Your friend is wise.

I couldn't have put it more eloquently.  Since I decided to follow the path I now follow, I have tried to live by those words, or rather similar words so clearly echoed by your friend.

As a group, I dare say ours, the TS/TG community, has more than its share of sadness and defeat, and our ability to change our circumstances is more limited than most others.   And most do our best to change our circumstances for the better, as anyone else would, except that  we have more of a challenge than most.

Sites like BC give us an ability to be able to vent these kinds of feelings, and it is good to have such an escape valve.  Because without such an escape valve, most would probably crumble under the weight of sadness, disappontments and unrequited might-have-beens.  So we tell the folks in our community about our times of sadness, of disappointments, of those times when our ability to change our circumstnces hits us like someone running into an immovable, uncaring brick wall, and we want to tell others, in the hope of finding a kindred spirit that will be able to identify with you, a suggestion on how to navigate a world full of these walls, or just getting a kind word of commiseration from a an-almost-friend.

However, being in BC is not a one-way kind of thing.  BC, as everyone says, is a community.  And, as a member of a community, one needs to give back and not just to keep on taking.  

Unloading such heavy psychic baggage is good because it lightens one's burden, but since it IS a community, you are expected to lighten others' burdens from time to time, too.

I try doing that, sharing the good things as well as the bad, especially in blogs.  Coz if I just keep on unloading my nighttime stories, my rainy-day narratives and my stories of sadness and failures, it is unfair and selfish.  The privilege to take is indeed a privilege, and you need to pay for the privilege - it means you have to give, too.  Very Christion, that sentiment.  Also very like capitalism, too.  A Chistian will say, " it is better to give than to receive."  A capitalist will say that's just a good balance of trade.  But it all comes to much the same thing - one needs to give, too.

It is very easy to unload.  And it is difficult to find joy, and to try and share that joy.  If one is selfish or lazy or a coward, one will only unload.  It takes effort, and, yes, courage, to find joy, and to share that joy.

It's  sometimes hard to look for joy in life because sometimes they might be small or even inconsequential, but we need to make the effort, and to spread that joy a little.  And it's sometimes good to accept, and to carry the burden of the trials we are subjected, too, without unduly burdening others with it.  Sumetimes we need to be a man and carry the burden.  Ironic that I say that here in BC, huh?

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To see Bobbie's blogposts, click this link:  http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/blog/bobbie-c 
To see Bobbie's stories in BCTS, click this link:  http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book/14775/roberta-j-cabot 
To see Bobbie's Family Girl Blogs, click this link: http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book/28818/family-girl-blogs
To see Bobbie's old Working Girl Blogs, click this link:  http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book/19261/working-girl-blogs