Quoting George Washington Carver

"How far you go in life depends on you being tender with the young, compassionate with the ages, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these."

I took my mother to the doctor again last week. We go every Wednesday to the wound care clinic where they look at her wound, poke into it with a metal stick of some kind, stick a stick into it to measure its depth, and then probe it before stuffing it with something called Prisma and bandaging it back up again. Every Wednesday she goes through this process. Not to mention the nurse who comes to the house every other day of the week to do the process at home.

Last Wednesday I got up to drive her to the clinic. I was nauseous from the time I ate, I wasn't feeling well, I was tired, and I was quite cranky. Phil had just gone back to work this week, and Mariana wasn't adjusting well. So needless to say, I was not feeling very sympathetic to my mother's pain. I think sometimes I get jaded by all that she has been through. So anyway, I didn't want to have to see her go through it that day and I didn't want to be compassionate, I wanted to be miserable and pity myself for how ucky and ill I was feeling.

On the way out, she had to stop in the restroom and I was waiting at the counter and I saw this bright yellow calendar, just a random flyer they give away. At the bottom was the quote by George Washington Carver.

I have been young and am young, I will be aged and am aging (though I know I'm still very young, technically we are all aging every moment), I have been striving and am always striving to accomplish some goal in life, I have been weak, and I have been strong. I have been and will be everyone of these over and over again in my life. Odd how soon I lose sight of that fact. It takes so little of us to remember to keep those around us and their pain and circumstances above or even at level of our own. How very selfish of me to even consider ignoring my mother's pain because I want to wallow in my own. I would never consider putting myself above my children, as my mother has always put our pain above hers. Why then was I not willing to do the same for my mother? Even for an hour of the day?

I like to think of myself as a loving and caring person, but even I need to remember to look at those around me and continue to be tender, compassionate, sympathetic, and tolerant at all times, and not just when things are well for me. I challenge everyone else to do the same.