One of my favorite pages on Facebook is called “Zen to Zany”.  If I didn’t know better I’d swear that more than a few of

Who are “they” that “say”, and why do I waste so much time listening to them???

the postings are directed specifically at  me. Often it’s a boost right when I need it most; other times it’s a right-on-target zap that makes me flinch and ruefully acknowledge the truth before making some necessary (and usually long overdue) changes. The post above provided me with a mixture of the two, and impressed me so much that it’s become my desktop wallpaper (with a flamboyantly purple border to match the lipstick).

Which brings me to the subject of today’s sermon:  Who in blazes are THEY, and why in the name of all that’s unholy should I (or anybody else, for that matter) give a rat’s ass what THEY have to say about…well….anything?

To me, THEY bear a striking resemblance to the mean girls who made my life a misery in junior high school, swooping down like harpies on any deviation from what “everybody else” (according to them, at least) did/thought/wore.  Speaking for myself, I already did my time with those vicious trollops, and I sure as hell don’t need that kind of influence in my life now.

THEY also sound like The Committee in My Head, that unwelcome, fear-mongering Greek chorus I hear when I’m about to try something new/different/challenging. In fact, the two are so disconcertingly similar I sometimes wonder if THEY  put their larvae into my ear, like Khan did to Chekhov in the Star Trek Movie “Wrath of Khan”  (warning: this scene is not for the faint of heart), and the damned things reproduced.

Since it’s not likely THEY are going to obligingly disappear any time soon, I figure it’s up to me to decide how much effect THEY are going to have on my life.  As a start, I’ve adopted a few mantras:

• Just because THEY talk doesn’t mean I listen.

• Life ain’t always about “what if”—sometimes “why the hell not” works a whole lot better.

• Haters gonna hate.  Let ’em.

• The dogs may bark, but the caravan moves on.

On that note, will somebody please help me down from this soapbox?

 Take care, all!

DF