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“You can please some of the people some of the time, all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you can never please all of the people all of the time.” - Abraham Lincoln
Another thing that goes along with the territory is negative responses from some of my readers. These include, but are not limited to - personal attacks, attacks on my family, unfounded accusations and attacks on my faith.
Fortunately, the positive reactions outnumber the negatives ones about 100 to 1. I always keep that in mind when someone decides to take it upon themselves to try and "hurt me" because I "hurt them".
I'll tell you what the best medicine is though, it's getting responses like the one below to my blog yesterday:
Mama: Hi Ronnie, I just want you to know we are so grateful for you and how encouraging you are! [Son's name] is doing his treatment that he does not want to be doing and read your post about how you did not do your treatment like you should of and he said, "Man, mom, Ronnie is so encouraging!!!". Thank you sooooooo much !
Me: I'm so glad that he can find encouragement from some of my posts. My hearts desire is that others, the next generation, learn from my mistakes and don't make the same choices that I did. If I can change someone's life as a result of my stupidity, I'm glad to do it. Thank you for sharing that with me. Made my day!!!
Mama: Are you kidding, you just helped me stop nagging, I get tired of hearing myself, too.
That's EXACTLY why I do what I do. I've been very upfront about all of the bad choices I've made. I talked about the different tricks that CF can play that I fell for hook-line-and-sinker. I write because I hope that people like the Mama above and her son are reading. I hope that something I say can help them make better decisions than I did growing up. Simply, I hope that the next generation treats themselves much better than I did.
I'm often reminded by this quote of a fellow cyster in the community that I think put it best:
"I wanna help as many CF'ers as possible. It's therapeutic to think my failure could be someones success." - Michelle Matta
I love it. After hearing that, I just knew that she had to write a guest post on RSBR, which she did, here. I reminded her however that failure only happens when we give up and it's an outcome of deciding not to try. Both failure and success comes in many forms and is different for each person involved. Fortunately, I've rarely seen anyone in the CF community flat out fail!
Lastly, I'd just like to thank all of you who send kind notes, emails and encouraging comments. You keep me going. I'll continue to write as along as there are people out there who will read, and hopefully, leave this blog feeling encouraged, motivated and/or inspired.
I've come to realize this - The feathers of my generation may get ruffled while I encourage the next generation to fly higher and straighter at any cost.
