SANTA ROSA NEWS

LIFE STYLE CHOICE

by Nat Bloomer 

I was called lazy the other day.

I was supposed to go on a 9am hike, but it was 38 degrees Fahrenheit in my bedroom.

My dog’s water dish, inside by the door, was frozen solid.

So I called my friend to tell her I was running late because I was freezing

and I didn’t want to get out of bed. Plus I work nights washing dishes so I get home late.

That’s when she called me lazy. I said “You have a big warm house

with a warm bathroom and a hot shower waiting for you.

My motor home is freezing!  

Her response was  “Living the way you do is a Lifestyle Choice. And she was right.

It is my choice to live in a motor home on someone’s land not my own,

and work for six bucks an hour washing dishes, mopping floors and scrubbing toilets.

It was also my choice to get married and divorced twice. So I made the choice to live

in a glorified cardboard box because that’s all I had left.

And the person down the street, his house is in foreclosure because he made the choice

to get a balloon mortgage the banker talked him into. That’s his Lifestyle Choice.  

And the kid who joined the military, hoping to learn job skills

leading to a career in technology, he is now in Iraq in charge of waste management-

this consists of pouring diesel fuel into fifty-five gallon drums full of human excrement

and lighting it on fire. But that is his Lifestyle Choice.

The guy whose wife steps out on him, and in the resulting divorce and house sale

he loses ten years of sweat equity, his job, and has to move elsewhere to work in

his career field. He misses his children as much as the kid in Iraq misses his mom.

But that’s his Lifestyle Choice.

Or the man you see on the street who looks weird—he was born with fetal alcohol syndrome

and can’t quite follow social norms, but that’s his Lifestyle Choice.

You look down on him without compassion, and that is your Lifestyle Choice.

I guess I am being a little hard on my friend’s flippant remark.

It’s easy to diatribe on a quick comment made in a conversation.

But some people out there really think misfortune is a Lifestyle Choice.

Those people have a lack of compassion. I think some people are blessed

with better choices than others. Too bad they don’t realize their blessings.

Having compassion for others, now that is a Lifestyle Choice.