Illustration by Charles Oropallo
Charles Oropallo finds the concept of Glass Houses as an interestingly simple concept. If you think about it, that concept is really just common sense. What’s really amazing is how many people just don’t think about it.
Charles Oropallo’s personal experience has shown that life is clearly whatever he decided to make of it. Charles is a firm believer that misery is the anomaly, despite at times seeming to be the norm – especially when one feels overtaken by it. After all, life is not fair – it’s just life.
Mistakes
Photo by Charles Oropallo
One thing that Charles has recognized – and accepted – is that navigation through one’s life involves mistakes. And he believes that making mistakes is indisputably part of life itself. Mistakes, like everything else, occur along a continuum ranging from those small innocuous ones to the incredibly gigantic ones. Charles Oropallo believes that the important lesson of mistakes is what is to be learned from them and how one chose to proceed afterwards. A friend once told Charles, “Don’t let your past predict your future.” One’s past actions certainly give snapshots into moments in one’s life. However, we must believe that people can change or there would never be any forgiveness for anything. Charles believes society in general would devolve to total hate and mistrust if that were true.
It is also true that Charles Oropallo is very certain there are people in your lives who you care about immensely who are so stuck in their negative funk that you can’t reach them. Often these people can easily intellectualize their non-productive state. Unfortunately, however, they are truly unable to make a practical application of their intellectualization. They are often perceived as not being able to get out of their own way.
Self Esteem
Charles recognizes there are those others who feel so lousy about themselves that they feel compelled to raise themselves up by stepping on those around them. Just like all of you, Charles Oropallo knows some of those kinds of people. They are the individuals who will back-stab nearly everyone around them. You all know (or at least suspect) that they also talk about you when you are not around. Charles finds it incredibly ironic that these apparent back-stabbers usually don’t even realize that everyone around them sees what they are. These maladroits usually fail to see their own faults and misgivings entirely. Their lives are full of blaming others for everything from their inability to maintain healthy personal relationships to their drinking or other chemical abuse and even driving and putting innocent others at risk. Yes, there are so many of those out there.
Misery
Unfortunately, it appears to be so true that misery loves company. However, the reality is that miserable people really don’t love anything. Charles Oropallo believes if there is any root to misery, it’s connected to extremely self-centered individuals who have invested heavily into their misguided feelings of entitlement. They think that because everything didn’t go perfectly in their lives, it’s okay to spread the misery around like mud – throwing it everywhere. They fail to understand that no one’s life is perfect – trials and tribulations are the norm.
Perpetual Victims
Charles Oropallo believes that basic victimology bears much of what he has said here out. Perpetual victims believe it’s okay to hurt others because they were hurt. It is a difficult thing for one to come to grips with. Such thinking is part of a false sense of balancing – of fairness – to somehow equalize the misery of their existence at that time. The truth is, however, that the relief they feel from harming others is so short lived it’s usually gone immediately. So, ultimately there is no balance achieved through causing that pain to others – either directly or indirectly or through self-destructive behavior. Hence they continue to behave poorly seeking balance they can never really achieve in that manner.
Breaking Cycles
One thing Charles Oropallo has learned is this is all this is just a vicious cycle that people can get caught in. Charles also knows that, fortunately, these negative thinking cycles can be broken. Breaking them, however, is never is easy. It can be a tremendous amount of work to effectuate personal change. But Charles Oropallo is a firm believer in the good news: that it can be done.
Exactly how, of course, is yet another story!