Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away at the start of Rosh Hashanah – the start of the new year for the Jewish. This makes her, according to Jewish tradition a Tzaddik – which is a person of great righteousness — as she was given the full measure of a year.

While I recognize, the cancer she had is one of the most painful, and the most all encompassing. It is still quite sad for me when cancer takes another soul. She had literally a month of remission, before it came out and reared its ugly head again.

She was a good egg. Wiki does a pretty good job overviewing her life, and her progression onto Supreme court justice. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Bader_Ginsburg)

She was a powerful female role model. We all have our heroes, and while she was not one of mine, she was a powerful advocate for many of the things I feel passionately about. She will be missed her in corporal form.

Some days are hard. There are so many things in the news, so many struggles. Sometimes it feels like being one of the animals in a rodeo – no clear direction, and so much chaos all around.

Had some strange strange dreams last night – most of them just chalked up to Alethia Insanity.

Sometimes its hard to get into the space in other people’s heads, to try and see the world from their position …. to understand why or what would drive them to specific courses of thought, action or belief.

While its not really vital all the time, for the people that I love, it does help defuse, or explain why they react a specific way to something I have done – often with a very different intention than they understand.

I explained to a friend recently – when I had a realization and epiphany about the fact that “exercise nuts” – those people that exercise more than I can possible imagine – and enjoy it…. its just another form of “emotional eating” – instead of food, they are working out to release/free/comfort those emotions – I digress.

Explained to this friend, that we are crossing the same mountain, we are just on opposite ends of it – so when we try and describe the struggles, the landscape is just very different. The mountain is the same, the mountain requires the same tools – just the path way is different.

Its challenging to realize that in the course of everyone’s own personal struggle – to understand and help them without minimizing my helping myself. I’d imagine its much like when a flight attended tells a parent “remember to put on your own mask before you help your child” — I can’t really imagine being a parent – but I can see where for a parent, this just seems so wrong. While I can understand, the logic, the value and the truth the statement from a flight attended, its rationally and emotionally hard to stay on that course, and not just reach out and help.

My challenge right now, is being selfish. This isn’t something I’ve ever been particularly good at, I seek to balance things, and to have the people around me be happy – to sacrifice myself, or fall on my sword to ensure that the outcome is pleasant. Right now, my job is to hold the line, even when its uncomfortable and just stay on the course to get what I need.

This should be easy for me, but it’s very not. I desire to acquiesce is a perpetual struggle. I am learning. Hopefully, it will get easier soon.