Choices

After reading Sketches thought provoking post which touched on drugs, hardship and abuse, I found myself thinking about choices.

When we're young we're influenced by a lot of complex factors which can be difficult to unravel at the time.

Speaking from personal experience, I had socialisation from my parents, schools, 'friends' and the wider community. My parents had strong feelings of pride, expectations of career paths and specific ideas about how they wanted me to develop. At school, I learned a little about education and a lot about abuse. I suffered peer pressure as we all do (all manner of beasties here) and then of course there was everyone else (wider family and society).

In addition to all the normal stuff, children are sometimes exposed to abuses and cruelties that they really shouldn't see. While trying to understand these alien experiences we can easily be subject to extreme feelings of anger, stress, worry, and self doubt which can be potentially destabilising.

And of course life is transient. Our developing state of mind can change radically over weeks and months because while we are young we are continually striving to make sense of all these influences and also develop within ourselves.

The older me has learned that feeling proud is something that comes from positive energy and is simply about a personal reward I get for seeing a person or an idea develop. When I was younger I had a kind of desperate pride. A destructive pride that could forgive cruelty and excuse all manner of ill deeds.

For myself, there were periods when I was terrified, in a way I simply can't describe, to just walk out of my house. I ran away from home when I was 12 and someone (how can I say this safely ...) who had a very strong influence on me, was committed to a psychiatric institution for a considerable time. I had to grow up and experience all the normal pressures with these (and other) background influences but I don't consider myself to be unusual or particularly disadvantaged. We all have ghosts buried somewhere from childhood and many people have grown through far worse.

All I'm saying in this bit is that when we look at people, things aren't always as they seem. When I hear or read about cases of abuse, drug addiction, violence involving young people, I don't find myself judging or rationalising. How could I when I don't know the full context?

So, what's my point?

When we're young we don't have a lot of wisdom to spend when making choices. Sometimes our choices are made as a result of confusion and reaction to difficult events.

I don't see anything today that will eradicate hardship, drugs or abuse. But I feel what's important for the individual is what happens after these experiences. It's how we extract ourselves from this that defines us.

It takes wisdom to choose the right path
It takes strength to come back after having chosen the wrong path.

I'd like to conclude now but I've run out of spoons and lost my thread. I might re-read this tomorrow to see if it made any sense.
..
It's tomorrow, I re-read it. The writing is awful but I'll get confused if I try to change anything so it's staying.