101124 Letter to Melanie Trecek-King

Hello Melanie. 

My name is Ruby.  I live in Alberta Canada.  I just discovered you thanks you recent download video on The Thinking Atheist.  I think what you have to say can help me.  

Technically, I'm a Post-Christian Agnostic Atheist.  But I have been leaning heavily on the Agnostic part of that label  because I am surrounded by certaintists.  There is very little room in my off line environment for conversations with my people.  Because of their certainty, I am left to wade in the unknown.  I can't afford any confidence in a different narrative than the one I was raised with, I can only imagine and wonder about the possibility.  I have no platform and will endanger my relationships if I come out of my closet with any intent to declare such things like Genesis is a myth, Jesus was Jewish, not Christian, and even the Earth is not flat.  These seem like simple things, and I can embrace them in my own space... but I feel like I have to enable people's beliefs, even when they contradict my own understanding of life. 

I'm in my mid fifties.  I have learned to take care of people and put myself and ideas on the back burner.  I can be honest and authentic in my blogs, but not in my daily conversations with people.  I feel like I need to protect them.  I am thankful that I can write my thoughts and questions... I just can't share most of them.    

I am thankful for voices like yours who understand the nuance of life.  I want to listen to more of your content on Youtube.  Thank you for putting your voice out there.  I can't thank you enough for the encouragement I have listened to so far.  

Thank you.  

Ruby Neumann

Calmar, Alberta, Canada

(written October 11, 2024) 

Melanie's Website 

100524 MY quotes from last week

* There are plenty things in life that I can't live without. Having an explanation for life itself, isn't one of them. (October 5, 24) 

* I would like to have the opportunity to meet one human being where I don't feel like it's my responsibility to protect them from me. (October 3, 24) 

* The greatest loss is not losing a child. The greatest loss is the greatest loss for you. It might be your child, it might be your partner, it might be your sibling, it might be your cat. There is no universal "greatest loss". There is only your greatest loss and even then there may  be more than one greatest loss for you.   The lesson is... Don't compare losses with others and don't compare losses within your own life's journey. (September 30, 24) 

082224 It's not about evidence

It's not about evidence. I don't have access to the evidence. So many people don't have access to the evidence.  It is about the narrative we embrace, most often without choice. 

I was given a narrative as a young child and I embraced that narrative for a long time. After considerable thought, I could no longer embrace that narrative. 

Now I embrace a new narrative because that is all I have access to. I still don't have access to evidence. 

Even if I had access to evidence, I would still need a narrative, because stories are easier to hug than facts.

(written August 22, 2024) 

082024 No need to imagine.

In a world of so many possibilities,  I often find myself wondering why people plant themselves along the highway of life and don't go any further.  New ideas to them are either frightening, threatening, intimidating or seemingly impossible.  

I have done something over the course of my life that, in a way I had hoped would help me to not be so attached to the things and people in my life.  I would often imagine what life would be like without them.  That exercise wasn't all-inclusive.  I never imagined what life would be like without my sister.  I imagined my parents dying, I've imagined my husband dying.  What would it be like for me to go on without them.  I thought I needed to prepare myself if and when that happened.  But my sister was always a constant in my life.  Even up to the last year of her life, I still believed that she would outlive me.  I had no need to imagine otherwise.  But today... I am living without her because she died thirteen months ago.  

My mother has "Jesus" in her life like I had my sister.  "Jesus" is her constant and she has planted herself beside him in the highway of life.  She has no need to go any further.  She has no need to imagine life with him.  

And then I come along.  I dared to go further.  I dared to keep walking I dared to discover that, indeed, there is a world beyond where my Mom is.  Life does go on without "Jesus" at least for me it does.  So I wonder now what she sees.  Her whole world is filled with "Jesus" and yet I have travelled past that reality.  Does she still see me now? 

(written August 20, 2024) 

071124 Swimming with the other fish in the ocean.

"I'm not looking for another "thing" to embrace, as much as I am looking to figure out how to swim with the other fish in the ocean and not become them." 

(Written July 11, 2024) 

070424 Words I don't need to share with my mother

A text from my mother after we had an argument about swearing.   

"I love you Ruby, That is why it hurts so much."

The reply text I wanted to send her, but deleted.  

"I think the reason "it" hurts so much is because I'm your daughter.  Love is what you do because it hurts, its not the reason for the pain.  Your are the reason I exist.  That's a lot of responsibility to carry.  I don't know what that's like.  I wish I could understand, but I never will."  

Maybe a psychological response isn't necessary.  Maybe it's okay to let my Mom have the last word... even if I think it needs adjusting.  

What hurts my Mom? ... so many things.  Maybe the argument about swearing wasn't helpful.  I came away with a little more awareness of who my mother is.  Maybe I was personally shocked that the word that started it all didn't seem that offensive to me.  So I got defensive.  I even told her I could make it worse... Like that would help.   

I still want to understand if the discomfort with swearing is word related or emotion related.  It's been in the back of my mind for a long time.  Even with my own discomfort.   What makes a jumble of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet so harmful?  I could swear in her midst in a foreign language and it probably wouldn't phase her, because those aren't the collection of letters that she was taught were "bad".  

"It's okay to use ass to describe a donkey, but not okay to use the same word to describe someone's backside or label someone when they are being a jerk?"   I am still confused.  But I learned again that it's not a conversation to have with my mother.  

Something else came up.  

"I wish I could have asked you this stuff when I was five.  That is when a mother gets to listen to her child regardless of the questions that child asks.  Now that I'm in my fifties, I don't get the freedom to ask anymore."  

Now my questions offend, hurt and bring on tears.  If I asked them fifty years ago, the emotions wouldn't have been so elevated.  Children's questions are easier to sweep under the carpet.  

I can surmise all I want about how my mother really thinks, and I may never come close to understanding her.  That is the challenge of any relationship I have... not just the one with my mother.  

Yesterday was just an example of how my words have hurt Mom.   This whole blog is a collection of words that would hurt her.  It's why I told her not to read my blogs anymore.  They are just more words that will cause her pain... and I don't even have to swear to do that.  My honest feelings about how I see the world do more to bring tears than a swear word will.  

Maybe it's not my job to normalize certain words in the English language.  English is a moving river and changes around every curve it goes.  Some move with the river, some park on the shore and want to stay where they are most comfortable.  It can make it difficult to communicate at times, but that is the challenge we all face across the spectrum of humanity.  

I still think one swear word couldn't have caused as much pain as the anger and the arguing that followed it did.  I could have let it go after the one verbal slip that didn't meet with my Mom's approval.  But I didn't let it go.  I got defensive and didn't want to back down.  I admitted yesterday that protecting my family from me is exhausting. 

What's my conclusion?  Maybe words are better harnessed.  Maybe people are better when they are protected?  Maybe, as exhausting as it can be, I can save my honest and unbridled words for my blog.  It's much like giving the horse a pasture without the saddle and bridle to roam free on it's own for a while.  But realizing that for the most part... the bridle and the saddle are a part of that horse's life.  

 (written on July 4, 2024... Independence Day) 

062524 The Pieces of Life’s Puzzle

For most of my growing up years… right through to high school and then on in to my twenties… I didn’t think of life as a whole picture.  I was part of some puzzle. Each moment, each event, each person that walked through my life was another piece added to that puzzle.  I didn’t have a box that the pieces came in.  I didn’t have a picture with which to figure out where the pieces fit.  All I had was pieces and the surface of my life in which to lay them on.  

I get asked at the grocery lineup if I’m a senior now.  I tell them I’m a dyslexic senior (56).  Now, I am seeing the picture of my life a lot more filled in.  There are still empty pieces, but even at 56, there's not that many left to fill in.  On my next birthday, I will be the same age that my sister was when she was finished filling in her pieces.  I am going to guess that she didn’t see her puzzle as compete at 57.  

Where does motivation and inspiration come from now that I am on the upward trajectory toward sixty… and then to seventy… and then to eighty… if I can afford to or find a reason to live that long.  Life to me now is survival for my close loved ones.  I need to keep breathing for them.  As long as my mother and my husband breathe, then I need to breathe.  But breathing is harder to do now.   Life isn’t the empty unassembled puzzle I had in grade school or high school.  

I just want to point out that this isn’t depression.  I understand depression well… and this isn’t it.  Maybe, I’m not seeing the planet, right now, as a place that wants me around for a long time.  It’s given my mother 87 years and for that I am thankful, because she still lives on the farm where the loves to be.  She still gets to drive to the places she wants to go to.  She still gets to be with people that give her joy.  But there is a big difference between her and I. 

This planet is just a passing through place for her.  For me, the planet is my only home.  Everything we’ve made this floating rock in the cosmos to be, is all that I have to work with.  No dreams of heaven, or colonizing on Mars.  Earth is it.  So if Earth’s resources are aren’t enough to see me to 87 like my mother, then that is when my breath ends and I turn into a memory for a while.  

I spend a lot of time working on puzzles and in the summer… weeding and watering my flower garden.  I am working on pictures every day.  Trying to make something beautiful while I’m still here.  My mind doesn’t wander far into the future, because that place isn’t safe for me.  It wanders more to the past where I still had lots of pieces to assemble.  

I find myself wanting less and less to mingle with people who have thrown out their puzzles.  Some look at their life and see only disappointment in the pieces they have laid out.  So instead of valuing them for where and when they were laid, they throw out the puzzle and buy a new one.  I still struggle with who I was, but have no need to deny that I was someone of value, even when I was misguided and misinformed.  

Thank you for reading this far.  Today is an unknown.  I just wanted to voice my thoughts not knowing how the day will end.  I hope I will find more pieces of the puzzle and more ambition or inspiration to place them for a while longer.  

(written June 25, 2024)