Anyone who knows me, knows how much I adore my dog Puchie, I love her as though she were an actual person, she is literally my baby no doubt about it. Lately it seems as though Puchie feels a little neglected because of the new addition to our family, Kitty! She seems to be a little jealous of Kitty and Kitty only adds to her insecurity by fighting and teasing her. They are constantly at each other’s throats; I guess they are still learning how to get along. If you touch Kitty Puchie is ready to attack and eat her if given the opportunity, but if you leave Kitty alone Puchie will be fine and treat her normal. We decided to cut Kitty's nails to keep her from ruining our furniture and poking one of Puchie's eyes out, but that has only made Puchie more confident in knowing that now Kitty cannot defend herself. What a dilemma to have your pets constantly getting at each other! I leave them alone together all day, and I have yet to find a dead animal when I get home, so they must be getting along well enough. They are literally forced to get along, so what do we do when we are placed in a situation that is uncomfortable and nothing can be done to change it? What do we do when we are forced into things we have no control over? Do we kick and scream, run and hide, or do we just deal with the situation at hand? Could it be that the reason we are placed in certain situations is so that we can learn something about ourselves and about others? Could it be that God wants to teach and show us something that we will only be able to see and learn in that given situation? Sometimes our emotions are so visible to others that we cannot hide them no matter what we do, we let our anger get the best of us and when this happens we fail to see the lesson behind all the madness. So how do we move out of "A" versus "B" or "you” versus "them"? Do we always have to be on one side or another? My first guess would be, is to stop seeing the other person as an enemy. We tend to reject people that are different from us when perhaps what we need to do is embrace those that are dissimilar in order to see that maybe they are not all that different after all. Its funny how people pick sides and segregate things, we pick sides based on similarities, proximity; things we can relate to or things we believe in and stand for. Not everyone views things the way that you or I do, and I believe at times we forget that, we only see "me" or "I" instead of "us" or "we", we forget that there are other people on this planet beside ourselves. We become so focused on the negative or bad things that other people do to us that we make the situation worse by drowning in our anger and bitterness due to the injustices we are encountering. I guess we would really have to know the person, know their quarks and quinks so that they cannot get to us. We could always take the nonchalant approach and go to Publix and buy a tub of Vaseline and rub it all over ourselves not literally, but figuratively speaking! Or even the juvenile approach and simply state I am rubber your glue and whatever hits me bounces off and sticks to you, but whom are we kidding? We cannot go through life with these attitudes because things do not always slide or bounce off of us so easily. My mother has always given me the advice of "knowing" a person. If you know the person you will know how to deal with them accordingly. So I guess when we are stuck in these situations where we cannot do anything about the people we have to deal with, what we need to do is keep in mind who they are and handle them accordingly. Have you ever thought there usually is a reason that some people are very difficult? More than likely, part of the problem is that they don’t have anyone to love them or even enough love to give in return. So think of it like this, hopefully you are lucky enough to have people love you and love them in return, but what if we were kind to those who where rude and loved those we disliked. Wouldn't the world be a better place if we took that approach instead of fighting like cats and dogs?