If you’ve missed a step or two, or few, in my journey from raising hens to raising myself, I have made sense of my troubled existence. Finally.

The missing element of wonder that I experienced in childhood has alluded me for many years, being troubled by cares of this world. And raising hens. Sometimes when you care about someone else you emerge your best self, I believe.

We don’t care about ourselves as we should. One journalist observes that people will take all measures for pets they love. But, fail to take similar measures of care and concern for their own well-being.

We’ve been conditioned to believe ‘others’ and living for others is what is required. But, we are not slaves to other people’s needs.

As Scarlett O’Hara says to her sick friend, Melanie: “Go back to back to bed! You’re no good to anybody if you’re dead.” (Scarlett was rather stressed from shooting a Yankee trespasser who died in a pool of blood on her floor in the story Gone with the Wind.)

Scarlett was direct and modern in behavior and speech, like Rhett Butler. Like northerners are today. Grace, kindness, and cushion-y speech that may ease the blow of what your saying was not her gift. (Compared to my southern neighbors, it’s not my gift either.)

Anyhow, compassion can be a tool of prey. I believe the amount of gas-lighting and shaming in our culture is proof we are being manipulated by our emotions.

We all want to feel a sense of self worth. And, ‘doing good’ helps us experience that. Often.

But, telling the truth (which required for functional adults): How much ‘good’ have we all done, never to see the desired end result of happiness, in ourselves or others for whom it is intended?

There is an ocean of human needs. And, though the Liberal New World Order promised us a quasi capitalist-socialist solution to meet those needs, it isn’t working! The solution to human needs cannot be top down. No system can solve the troubles of a human heart.

So, the happy news is after everything I’ve been taught to believe since birth- that’s been reinforced by media, public schools, by politicians- as it all falls apart, I am actually excited.

Inter-dimensional urging don’t fail me now!