What would you do?

Last Thursday something interesting happened to me. Well nothing really happened to me but I was witness to something quite interesting and it made me think. It was a holiday here where I live and I had decided to go along for a ride with my father and his girlfriend, they were off to the local shopping centre to pick up some things that they needed. I didn’t have anything better to do so I decided to go with them. It was a nice day outside and the sun was shining. When we arrived at the shopping centre our first trip was to the electronics store which wasn’t actually located in the mall but just outside of it. We went inside to search for empty disc cases and a print cartridge for their printer. Being that I didn’t really have a reason to be there I just wondered around gawking at amazing pieces of flashy equipment that I would never have a need nor a use for. After coming to the conclusion that almost everything in the store was way out of my price range I decided I would go outside and wait for them in the beautiful light of day. I stood out side the door for maybe a minute or two and got impatient as I usually do, so I snuck back in just to take a peek at where they were. They were already through the check out and on their way out of the store. As the three of us walked out of the store together we saw three employees of another store that was just up the street come shooting past us at full speed. Up ahead of the employees there was a young man dressed in jeans and a jean jacket doing everything he could to get away from them. It was a full out foot pursuit. As the employees gained on the young man it seemed as if he had given up, he stopped running and the store employees had caught him. The four men turned around and began to walk back towards the store that they had originally come from. I assumed that they were headed back to call the police and to return the goods that the young man had obviously stolen. As the four individuals approached the area where we were standing, I noticed that the store employees weren’t even holding the man they had been chasing nor were they even paying much attention to him and on top of that the man was on his cell phone. That struck me as a little odd and sure enough my feeling was right. Just before they reached where we were standing the man took off at full speed again, this time heading towards the road where a car was waiting for him with the back door open. The store employees bolted after him again. The young thief dove into the car but not before the employees grabbed a hold of him. As the men tried their hardest to pull him back out of the vehicle the other men in the car tried their hardest to hold on. After about a minute of brawling inside the vehicle I guess the driver decided enough was enough and he hit the gas, running over the foot of one of the store employee’s. Although that was the end of this event for the young thief and the store employees, it wasn’t the end of it for me and the questions I was asking myself.

As the day progressed I realized something interesting, I realized that if it weren’t for my impatience that day I would have had a very important decision to make. If I hadn’t gone back into the store to see where my father and his girlfriend were, that thief would have ran right past me with the store employee’s directly in pursuit and it would have been obvious that he had done something wrong. What burnt my brain about this was that I couldn’t figure out for myself if I would have done something about it. Would I have taken it upon myself to lay the smack down on this guy thus becoming the hero of the day or would I have simply watched as they flew past me. Is it really worth it to get involved in a situation such as this? Was I even capable of making a split second decision like I would have had to had I been standing out there? These were all questions that ran through my head later that day. The more I thought about it the more I wondered. It has now been a few days since this event and I still haven’t come to any conclusion. I don’t think that the problem lies in the situation it self, I am almost certain that I would have tried to lend a helping hand and gracefully or not so gracefully would have attempted to tackle the guy. The problem that I face is that I don’t know if I am capable of making a decision like that in that amount of time. Some of us may be blessed with this split second decision making and for the rest of us I think it takes time and effort to be able to train ourselves to make decisions quickly. Life is full of decisions and choices we have to make and I think if we work hard at learning how to make good decisions quickly we can all make life a little easier for ourselves. One must tread carefully under these circumstances though. We don’t want to just make all of our life decisions on the whim; we want to train ourselves to make these decisions carefully and accurately while still doing it with haste. It’s a talent that takes many years of practice. So the next time you find yourself with a decision to make that’s burning your brain try to think about what could help you speed up the process but if you find that difficult don’t worry, so do I and many others.

Jesse Roulette
Catching bad guys One at a Time

Heartbroken

Something happened to me today, something I would call a little strange and quite if not extremely coincidental. I sat down at my desk early in the afternoon to begin writing an article I had been thinking about for a while now. I have wanted to write about the subject of heartbreak for quite some time. I wanted to discuss the feelings and emotions that we often associate with heartbreak so that maybe I could achieve a better understanding of the term. As I sat in front of my computer screen I began to write, but it just didn’t feel right. It felt like something was missing, like I was writing just for the sake of writing and it didn’t mean anything. I had a good day today and I was feeling fine so I didn’t quite understand what it was that was keeping me from fully expressing myself. I decided it might be better to take a break and give it another shot later on. I spent the rest of the day basically doing nothing other then attempting to find ways to mildly entertain myself.

It’s late in the evening now and I am just about getting ready to climb into bed. As I was about to lay myself down I decided I would turn the old computer on and take another crack at that article. When the computer finished its loading process I noticed I had received an instant message from a friend of mine. I read the message. My friend wanted to tell me that she had not had a good day, that she had been feeling really down and wanted to talk. Naturally I messaged her back and asked why; her reply was surprising to say the least. She told me that she had just broken up with her boyfriend of two years and was feeling the pain; actually the word she used was “heartbroken”. I was stricken for a moment. Can something like that happen purely coincidentally? It made me think about what I believe in and I came to realize that I don’t really know what I believe in. I wondered how many other people shared this conundrum with me. Do we really need something to believe in or can we just float around within our own spirituality and never really come to any firm belief? I think many of us unconsciously need a firm belief system and some of us consciously need one. I also think that some of us don’t need one, or don’t want one for that matter. Does relying on a belief system mean that we assume we know the answers to everything? This is why I’ve always had a bit of a beef with organized religion, but that’s another topic. I apologize for my off topic rant, back to heartbreak.

When we suffer from “heartbreak” we often feel lost or left behind, at least that’s how I would describe it. I think many people would describe the feeling differently because we all connect to each other in different ways and when heartbreak happens to us it is often due to the severing of an important connection in our lives. If you’re reading this you might be wondering if there is any way to heal yourself of heartbreak or completly avoid it in the first place. Well there really isn’t. If I was a doctor and a patient came to me with a bad case of heartbreak there wouldn’t be a doubt in my mind that the only responsible thing to do would be to prescribe that patient with a healthy dose of time. Its an old saying, “Time heals everything”. Well old sayings are old sayings for a reason I guess, they’re important. Time does heal everything and in time you will feel better. The sadness and the pain of heartbreak will begin to subside in time. If you haven’t already read my article called “Memories” you may want to take a look at it as it covers some of the same topics and offers some original ideas on dealing with heartbreak and pain. As far as avoiding heartbreak, well we can’t avoid heartbreak altogether. We can try to avoid situations that may lead to heartbreak in the end but the truth is that we never really know when heartbreak will come. If we spend our whole lives avoiding situations we believe could end in heartbreak we might end up missing out on what could have been the best thing to ever happen to us. I think a much better plan would be to accept the fact that life comes with risks, and if we have to endure a little pain in order to learn something about ourselves and about life in general I think that’s a small price to pay.

So if your hurting due to heartbreak just remember that time heals, and that even if you could have avoided the situation you probably learned something valuable from it. Its not everyday life lessons are offered to us, so lets take them when they do come!

Jesse Roulette
Sewing Hearts One at a Time