When I came  home from the doctor and told Maria I had decided to go on insulin, I saw that she was angry. I was surprised, she is one of the most sympathetic creatures in the world. She seemed short with me, abrupt, leaving the house to go back to her studio, and when she came back she asked me some sharp questions: Was I sure? Wasn’t there anything else I should do? She could do? That we might try? She wondered if I was giving up, and then after a few minutes, she began to cry and said she was just upset, it seemed like a big deal to her and she wondered if I was accepting it all too readily.

We talked about it, as we often do when there is some tension or trouble and she wrote a beautiful thing about it on her blog yesterday. I was inspired by her piece, I wanted to write about it also. Maria and I talked it out quickly, I told her I was expecting this, I was prepared for it. I have long been eating properly, made many changes in my life to deal with diabetes, I saw that my blood sugar levels were too high, and if I didn’t do something about it, then there would be some permanent damage to my organs, which had not yet happened. I am accepting this, dealing with it directly, blame is neither healthy or useful.

It was a big deal to me, too, I said, I didn’t want to get here, but I am very cognizant of the fact that there are many worse fates to befall people, many things medicine does not understand as well as diabetes. There are many worse things to hear, as many reading this know. The truth was, I said, this was my problem, she couldn’t fix it or take it on, she couldn’t make it better. I had to deal with it myself and I had and was and would. I would surely ask her help when I needed it, and I knew it would be there.

I hear people blaming other people and things for their troubles all the time. The government. The banks. The media. I hear parents blame teachers, and patients blame doctors. The left. The right. When something goes wrong, it seems to be a human instinct to be angry, to find someone to blame, to shed responsibility, taking responsibility for one’s life is a pretty rare thing. I do not blame myself, doctors, health care, the Gods,  for diabetes, it was in my family, I always knew it was a possibility, I could perhaps have reacted to it much sooner.

There is no point in blaming other people for my life, it is distasteful to me, I don’t believe in it, it is not healthy. Recently, I had to remove several hundred people from the Open Group at Bedlam Farm, there were just too many people in it, and I tried to notify as many as I could, but there were just too many for me to contact individually. I was saddenes by the outraged messages I got demanding explanations, suggesting they were victims, they received no satisfcation, blaming me for disliking them, for being unfair to them.

And then were those messages saying they understood that changes and difficulties occurred in life, and they appreciated the complexities,  they didn’t take it personally, but they would love to be re-admitted, they loved the site. I let every single one of those people back in instantly. They not only told me they cared about the site, they told me they didn’t need to fix blame when life happens. They are the sort of people you want in any group.

Kiki messaged me this morning and thanked me for the blog, which she said got her through a difficult time in her life, she wasn’t sure why, it just did. There are she said, only two elemental rules in life:

No one gets out alive and everything changes.

How true, how wise. Almost all our troubles and miseries come from those two realities of life.

Who is the blame for that?