a new perspective and mom's fridge quote

a few days after i wrote about struggling with my priorities, a friend of mine wrote this post called "I Am Not Dead".

go to raisinglemons.com to print a copy for yourself

after reading her post and reflecting on what i had written earlier, i realized that i'm okay.  i am down and bleeding after a BUSY month. it has certainly been alright for me to lie there and bleed.  now though, it's time for me to get back up and fight
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her post also got me thinking about the quote on my mom's fridge that confused me while growing up.  the quote read

 "Never try to teach a pig to sing.  It wastes your time and annoys the pig."  

while this can be taken both literally and figuratively, i only understood it in the literal sense as a teenager.  as an adult i'm starting to see how this applies to me and my time and efforts.

the problem with teaching a pig to sing it that pigs don't sing!  they aren't supposed to sing.  that is not their purpose.

sometimes we may want another person to understand or know something that is either beyond their limits or beyond their abilities. sometimes we want to teach someone a skill that they don't have the maturity to grasp (thinking about my kids here).  other times we think that if a person just learned to do this or that, life would be so much easier for them. sometimes we want someone to change a habit or attitude that is inconvenient or is hurtful to us.

everyone has their own talents and skills.  while organizing might be easy for me, others struggle with it.  while others can craft and sew masterfully, i can't sew a straight line.

while most of the time i believe that intentions are good, you can't teach something to someone if they are unwilling and/or unable to learn it.  and besides, just because we think that someone should master that art of whatever-it-is we are thinking about, doesn't really mean that they should and we may not even be the most qualified person to teach them.

i wonder how many pigs i am trying to teach to sing right now.  people that i think i am trying to help, but really i am wasting my time and annoying them.  how much time and energy am i investing in wasted "pig singing lessons"?

i wonder how many people are trying to teach me to sing?

found this ecard here