honest brave compassionate human being

My mom texted me to say that they'd decided to euthanize one of the dogs, and that my brother was sad, and maybe I could call him? This is the dog that follows my mom everywhere, the dog that she greets first, before me, even when I've come many miles to visit. I wanted her to express her own grief. I wanted her honesty. My sibling called me today, upset about a situation with a friend. They wanted me to validate their choice of how to deal with it, and confirm that they'd done a reasonable thing. I did not think that they had. I could not, I told my own friend, do what my sibling wanted. During the conversation with my sibling, I felt the pull of my (metaphorical, habituated) oxen and it took much of my attention to avoid saying, "I would have done this! Are you sure you want to cut your friend off like that? Why don't you calm down first and re-asses? No wonder multiple of your friendships have ended suddenly." I knew these were oxen of judgment, but the

The title of this blog comes from a comic from existentialcomics , but I have been unable to find the actual comic. In the comic, an adult asks a child, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" and the child answers, "An honest, brave, and compassionate human being," to which the adult answers, "No, I mean... how do you want to sell your labor?" And while I love this for its commentary on social capitalist expectations of children, what I really love about it (and the reason I keep buying shirts with this comic on them, available here ) is that wanting to be honest, brave and compassionate seems like the most urgent thing to me, and when I ask my heart what I want to be, what I want to do with my life, that is the answer. So that's what I'm doing here. Right now, I'm practicing bravery. I'm practicing the bravery of being my whole self to the nasty and lovely world of the internet. I think of myself as a private person, and I am, but it