Settling Is Not An Option

Originally Posted 29 Febuary 2012

Settling is not an acceptable option for me. I teach my kids as I have learned, only accept the best a person has to offer. It does no good to settle for what someone else tells you is the most you can expect. I will be the judge of what my expectations are of people. I am not a “have to win everything person” or a “can’t stand to lose person”. If I or anyone else gives it our best and we fail, we must treat the failure or short coming as a lesson to learn from. When in school, we had to study in order to pass the grade because we were not born knowing it all. Life is a lesson learned everyday, we cannot just be acceptable to doing things half-assed and life is peachy because of it. I see too many people in my life that really could give a shit about their interactions with other human beings. Why? How does a person get to the point where they have given up on trying. No, this is not a motivational piece inspired by something phenomenal that has occurred to me in a dream. I wish, no such luck. It is, however a wake up call because I am sick of being told I need to accept everything in life because that is all that is offered.Are you a part of the problem, or are you a part of the solution? My dad told me many years ago that those who depend on someone else for things in their life will become so dependant that they will never be able to swim back out of the wirlpool tide. Is this true? Yes and no. If you start accepting less of yourself and the people around you then you are destined for failure. Once you realize that you don’t need to accept the below par behaviors, you have achieved the first part of realization. Now what? Act upon it? Sit on it a while? Or do like most people do, bury it. People have an excuse for every single thing in life. Take the time sometime and just ask the question “WHY?” And apply it to anything and everything. You will be very surprised at the answers you will get. What you thought you knew will start to get chipped away until finally………………..KAAABOOOOMMMMMM, and all the crap you held sacred fades away and you begin asking “WHY” did I always accept someone else’s second best, “WHY” is second best all I ever offered? Think about that for a bit, it sucks, it hurts, but it is worth digging down and finding the root of the problem. Problem? Who said there was a problem? I say there is a problem. Personally, I have zero tolerance for crap like this. What amazes me is I used to think it was me, that I demanded to much out of people, but then I realized that is was not me, I was giving my 100%, yet others were falling short of the mark. The day I realized this mess of a life I had was beyond fucked, I stood back and realized I let it get that way, I accepted the bare minimum people had to offer. Now, I don’t tolerate it. Give me you absolute best or step aside because I am done with you in every way possible.

Lets look at something together for a few minutes. Lets look at one simple thing I have done to make my families and my life better. My wife and I both work, together our incomes were not making ends meet. I was satisfied with that for many years. Looking to others for something to make it all taste a little better. Then, I applied for a second job. I didn’t want a second job, but a second job became the only answer to the question of how do I make the ends meet. Luckily for me, I spent some time at school and became a TABC licensed bartender. Luckily, I am a good bartender. And, yes, luckily I stumbled into a job totally by accident. I wasn’t looking to get a job where I work now, I was actually applying at many other places. So, did luck have anything to do with it? Or did someone finally call my bluff and tell me to put up or shut up. Truth be known, it was the latter. I was told I talked a good game, now prove I am as good as I am. So I did. Sort of shocked myself to be honest. Life is sometimes difficult that way sometimes because you can only bullshit some of the people some of the time, but you can’t bullshit all the people all the time. Just something to remember.

Now, my day job is different. For me to be able to function properly, others must first do their job properly. It happens about 50% of the time. The 50% that they failed to do their job falls back to me, low man on the totem pole, to fix it. Why do I do it? To keep my job of course. The difference is that those individuals are being paid for incompetence why I do double work. Do I care? Sort of, I get paid pretty good, I have some spare time on my hands each day, so I do it. I have created my very own viscous circle of a web that has become unbreakable. Now I get to fix it because that’s what I have always done, hold hands and babysit. However minor this is, it would be nice for people to step up and do the actual job they are being paid for. Is that too much to ask? I challenge anyone to show me in my job description where it says I must coddle, babysit, and hold the hands of those not qualified to fulfill their obligations. I just looked, nothing. Since this is my day job which provides medical insurance and so forth, I move forward, begrudgenly, I move forward. I know my shit…….. and that lets me sleep at night. So, even I have to settle for incompetent behavior, not by choice mind you. Where I differ from most is I recognize there is a problem. As I am not the boss, I cannot control others destinies in employment. Do I ask too much?

It would be wrong of me to think that the rest of the population is full of blithering idiots, because I know that’s not true. What is true, in my simple observations, is that we all settle. We all accept things the way they are. Some recognize it and some just go on in life oblivious because they just don’t care. Perhaps they have given up. Perhaps their willpower has been drained down below a correctable stage. I am stingy when it comes to money. I believe I should get the best for my money, whether it be a product or service. I consider that I work hard for my own money, someone needs to work twice as hard to pry it out of my hands. We stopped going out to eat because I got tired of crappy food and crappy service. For the prices of a meal that a nice sitdown restaurant (minus the golden arches) charges nowadays, I should expect to have my taste buds doing cartwheels off of other peoples tables. My money should be trying to jump out of my wallet in gratitude and appreciation of a job never matched by another human being providing me service. Neither ever happens. Quite the opposite, I usually leave a restaurant pissed off, hungry, and wanting to just go home. My wife tells me I expect too much out of people. I suppose she is right, but not totally. I expect my wife to be loving to me and my children, and let me tell you, she outperforms all of my expectations all the time, hands down. She has never, in 14 years of being together, given me a reason to ever doubt anything about her. None. How many people can say that? No, we are not perfect. But we do act like grown ups, which always helps. We, together, work damn hard to provide a good home for us and our children. We both grew up wanting things our parents could not afford, my children do not have that same concern. Is it all about the money you ask? No, its how you spend said money. Buy stupid shit and you are left empty handed most of the time. Me, I am a saver, I am always socking money away, always. Why? Because the “rainy day” might be right around the corner and I would like not to have my pants down around my ankles when I get that surprise.

I guess, in the end, I just want to know why we humans just “settle” for whatever is presented to us. Have we evolved so far that our needs to survive have been replaced with just hoping we will get enough scraps tossed at us? What would happen in our world if no one would say “I Can’t”? Just think about that and I will get back to you another time. Thanks for listening, I don’t feel any better now, but I am hungry.