Trying to be helpful

We're having quite the "medical time" with our 18-year-old cat. Yes, 18! Just stroking her back, she's feeling much more frail than she used to, but she's as sweet as she ever was. Hard choices, whether to go to treatment X or treatment Y... with an 18-year-old cat, one is very sensitive to "the cure is worse than the disease" choices.

Which particular principle (cure worse than the disease) has kept me off the standard MS treatments, e.g. Tysabri, which in its day was responsible for quite a lot of "cure worse than the disease" noises. But as Alton Brown has been known to say, "That's another show."

But taking the Cat Journey definitely brings to the fore the simple truth that we all process "difficult to deal with" issues very, very differently. And said difficult-to-deal-with issues are differently difficult, and each of us offering up something we expect will be "helpful" often isn't.

About all we have is what Ram Dass said, quoting his guru: Love God, and tell the truth.

Some of my "helpful" offerings (which often aren't) I think are well-rehearsed delusions... "Well, easy answer, smooth but definitely easy-to-give answer" is first on the list of "not helpful."

I think it's quite safe to generalize and say "Delusions aren't helpful."

I hope that isn't a delusion... I'm pretty sure it isn't...

Trying to be helpful isn't always helpful... sometimes it just gets in the way.