9 out of 10 monkeys believe they are not behind glass

I sometimes wonder if I have lead a particularly charmed life. A blessed life, overseen by benevolence and providence. I wonder this because my family seems to not share in similar outcomes. It makes me wonder. If god is truly looking out for me or if I have just been very lucky, either way, my behavioral responses to external stimuli would still be a product of my upbringing. I must have been raised to react well to the things that happen to me.

Or was I?

My brother was raised right alongside me. He suffers from some birth defects, true, some of his behavior has been shaped by his disability. But he has been gifted with an extraordinary intellect, so should have been able to overcome any diversity. You would think that on a fundamental level, his behaviors, mores, ethics, reactions would all be a similar if not the same as my own. Not the case.

He lacks motivation to an extreme. Whereas I am productively lazy i.e. working smart, he is just plain lazy. He can’t overcome his own fear of failure. Perhaps I don’t know the real reason. I have tried to talk to him about it, but he becomes a yes man around me, so I am sure I am not getting the whole story.

So am I product of my upbringing and my brother just happens to be a fluke? I am not so sure. My mom is a hard worker, but her luck and the situations in which she finds herself fucking suck. Pardon my french. Right now, she is in the hospital because she failed to medicate herself properly after being incorrectly dropped from her insurance. A huge culmination of very unlucky events that ended up with her in the ER unable to breathe. But then again, she could have mitigated some of that risk… Some of it had to be her lack of foresight. She does get herself into some odd situations. Almost a self destructive pattern in some ways.

So how the hell did I manage to be able to successfully function once I left home? I managed to get by, avoid the bad stuff, find the good stuff.

One could attribute it to luck, but I am sticking with the providence angle. I have been graced. Because I am not sure my parenting or my environment lead to the outcome I have experienced. It just doesn’t fit the evidence at hand.

Head scratcher. I mean I am not perfect, far from it. But there has to be some drive or some sort of quintessential property that I have and that my brother and mother lack. What it is, I just don’t know.

Perhaps I am not meant to know.

But meanwhile, I do worry. I know they need to find their own path, but sometimes I wonder if they are even looking. You have to look for it in order to follow it.