A Pity Party for Birds

I am not a religious person. I was raised in one church or another and continued to attend off and on in my early adulthood. I never found what I was looking for there. I found what I was looking for WITHIN MYSELF and within the world around me, mostly nature, sometimes the influences of the thoughts or ideas of others that rang true with me.
This being said, I also do not condemn others for their various ways of life or degrade their paths. The reasons we all follow what we follow or forge our own paths of understanding are myriad. I don't claim to be right or wrong, I don't profess someone else's way to be right or wrong. It DOES however, get me heated to have someone try to make me swallow their religion against my will or to try to convince me that I am not up to their standards in my journey.
I had a very heated discussion with a bus driver today. Usually on my public transportation adventures I have my earbuds in and my music up. Today I really wanted silence in order to sort out the whir of thoughts I have had recently. Instead I had a bus driver ask one too many personal questions for my taste and then ask me if I am "saved". Saved from what exactly? He wanted to know if I knew Jesus. Exactly how old do I look to you, man??? I wasn't alive back then. I guess I kinda stirred him up because I was being a smart ass. I didn't mean to be insulting, I really meant to be deflective. I wasn't in the mood for this conversation.
Since I was the only one on the bus at the time I guess he felt that this was a good time to see if I was a Christian lady. BIG SIGH. After letting him know that I have no interest in religion or things unseen and spooky he got absolutely indignant. He pulled the bus over to pray for me! Mind you I am already late for work at this point, so I whip out my handy dandy cell phone and offer to call dispatch to let them know exactly what the bus is on the side of the road for. Once the bus is in motion again he proceeds to tell me how he feels sorry for me, he pities me, he will pray for me.
I don't feel sorry for me, but you do. How does that work? Pity parties usually require the host to feel sorry for themselves FIRST. I don't know how this one got dropped on me, but I'm kicking everybody out of that shindig! You don't have to go home, but you gotta get up outta here!
There is nothing in my life to feel sorry for- even if it looks like it. Everything that has happened in my life, good or bad, has happened as a direct result of choices I made, actions I performed or actions I chose NOT to perform, things I said or didn't say. I did or said what I felt was right at the time and carried on to see the reward or penalty of those choices. I did not kneel down and pray for something like a spoiled child asking Santa to bring them something they know they don't deserve. I have always gotten up off my ass and went out and MADE happen anything that happened. I complain sometimes, sure. After I'm done, I set a plan in motion.
I don't knock prayer. I just don't do it. If people say they are going to pray for me I don't usually object because most of the time it is a person who knows me and cares for me and I understand they are doing it out of concern. My personal view is that a prayer in the right frame of mind is still positive energy- that person is willing something good for me. However, if you are angry at me for not seeing YOUR way of things, please DON'T pray for me. There is an energy attached to that that I do not want aimed in my general direction.
In a recent work of fiction that I was reading a character said,"What does it matter what you believe? What is going to happen will happen anyway. What matters is what you do." I like this. This particular character believed in reincarnation, which I'm not so sure about, but his statement made clear sense to me. There is only good and bad. I guess this could be left up to opinion. Some people think tattoos are bad. Some people thing smoking marijuana is bad. Some people think killing is good. Some people think stealing is good. I have tattoos, I don't smoke marijuana, I kill bugs, I have stolen, but not recently. I'm okay with myself as is. Generally I think we all have a sense of right and wrong, the criminally insane excluded. We know that it is wrong to take another human life. What if that human is a threat to your own life? Here is where opinion will come in. We know that is wrong to steal. What if you have no other option to feed yourself? This list of opinionated right and wrong could go on and on starting with abortion and ending with politics. The accepted right and wrong is usually set up by us: society, and it is also changed by this same us accordingly.
In my mind, no one religion or way of life is completely right or wrong. In all there are common truths and there are many fallacies. In all there are fanatics and people who take it to an extreme. In all, things are subject to personal interpretation and application. Like the grapevine game in elementary school, things get lost in translation.
I like birds. They do not concern themselves with other birds and telling those birds what they should or should not be doing. They go about their day taking care of themselves and their own. They don't beat up on other birds because their feathers are different.
I'm only inviting birds to my pity party. They won't care. LOL