Keystone Concepts

I've been focusing heavily on staying in the moment lately, on simplifying my often distracted mind, on streamlining my hectic schedule and allowing myself a less frantic pace.  It's working and I'm starting to feel better, if not physically as much as I'd like, at least I'm finding ways to stop demanding so much from myself emotionally.  I have a lot of tools for accomplishing this, thankfully.

One of the allowances I've made in my quest to calm my mind and heart (and hope that my body will just take a fucking clue already,) has been to indulge my Inner Documentary Junkie.  We don't have television here in the house of Vanci, you see, because A) it rots your brain, B) from what I've seen of television in the last fifteen years, either I've gotten really really smart or the rest of the planet has gotten progressively stoopid-er and C) our area is rural enough that we don't have any free television channels available and I'm too cheap to pay someone to beam into my home and ask my if my teeth are white enough or if I'd like to lose weight without trying.  So, no television channels, but of course we watch movies and we play video games and the like.  I'm not a Luddite, I'd just honestly rather read a novel if I find that I have excess time in my life.

What we do have in my little town, though, is a killer library.  And that library has a fairly extensive movie/tv series selection.  So, I've been checking out documentaries lately and DH and the DD's have indulged me by letting me watch them in the family room in the evenings - sometimes the series are good enough that one or two of the family members get interested, too!

I recently finished a rather poorly done - but still fascinating, to me at least - series on the 'secrets' of ancient architecture.  I'm happy to report that I now know far more than I will ever be required to know about the difference between doric, ionic and corinthian columns.  So I've got that going for me.

One of the so-called secrets that fascinated me the most, though, transcended cultural boundaries and seemed to show up in all of the ancient civilizations discussed were these enormous stone archways that stood for millenia over huge spans and at towering heights.  There, apparently, always has been debate about how these wide curved spans were constructed by people with marked lacks of technological advancement: how does a society with no firm grasp of potential uses of wheels manage to heft a series of two-ton blocks into the air in a graceful, flowing curve so masterfully that they'll stay in their place for, theoretically, ever?

It's all about the keystone - the load bearing, specifically shaped, precisely fitted wedge at the top of the span that, once inserted, holds everything together.  I'm not a geologist and geometry wasn't ever my thing, but my lack of technical understanding hasn't stopped my absolute respect for this concept of the one key piece that determines the fate of the rest of the structure.

So I'm thinking about my own personal keystone concepts.  I've survived an awful lot of really terrible events and people in my life, and I'm grateful for that.  I've learned from these experiences, and I'm even more grateful for that.  What I've mostly learned is that I wasn't always able to prevent the Big Bads from happening (and I'm sure I won't be able to sometimes in the present or the future, too,) but that I can pick up certain invaluable tools every time I make it through, and I get to keep those tools.

Those tools have become my go to's, no matter the situation, the ideas, concepts, learning that I can come back to and understand that yes, THIS, THIS is what works, THIS is the TRUTH.  I hold that little collection of Truths near and dear to my heart: that I am lovable, that I didn't/don't deserve for bad things or people to happen to me, that love is strength, etc.  But I've been wondering what the crux Truth is, if there is a single identifiable piece of Truth that holds all of the others to their shape.  The baseline, the square one, the universal Truth.  What's the keystone?

I think it's this:
I exist as a human bean, and that alone grants me the right to decency.

The right to decency isn't about entitlement.  I don't deserve anything more than you or anything more than I'm willing to work to attain and keep or give away.  Being in the line up, after all, does not guarantee one the right to a home run.  It doesn't even guarantee the right to a swing, necessarily.  But it does guarantee me the right to show up and to take a shake at it if the opportunity presents itself.

It seems to me that the people who've tried to hurt me have really, at the core of their behavior, been trying to take away my right to exist.  Through fear, lies, manipulations, violence, abusers have tried to convince me that I deserved less than the breath I inhale and exhale, or that I should be ashamed for taking that air.

Every time I've come back around to understanding that I didn't have to take abuse, my strength has come from my eventual understanding that I have a right to decency: which simply means to me that I have a right NOT to be hurt, or to choose to walk away from hurt.

It's sad to me when I hear people say, in response to an action of distance taken by one being abused from an abuser,
 "But she's your mother/sister/friend/teacher/father/uncle/brother/pastor/lover/husband/wife etc..." as a means of implying that, yes, this behavior is unacceptable, but some tie that you have with the person treating you inappropriately requires you to ignore the abuse.

As if abuse can be lessened or somehow condoned based upon the title or DNA similarity of the abuser and victim.  This quantification is a protection of the abuser to the detriment of the one being abused, and that's a societal sickness that's, unfortunately, socially acceptable.  But it's not a Truth.

The Truth to me, the Keystone of Truth I suppose, is that it doesn't matter who wants to hurt me nearly as much as it matters that I have a right not to be hurt.

I'm a human bean and I have the right to exist and be treated decently.
So are you and you do too.


Love,
Vanci