The Value Of Evaluation

In a few hours, I will be riding along with a friend on a road trip to Harrisonburg VA (about 2.25 hours from here). My friend is the one doing the driving. She has been invited to be the guest speaker at a church over there (where we both attended at the same time almost 20 years ago). She asked me to ride along with her. Since someone else is driving and because my car has 245,000 miles on it in less than 9 years, it will feel good to be a rider. I don't think I've ridden in a car as a passenger for any distance over 10-20 miles in years.

Was looking back on some old blog posts from 2009 when I couldn't wait to start driving again.

Naturally, I go back and read some blog posts from the beginning just to remember and evaluate where I was and where I am. In my eyes some of those earlier blog posts were pretty naive. However, they were honest. They were naive in the fact that I really didn't research the treatment options and didn't really consider the long term effects they would have on me. I've heard my treatments referred to as "the big guns" by those in the profession. No questioning what that means, but there are questions about what effects the treatment could potentially have on me, physically, later in life. I don't obsess over those questions and they don't keep me awake at night.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, what I don't regret is that the decisions I made in the early days were based on trust in the individual who presented the options to me. I did have others along with me during some of the appointments when the options were presented, but to their credit, those that went along with me knew that the final decisions rested with me.

Since I feel good now ("Better Living Through Chemistry"), I trust myself and those that presented the options to me. Somehow, I think that presenting your trust to others is a momentum changing activity. Potentially even with someone who may have less than honorable intentions. In the beginning, when I couldn't understand why some of those around me weren't acting the way I wanted them to, several folks said to me, "The way to change others is to change yourself first. You have to decide the type of behavior that is acceptable and then you have to present it and LIVE it." They were right.

I met some folks in the process with who I didn't instantly connect. I advocated for myself when I met those folks, but I didn't do it in a adversarial manner. I used humor and some firmness, and it worked. I will tell you that there are some folks that if I encountered again, I would release some of the "hounds of Greg" on them. However, there were countless others that accepted my trust and repaid it many times over.

My focus and forward vision is a result of them.

'No government can help the destinies of people who insist in putting sectional and class consciousness ahead of general weal.''  Franklin D. Roosevelt