Look At Miss Ohio

I'm home sick today -- the virus that has been wrestling with my immune system for the past week seems to have finally won this round. I went to see my acupuncturist this morning, and afterward I went to the grocery store to get some of the ingredients for the recipe she'd recommended to help strengthen my immune system so it can triumph once again.

When I walked into the store, this song was playing. It's a favorite of mine, and it became so during a time in my life where I could pretty directly relate to Miss Ohio:

Oh me oh my oh, look at Miss Ohio

She’s a-running around with her rag-top down

She says I wanna do right but not right now

Gonna drive to Atlanta and live out this fantasy

Running around with the rag-top down

Yeah I wanna do right but not right now

Singing it to myself as I put my groceries away and started cooking, I heard it more metaphorically, with a meaning that applies to a wider variety of situations than just being wild and boy-crazy. I think there are many situations where we as human beings know what the right thing to do is -- and here I am defining that as the choice that makes us feel good about ourselves on a human-to-human level -- but we choose to do otherwise. When this happens, it tends to come from a place of fear, or pain, or both, just as, for me at least, the Miss-Ohio like choices did, rather than from a place of love.

When we make these sorts of choices, people in our lives tend to want to point out to us the harm they are doing, but we don't want to hear it:

I know all about it, so you don’t have to shout it

I’m gonna straighten it out somehow

Yeah I wanna do right but not right now

Because hearing it often means having to examine our behavior, and deal with behavior of which we may not be proud, and the emotions underlying our choices.

Luckily, it's never too late to make a different choice. We can do this at any moment by owning where we've been and where we want to be now...