{"id":359,"date":"2014-02-11T13:13:22","date_gmt":"2014-02-11T18:13:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/?p=359"},"modified":"2014-02-11T13:49:35","modified_gmt":"2014-02-11T18:49:35","slug":"being-imperfect-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/?p=359","title":{"rendered":"Being imperfect, together"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In my internet wanderings, I ran into <a href=\"http:\/\/grayconnections.wordpress.com\/2014\/02\/08\/dear-lung-cancer-patient-who-smoked\/\">this open letter to lung cancer patients who smoked.<\/a>  And&#8230;I feel pretty strongly this way.  I run into obits sometimes where they specify that someone died of lung cancer <em>even though they never smoked<\/em>, and I think to myself, because if they had, their families wouldn&#8217;t have permission to grieve?  My grandpa smoked, back in the day, and he quit before I was born, but his COPD contributed to his death.  He didn&#8217;t have to earn my grief with perfect lung-related behavior.  He didn&#8217;t even have to earn my grief with perfect <em>Grandpaing<\/em>.  Not a one of us is perfect.  Not a one, though some of us are amazing.  Sometimes we get a chance to do better.  We try our best, except sometimes we don&#8217;t.  We try our best at the things we can manage.  Except sometimes we don&#8217;t.  And we love each other anyway.  And then we&#8217;re gone, and we&#8217;re allowed to grieve.  We don&#8217;t have to justify our grief with righteousness.<\/p>\n<p>I get upset about this in the fundraising letters from the charities I support.  Habitat for Humanity sends me these letters about these families in trouble, all the good choices they&#8217;ve made and how they&#8217;re in trouble anyway, the virtuous poor, and I think, okay, yes, I believe in those virtuous poor, I believe that happens sometimes, but.  But.  I also believe in people who didn&#8217;t make perfect decisions <em>and still need a place to live<\/em>.  It&#8217;s all right to say, &#8220;We believe that it&#8217;s not okay for people to be homeless.&#8221;  It&#8217;s entirely fine to say, &#8220;We are people who think that other people should have a safe warm place to sleep.  Is that who you are too?  Join us.  Be people who think that too.  Be those people, together.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In my internet wanderings, I ran into this open letter to lung cancer patients who smoked. And&#8230;I feel pretty strongly this way. I run into obits sometimes where they specify that someone died of lung cancer even though they never smoked, and I think to myself, because if they had, their families wouldn&#8217;t have permission [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[30,17],"class_list":["post-359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-grandpa","tag-grief-sucks"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=359"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":360,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359\/revisions\/360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}