Especially as we grow older, we lose alternatives in the traditional sense. We are no longer in the thick of things, don't have as many choices. What she stated is a very narrow defense for maintaining the status quo.
She sounds bitter about losses, or perhaps adopted that to excuse what she did to someone else. Takers think they are doing something good, because they may not be feeling any pain from the transaction. Pain can be shared or denied as we choose.
We can't live our lives according to a catchy phrase about how there's no hope, to dismiss the pain and refuse to change. Each loss is a gain, but sometimes we don't know what we gained by it.
I like the phrase 'the gift of goodbye,' about things and people I left behind or who left me behind. Trying to change that past prevents moving forward. I am no longer that person. The present is always there to use to make a future, but if we tie ourselves to a dead thing that no longer wants us, who's to blame?
Although I found the words on a bumper sticker funny, 'Since I gave up all hope, I feel so much better,' it was also instructive. In other words, accept things have changed and didn't go the way you wanted. Now take stock of what you have, right now, in this moment.
Then, perhaps, one can find another way to be what one believes they are meant to be. Much of our hopes are fanciful and we decieve ourselves drawing our castles in the sky that are never built. It's not anyone else's fault, it's just a passing thought.
Making black and white statements is like the place where people just stop thinking because they're tired and want a slogan to take its place.
'America, love it or leave it,' 'Restoring honor to America,' 'The Bible said it, I believe it and that's the end of it,' 'Guns, god and gays,' 'These colors don't run.' There are many, spoken in a tone of finality and conviction with strong passion.
None of those statements mean a damned thing. Any of those can be reasonably argued and defeated. The person has only announced that they are refusing to listen, they're hiding behind dead words and phrases.
People do that when they've run out of ideas, are tired physically or are clinging to the past. But people have to change or die. The world is not made up of any two single actions or philosohies. It's made up of infinite happenings and infinite ways of looking at it. IMHO.
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