abilities just won’t cover. If they gave themselves powers, I would expect it to corrupt them, because power that is grasped at will corrupt.

The Bible says that Jesus did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped. But Satan did. Jesus is our savior, Satan is the great enemy. Because equality with God means having all power, over all things. Jesus didn’t try to take it, it was given to him. (Read the first part of the Gospels for the whole story.) Satan tried to take it, he got cast down.

Which is precisely what happens to Spiderman’s villains. They try to harness power and it destroys their lives. But Peter is given power, and though it test his endurance, in the end he knows it’s his gift. Something he has to use for others.

I am not saying Peter Parker represent Jesus, I am not one of those people. I think few superheros even being to fit the role of a Christ character. They aren’t supposed to.

They are heroes, plain and simple. The kind of heroes we should all strive to be. Whether we can climb walls or see through them or not. Whether we can fly or shrink or shoot an arrow backwards. (By the way, I took archery for awhile, I still have serious doubts about Hawkeye being able to do that. Even if he looked first, it could change in a split second. But it sure is a cool trick if you suspend disbelief.)

If anyone but Peter Parker was Spiderman, Spiderman could not be what he is. That’s why the trilogy was smart to focus on how Peter Parker’s normal life is such a huge part of his Spiderman life.

Those are my thoughts for now, unil next time–Natasha.

The Lord of the Fantasy.

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Yesterday I saw “The Fellowship of the Ring.” For the first time.

I know, Christian; millennial; homeschooled; how is it possible I’ve never seen it before?

I haven’t read the books either (gasp.)

Honestly, the story just didn’t appeal to me. The ring creeped me out, and there weren’t a lot of girls in the story. Up until recently, I really didn’t have an interest in any story without girls in it. Girl Power and all that.

I’m sure some of you haven’t seen or read the series either, but I’m  not going to recap, I’d never fit all that into one post, or two.

The point is, now that I’ve seen it, do I like it?

Sort of. I actually only decided to finally take an interest because I’ve been reading a lot of J. R. R. Tolkien, and what better way to understand a writer than through his material?

but reading about his creative process is very interesting. Did you know he never knew much about what would happen in the legend before it actually did happen? HE always had  a sense of the story being given to him, not imagined.

And knowing some of it, I completely agree that no one could make that up. It really happened.

No, I don’t mean I think it actually did, (though If I were told it had historical base, I might,) but it would make you think so.

Genius.

And it just the thing to make you feel how little you actually know about writing.

I can easily feel smug about my talent when I compare it to most modern authors, who don’t know how to really write. If I have even an inkling more than they, I’m ahead. But next to real genius, my efforts still look like child’s play.

Nothing wrong with that of course. Plenty of good books are written n that way, and it’s not a reason to stop. But it is a reason to be more humble.

I think we get lied to a lot about our abilities. Not everything we crate is beautiful just because we created it. Being unique does not equal beauty. Some of the ugliest and most disturbing art I have seen was unique, because it was unhealthy.

See, rarity works both ways. It can either mean you have an incredible gift and are using it well, or that you are creating something horrid, that only people who have a flaw in their soul will like.

That is not an exaggeration. It is hard truth.

Now, it may be a rare person who will create such bad art, but it’s not so rare as it was, because we’ve started letting them off the hook by saying they are expressing themselves. (As if any of us would want to know the self they are expressing, if that was the case.)

But this is not a post about that, I think I’ve made my point.

But most art is on better footing. Not all of it is about pleasant subjects, but it will at least be making a healthy point about the sadness of a more tragic subject.

Tolkien’s work is very much a blending of both, and a skillful blending because he does it without shifting the overall tone of the story.

No one should read fantasy without considering its tone, and its message. Anyone who thinks fantasy is for pure entertainment and has no real life point, is reading it wrong and does not understand the genre.

See, if I may wax Tolkien-like for a moment, fantasy is far closer to real life than we think. But because we have no guard against it, we accept truth in fantasy easier than we will in real life.

Think of you favorite books, mine are all fantasy or fiction, and I know that the truth I learned from them became a part of me because it was ins tory form, and that was much easier to take in and retain than any “real” lesson would be.

The Gospels tell us that Jesus constantly used stories, known as parables, to teach the people. But only to his disciples would he explain the full meaning.

The reason he gave was that it was for his disciples to know the things of the Kingdom, but he people had shut their ears, and eyes, and hearts.

This makes more sense to me now than it did when I first heard it. Someone recently expounded on it, saying that the stories were so even the people could understand the way to have an abundant life. (I paraphrase.)

As we all know, many people consider Jesus to be a moral teacher but not the Son of God, and that being the case, they will only accept his teachings on that basis, so the stories are an effective way to convey that.

In this case, the motivations of Jesus and of fantasy writers is the same. Both wish that the people would understand them if they spoke plainly, but people don’t like that for the most part, so in order to get their message out, they use stories. Because they want people to have a better life, even if they stubbornly refuse to have the best life.

You might compare it to how, in stories, the heroes will have the best life (if they win) but the people who helped them along the way will still have a better life than otherwise. No good author likes making everyone in their story miserable just because they aren’t the hero. (Not that some don’t do it. Check out Les Miserables, though I don’t know if Victor Hugo liked it, so much as though he needed it.)

So, the first thing fantasy teaches us is that if we want to be happy, we have to be good. That is the foundation of all healthy fantasy, because any that says otherwise is lying, the real world will prove that.

There’s plenty more about this subject to be delved into, but for now, I’ll sign off.

Until next time–Natasha.

A strong mind and a soft heart.

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Someone said recently, in a video I watched, that many people now have weak minds and hard hearts and we need more people with strong minds and soft hearts.

I agreed.

I suppose, however, that I didn’t really ponder what it meant, until I was reading “The Problem of Pain,” by C. S. Lewis. (Who, as some of you know, is my favorite author.) This book is as brilliant as his other books, but not fully developed in his style. It’s one of his earliest Apologetic books.

Anyway, I remember back when I hadn’t read any of Lewis’s books except The Chronicles of Narnia and eventually Mere Christianity, I had the mistaken idea that he was very much a reason-driven person; but once I learned more about him and read some of his other works, I found out that despite being brilliant, he was very much a believer in feelings being a guide as much as the mind.

To put it more concisely, Lewis would have favored both a strong mind and a soft heart.

The thing I noticed lacking in his non-fiction was an acknowledgement of how God affects our feelings, and uses our sense of need much more often than our sense of morality. But having looked closer, I see that he addresses that, just in a very reason-oriented way.

This appeals to me, since I hate to have things be too dumbed down for me to feel at all like I’m learning; but I have little respect for people who can’t get out of their mind and into their heart.

For me, it’s a temptation to despise people who are much less intelligent than I am, because I have never in my whole life been considered of average intelligence. I admit, I do get my share of vanity from this, but it’s no credit to me. I figure I just use the brains that God gave me, and the only reason I’m smarter than a lot of people is because they don’t use their brains.

Yet, I am not at all intimidated by people who are smarter than me in their ability to learn and retain information. Because I value wisdom even more than intelligence. (If they really are two separate things, and those who lack wisdom but have a high IQ are not really just smart idiots.)

Frankly, I don’t consider even those with Special Needs as stupider than me, because often they see things more clearly than a genius would. If anything, a lot of intelligence blinds you to the obvious. I have social awkwardness problems because I tend to get wrapped up in my own thoughts instead of sensing other’s feelings and reaction. As far as that goes, a dog might be more aware than the hyper-intelligent person.

Genius is not a bad thing, and when it comes out of a place of a lot of suffering, it can actually be a person’s link to sanity, the ability to go inside themselves and their creations instead of focusing on what’s around them.

But my point here is that intelligence is not the same as having a strong mind, a strong mind is a wise mind, and mind with a sense of humor. If you ever check out the book of Ecclesiastes, you’ll find a man who is wise, in a morbid way, but seems to have no sense of humor.

What about a soft heart?

Well, hard-heartedness is rampant nowadays. (When has it ever not been? The natural tenancy of man is to be selfish, unless he is consciously trying not to be.)

It’s a term we don’t really think about now, but it means to not let anything penetrate your heart. Neither pain nor pity nor love.

I move that technology has made us more hard-hearted. Charles Dickens would have agreed with me.

Also, being bombarded with negativity, and also propaganda. We have started to celebrate the hard-hearted; cold; and evil people of stories and real life.

You put out what you get put in.

As wrong as I think it is to admire any evil person for being good at what they do, I have to admit we’ve made it awful hard to admire the good. If someone is good, there is always some attack on their character, some dirt dug up, some rumor spread; to be fair, even the bad people get made  worse by rumors, but that only furthers the point.

Look, it’s okay to admire a good deed. I recently saw a short documentary of a celebrity (Julia Roberts I believe) taking vaccinations to a village in Africa. I think what she did was admirable, and she proved to be more of a down-to-earth person than I would have expected. (Because Hollywood seems to drive people crazy.)

That is admirable. I know nothing about Julia Roberts when she is at home, and not in front of a camera, but what she did was good. It’s good publicity for her, sure, but also for the cause she was supporting.

Getting back to the subject of a soft heart: A soft heart is an open heart, but not open to the wrong thing, that’s why you need a strong mind too. You need both.

And there is equal danger in lacking one but having the other, either way.

A soft hearted, but weak minded, person may end up supporting the wrong thing and in the end doing more harm than good to the same people they were trying to help.

But action without heart is sure to lead to an empty life or worse, one spent doing harm.

There’s plenty more to say on this topic, this post was sort of an introduction to the idea so I can reference it later without confusion, but for now, I’m done.

Until next time–Natasha.

Going back to the basics.

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I revisited My Report Card post, someone just looked at it recently. Of course, the reason I re-read it is because, as I said in the post, I need my own advice.

Disappointed again.

Boy, it’s hard not to just let this become your attitude toward life, isn’t it?

Funny story: back when I was a kid, I got disappointed frequently for awhile, and one day I got it into my head that if I said I hoped for the opposite of what I wanted, then what I actually wanted would happen. It even seemed to work.

But what’s not funny at all is how many of us still think that as grown men and women.

I realize now that my negative thinking was more likely to prevent what I wanted from happening than to allow it, but at the time I had a rather negative view of myself. It wouldn’t be the last time I felt almost like I was cursed.

If you check out Genesis, you’ll find that the original human beings were indeed cursed, but it was for trying to get what they wanted by doing the wrong thing.

The Man was cursed with thorns and thistles and constant work.

The Woman, which to us at least sounds worse, was cursed with painful labor, even though of course, it’s not constant.

As John Eldredge has pointed out in “Wild at Heart.” The curses are more than just what they sound like on the surface.

Men were cursed with futility and failure. Which I think doesn’t mean things like work are futile, or that men will constantly fail, a curse is really a lot more about your perception of what’s happening.

And don’t men feel like their lives are futile a lot of the time? And like they are failing?

So do women of course, but for us it’s even more personal, I think.

It’s not just having kids, it can seem like whatever women do, it ends up being a long and painful process, and one we never really feel ready for.

And of course there’s the part about having desire for, and being ruled by, your husband.

Relationship difficulties, am I right? Not fun.

Women feel like their desires contradict themselves, after all. We want this, but we also want something very different. Ah! Why can’t we be simpler?

Well, where’s the fun in that? But my main point is this all feels like a curse… and it is.

But not completely. Like I said, it’s your perception.

The reason I think that is because Christians like to say Jesus freed us from the curse of Adam and Eve; which is true; but not in the way we think.

At bottom, a curse leads to sorrow and suffering. Jesus was cursed if you can believe it, because the Word says “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.” Which is what a cross is made from. Major suffering.

But Jesus does not free us from having to suffer and know sorrow. He knew plenty himself, and part of the deal of being a Christian is learning to be like Jesus.

I’d venture to say 90% of our problems as Christians come from not understanding what being like Jesus entails. Maybe even more.

I like better the answer I heard from another source, that Jesus’ suffering redeemed our suffering. The thing about a curse is, it never makes your life better. (Read “Ella Enchanted.”) But suffering can ultimately make your life better, if it is in the right hands.

So in a sense, maybe my younger self was right. But now that I know this, I know that my disappointments don’t have to make me bitter, or just plain delusional. (Why do we use delusional as a word to apply to people who believe things are better than they are? IT’s far more often the other way around.)

All that said, will disappointment hurt? YES!!

Does it have to break you? No.

It might, being broken isn’t as bad as being bent. Broken is fixable.

So is bent, but it’s harder, definitely.

But once you’ve cried, or ranted, or whatever you do to feel better; it’s time to pick up the pieces.

Because as bad as I feel, and as much as  might want to quit, I’ve come to far to give up now. I’m finishing this thing.

Frankly, I can’t accept defeat because I’ve staked everything on victory.

You can’t quit when you realize what you have to lose.

And looking at the bigger picture, I see that one disappointment is not worth throwing away everything.

In a way, I needed to write this more than any of you needed to read it, because I had to remind myself of all that.

Still, I hope it was helpful to someone else besides me, thank you for reading, and until next time–Natasha.