D. A. I. L. Y.

We know what it means to me. I've been keeping journals off and on since I was 18. Earlier even, except when I stopped because my family had broken my trust more than once by reading my journals and then punishing me for things I had written. This was my stepfamily. I never got an apology; I'm not sure those people understood the meaning of private. But after I left my family's house, I resumed. And then there was that time when my first husband ALSO broke my trust and read my journal (though with him, he might have been reading them all along without telling me).

What is it with you people!!? Doesn't anyone know what a violation that is? Perhaps that's my attraction to blogging. If I put everything out there first, no one has the opportunity to violate my trust. Besides, at this point in my life, I could care less what anyone's reaction will be to what I write.

Except for those violations, I've been consistently inconsistent with my journals. There were times when I wrote every day - sometimes more than once. And then there were times when I didn't write at all. My drive to write was dependent upon my needs during any given period. But this "daily writing" I'm supposed to do as a class assignment is new to me. Suffice it to say that even if I don't put words down every day, I do think about the things I would write had I the extra half hour. Perhaps that ability - the ability to write without writing - is also part of my legacy of violaion.

To pick up where we left off. I figured out the mystery of the Indian woman. First off, it's annoying to be manipulated and that's exactly what she did to me. She pegged me for a sucker and used conversation to get me to pity her. Especially annoying because I consider myself a savvy New Yorker, bombarded by panhanders all the time and not easily suckered. But that night, I had exercised my savvy, decided that she wasn't a drug-abuser, and determined that, even if she wasn't using the money for a bus ticket, that I was willing to give it. Part of my definition of true altriusm is that one should just simply give, without conditions or expectations. Too bad my logical thought processes were a bigger scam than the Indian woman's. Once I saw that I was bothered by the fact that she wasn't on the bus, I knew I had to rexamine my thought processes. As Jung says, after all, ""Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate."

Turns out I was bothered because I was bothered, if that makes any sense. That for all my talk about true altruism, my interior motivations had really been annoyance and the desire to get rid of it, and not what "should" have motivated me - true altruism. So, while it may be true that I don't allow "shoulds" to rule my life, that doesn't mean I'm not plagued by them.

Speaking of shoulds, please replace all references above to "Indian woman" with "East Asian" woman. Thank you.