In your case, it is not hard to understand why, considering your past life as Himmler. [\QUOTE]
Except for another thing:
Even at the worst, I have not for one moment felt I was being punished for anything but my own decision to stay in the house and improve the neighborhood, instead of selling out and moving to the West Coast like my ex did.
Just like the rest of the people in my NA who chose to live in this area. All of us have other choices, other options. Unlike the people who live there because they have no other choices and no other options.
To me, they are the ones you should look at as being punished. The crackheads and the prostitutes are suffering, and drowning their sorrows in drugs and alcohol. The abused and neglected children playing unattended in the street. The gang members who are the latest generation of the old crime families, raised in extreme poverty.
What did they do to deserve that level of suffering? It certainly can't be anything worse than I did.
I cocooned for 3 years, but that's over now. I'm thriving on living in a bad neighborhood. I'm enjoying every minute of the amazing opportunity that has been given me to help be part of the solution by working with at-risk kids including gang members, neighborhood organizers, school officials, and the police.
To me, that is a reward, not a punishment. It certainly feels like an adventure.
But then, I have other options. I can change my mind at any time and sell the house for what I can get for it and forget that I ever lived there.
I'm enjoying the adventure too much for that.
Charles Stuart said:
Even your declaring yourself as an "atheist" is also not so hard.
Of course it's not hard to declare myself an atheist. It's what I am. No harder than it was for my mother to declare her own atheism. She was rather outspoken about it. Mom usually identified herself as a 'secular humanist', but she used the word 'atheist' as well.
I've been calling myself an atheist all of my life, except when I was briefly into Gardnerian Wicca (they lost me at 'skyclad') and then neo-paganism. Then, because I believed in reincarnation, but nothing else, I started just checking the "spiritual, but not religious" box.
Then I discovered that it is not required for me to believe in anything god-like or 'spiritual' to believe that reincarnation happens.
And when I got to that point, I stopped having a problem reconciling the whole concept of divinely-controlled reincarnation and karma and punishment, etc., with my own experiences and my own memories and knowledge. And with my own pragmatism and rational realism.
And that, I can accept and live with.
Charles Stuart said:
I would ask you not to counter-debate, in particular regarding such a serious issue, by trying to make use of sarcasm.
I wasn't being sarcastic. I meant every word. I am going to share that at my next neighborhood meeting. It will be a great stress-breaker, and I think they will find that as unique a way of looking at our situation, as we'll ever hear.
All of us are going through the same thing. If I'm being punished, then so are they. And, I'm getting off easy, because it's not having anywhere near the same effect on me that it is on them. It sure doesn't feel like punishment.
Just as I was, before I came out of my cocoon, all of them are terrified to live in this neighborhood. One guy has lived here for 15 years and still won't walk down his own street.
Some of them have got it really bad.
One of the people in my NA witnessed a drive-by shooting and broke down in tears when she related the story.
Another person in my NA was the victim of that drive-by shooting. A number of the young people in our neighborhood are shooting victims.
And, our neighborhood isn't even the 'hood or the post edition, which are much, much worse.
So, if you look at the big picture, what's going on in my life is an exciting adventure from my POV, and relative to what other people in my neighborhood and in the worse neighborhoods are enduring, I'm not being punished.
I'm only living with the choices I've made in the here and now.
So, please stop trying to spin my life so that it aligns with your belief system. It aligns with mine, and as it's my life...That's how it should be.
Phoenix