Several folk have suggested...

.

.

that, while kicking back, of an evening, afternoon, morning... when they had a moment and no immediate demands... while reflecting on things... just how much they have been through, suffered, survived.  How well they made it through all these things.  So... I gave it a shot.  Yes, I am different.

Oh, no... I saw what they saw.  How many graves I have literally clambered out from, how many wounds of all sorts and natures I have endured.  How much stress, hatred, and else I have had to contend, defend against, often just suffering through with no means of immediate mitigation.

However, I didn't stop there.  I then looked at how much of that was a direct or indirect effect of my own actions.  There is where you get to the meat of the matters.  Sometimes wrong actions.  Sometimes wrong-headedness.  Sometimes calous, hard-hearted natures, sometimes other wrong, incorrect, ignorant actions, beliefs, or else from my side led to the suffering, directly or indirectly.

These...  leave large, vast, regions of experiences open for... interpretation, reinterpretation, contemplation, as an advanced study.  Not to be forgotten, left on a shelf.  Like sins, they must see the light and be considered, understood as well as possible, and, like sins, managed in some right way.  If nothing else, kept in a psychic book for review when action or contemplations occur in the future.

Too though?  There are the times when I suffered greatly, but for the truth, for the right, for what was right, good.  I may have still lost, but I didn't surrender just because I couldn't win the good through.  I took the beating(s), slights, damages, and would not relent.  These, too, need contemplation.

Was it worth paying a price for a lost but good, right, cause?  I doubt if I made a single friend, made a dime, or even felt all that great holding on, holding out.  Why, why, oh why?  And I'll tell you this.  I am more satisfied with being on the right but losing side than any of my successes.  Not to be contrarian.  But because to be on Chrit's side IS painful.  Not for the pain, because it is right.  It might well, by necessity, cost your life.  For the rightest of reasons, that is a small price to pay.

Still, there are many times I was on the wrong side.  Too many.  Rather than waste mistakes, however, I choose to learn from them.  Same with actual sin, as possible.  Yes, I contemplate my sins, mistakes, as well as my succeses.  Especially the failure successes.  Amen.

Give it a go.  You might quite like the process, the full process.  Not just the laurels, but the thorns, roses, weeds, and fuller understandings.