And yet again:

I know, I know. I claimed last week that my motto was "give no one back evil for evil" and I do tend to try to follow that. And a person (well, for person = me) doesn't want to add to the sum total of the ugliness in the universe by acting in an ugly way myself.

But it's also tiring going out into the world day after day and seeing others who choose to act in ugly ways. The person who screams at the cashier at the grocery because they aren't fast enough. The person who yells at their child for a minor infraction. The person who graffitis on a building and the owners have to find a way to clean it off. And it seems that being nice sometimes is like tossing a pebble in the ocean.

And also, there has to be some middle ground between being so meek that people run over you, and being a monster of ego who only sees others as means to an end.

(And an aside: I always wondered about that beatitude. Was there something I didn't understand, or was something lost in translation? What would the meek want with the earth anyway? It's a pretty messed up place.)

And I do have to say that the guy who will ultimately be paid in this whole matter (the tree guy) was nice and friendly and treated me with respect, so there's that.

I'm just really tired right now. Tired of people and tired of fighting against the current that is day to day life.