Month: October 2021

Grateful Heart Monday

Welcome to this week’s Grateful Heart Monday, where gratitude is the only expression in my writing for the day, which for today is for one of my friends, Tony Mattoni, and the good he does for so many.

The first time I really began to appreciate Tony was when I was at a Christmas gathering a few years ago. After the dinner ended, I really wanted one of my favorite holiday treats, a Peppermint Mocha Latte from Starbucks. He offered to drive me there and subsequently treated me to it. It was a nice gesture that I’d come to know over time in getting to know him that it’s just what he does for everyone.

If there ever was a person who’s willing to literally give the shirt off their back to help another, it’s Tony. While I’ve only been a part of his life for a short time, I’ve been around him long enough to see he truly does exude this trait. In fact, one day he was wearing a really cool pair of socks that had my favorite cartoon character on them, Marvin the Martian. I complimented him for them, telling him of my love for the Warner Brothers figure. He actually asked me if I wanted them and was willing to take them off, wash them, and give them to me! I didn’t take them of course, but it most assuredly was a beautiful trait about him that he’s simply just a giving type of guy.

In general, there are givers in this world and there are takers, but Tony is most definitely the former. Being a recovering addict, I’ve had to work hard to move from being a taker to a giver, as there were countless years of my life where I took more than I gave. That’s one thing I can say I’ve never seen when it comes to Tony, as he seems to be a care giver at heart and I think he would have made an incredible nurse in another life!

Nevertheless, Tony is also the type of guy who fronts the bill at every meal dined out, just because he likes doing so. He very much enjoys treating those eating with him and seeing their happiness because of it. I’ve tried several times to pay for some of the meals we’ve had together, which rarely goes over well because it’s honestly just something he likes to do and says he was raised to do so. I believe that, yet I do my best to still get him special coffees at Starbucks from time to time, because I personally struggle when anyone pays for me constantly. I don’t ever want someone to think I’m using them because I did do that far too much in my old active addict days.

Regardless, one of the most endearing traits of Tony is that his home is always opened to stop by and there’s typically a homemade dessert sitting on his counter for his guests to enjoy, as well as plenty of beverages to go around too. Every time I walk into Tony’s home, I feel extremely welcomed and I’ve seen others in his home feel that same way as well. He makes his home such the inviting place!

Beyond that, Tony is a great listener, an affectionate person with loving and caring touch, and even goes out of his way to feed stray cats off his back porch, which really makes me smile given I’m a cat person. I’m grateful Tony has become a part of my life and appreciate him for all that he does for me and so many others, which is why I’ve dedicated today’s Grateful Heart Monday to my dear friend Tony Mattoni.

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

Thought For The Day

Today’s quotes all deal with the subject of projecting one’s anger and frustrations of life onto another…

“I can feel pretty critical of people, and I understand that sort of feeling of when you’re going through something that’s painful, taking it out on the world and projecting onto other people, finding faults with other people, because it’s harder to find faults in yourself.” (Noah Baumbach)

“Those who habitually point out other people’s faults make the least desirable partners.” (Dr. Greg Kushnick)

“The best political, social, and spiritual work we can do is to withdraw the project of our shadow onto others.” (Carl Jung)

“If you want to know what you think of yourself, then ask yourself what you think of others and you will find the answer.” (Seth)

“Living in a box means being convinced that other people and our circumstances are responsible for our feelings and our helplessness to overcome them. What we can’t see when we’re in the box is that the way the world appears to us is a projection, and that we are making this projection to justify ourselves in self-betrayal. We cannot see that it’s not others’ actions but our accusation that result in our feeling offended.” (C. Terry Warner)

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

Daily Reflection

“We have become masters of projection, pushing the responsibility for our own thoughts outward, so that the consequences of our own thoughts become someone else’s problems.” (Darren Main)

Often it really feels like I’m a magnet for people to dump their crap onto, projecting their own life’s misery outward, blaming me for their own personal drama and baggage of life. It’s been that way ever since I was a kid with an alcoholic mother doing it to me with regularity. Nowadays, I find myself struggling immensely with this, with taking ownership of someone else’s problems.

For example, just because I’m still unvaccinated from COVID, doesn’t mean I’m the cause of the virus, or the cause of anyone’s death from it, or an anti-vaxxer, or an evangelical who doesn’t believe in this specific vaccine, or anything of the sort, because I’m none of those whatsoever. Yet I’ve been accused of being each of those things many times over from others, all because I remain presently unvaccinated, where most never take the time to really understand or accept my personal situation.

Another great example is this. Just because I’m outside at times for hours every single day, cleaning up my yard and two others, and even sweeping a good portion of street around me of debris, doesn’t mean that that the noise I make doing so during the normal hours of the day is the true source of two neighbors’ anger at me. It’s merely a projection they place their anger on.

One final example is what I wrote about in a previous blog where I made an honest mistake on the road one day, narrowly missing another driver in the process. It brought out road rage from them, where they ended up pursuing me for a good 15 minutes, doing their best to scare me, when none of their toxic anger was about me whatsoever.

Lately, it seems like the world is filled with this, with one person after another blaming someone or something else for the source of all their anger and frustrations of life, when the real source of it is themselves. It’s taken me a long while to see this because I once was that person who always looked outward in anger for my inward anger.

I typically get great reminders of this in my current relationship with my partner Chris. At times I fall back into this illusion and find myself projecting my anger onto him, and he with me, when in reality, we’re both broken individuals lashing out at each other.

In the end, I believe the only way to fully deflect this, is to keep working on my own inner peace, as truly, when one is filled with true inner peace, it doesn’t matter how much anger and projection is thrown my way, because when it is, that peace will help me see it’s not about me, it’s about them.

Gracious and most Heavenly God, I pray for help in seeing the true source of all my anger and frustrations of life isn’t about anyone else, but me. Help me come to peace surrounding all my circumstances of life, so that when others project any of their unwarranted anger my way, that Your peace will help me rise above it all, enough so that I’ll no longer own anyone else’s baggage in life.

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson