How we find ourselves (#1156)

We find ourselves with humility. When being in a humble state, we are able to let all the things around us in. In that way we become aware of our surroundings instead of just traveling through our surroundings. I often like to control things in my sphere or scope of influence so much that I lose sight of where I have been. I miss out on listening to others and the sounds of life around me. I am always in such a hurry to get to where I want to be instead of enjoying the passage to wherever I end up. The journey is the key, not the destination. How I conduct myself in moving within time and giving respect to all the things around me as if my life depended on it is the expression I am seeking to live. That is how I know myself. I sense and receive information without losing sight of that. When I am controlling things I spend more time on manipulating thoughts and actions of others and little to no time on my own thoughts and actions. To use an analogy, I am not the hammer, I am the nail, waiting for the force of life to put me where I am most effective. Of course I have free will and use it to position myself as available, but I am not the determining force. As much as my ego wishes for me to accept some delusional misguided concept of my own self-worth, I cannot if I want to be me. I am but one human being in a land of 7 billion human beings. We are all here to understand and live our lives with some dignity and that can only be achieved if I and others will just be humble about who we are and let our souls guide us instead of our egos. it is a privilege being here in this existence and I thank you all for being here as well.

Gravitas (#1155)

High seriousness, or weighted thought. If one is considered to have gravitas one or more are normally expected to be expert in their evaluation of relevant subject matter. I equate gravitas as an element of wisdom that must be logically explained. If I am to trust the complexity of an argument that settles a dispute, then I expect the solution given to have a marvelous and expert weaving of all the factors involved. What I am looking at now is our US Supreme Court getting ready to affirm or deny a national law of huge importance. What I expect from the final decision about to be voted on by the justices is to have the gravitas or heft of a monumental proportion. I expect that the nine justices we have allowed to be confirmed by Senate rules will display wisdom beyond the mere facts but to also contain our nations history and the elements of our economy founded by our established principles of democracy. Anything less will be a disappointment in this particular era of judicial practicality. Always at the core of any decision made by those who are appointed or voted into positions of adjudication, I expect the base wisdom of acknowledging that democracy is paramount to any other form of institutional practice to be affirmed. Our democracy has at it's center the good of the people and the health and welfare we need to remain able to be self-determining, however, not at the expense of the diminution of our democracy's role to provide for that health and welfare. The ultimate position in our society when it comes to applying wisdom to our laws comes from the US Supreme Court, and as such the gravitas and contemplation necessary to navigate our history through precedence and insightful thought is enormous and in no way can ever be discounted. Who we allow to be in these nine positions says as much about our seriousness for our own futures as it does about the seriousness we expect from those who call themselves US Supreme Court Justices.

Think for yourself (#1154)

I spend a lot of time reading different titles to articles so that I can find out what the media thinks. This does not sway me one way or the other but it does inform me what the general mood is about whatever the subject is at the time. Once I read some of the articles however, I find that the titles are more the writer's opinion on the subject than an objective outline of the subject. Patterns in subjectivity are nuanced but readily discernible with a comprehensive understanding. Not all media portray "news" with a bias but many do and being aware of that is highly important. I don't let others think for me which gives me the opportunity to evaluate information with my own logic and common sense. We are all capable of deciding what is right and good for ourselves and to be involved in deciding for our community as well. Will we choose to do so with our own thoughts and understandings or we will abdicate our thoughts to forces that have their interests as the agenda. Nothing is so simple that we can trust others with how our lives are lived. Everyone it seems has a stake in something that is ulterior to our knowledge. When someone tells me something is good for me I am snapped to attention and automatically wary. My parents are the only ones I know who actually have my interests at heart and half the time they are wrong in their calculations. So why would I trust some talking head who doesn't even know me to tell me what I should be doing or letting happen to me. I am an individual who has his own mind and I know my character better than anyone. I will decide what is right for me and how I want to see our community of citizens build our society.

We were born to learn (#1153)

Despite any other definition as to what our purpose here in existence is, an only for certain known is that we are inherently able to learn and retain knowledge. Now of course I also allow that we are caring, and fight to survive as well but for this discussion I am focusing on our sensory perceptions and mental data storage. I have said many times that we are like a data processing unit, only that we are biological and have a sense of dimension. We also have, and this is crucial, the ability to remember. There are not many large scale programs we have initiated to help us remember everything we have ever learned but the future may hold that type of paradigm for us. We are still stuck in the morass of struggle and as we struggle we often give in to the allure of mind numbing intoxications. Frustration and not having life goal ambitions are our muse in order to vacate thoughts of what we could be as opposed to what we let ourselves become. We are uniquely qualified to be special as a species and knowing this fact, we tend to allay the gift and sputter around in ways that keep us static. I am an efficient type person in that I hate to waste time doing something that can be done with, and other things have taken their place in the meantime. However, we are not so much interested in what is our nature as we are interested in living a life of sensory experiences. As if we are all on a cruise ship just whiling away time like we are the masters of it. Eventually we will get back to our roots, our nature of learning, and then we will be on the track to our existence as it should be, putting nothing ahead of our nature to learn.

The hierarchy of community (#1152)

This morning has been a little bit of a struggle to find my subject for today's post. I want to write on community but something is holding me back. However, the force pulling me is greater so here goes. The importance of community cannot be over sold. We are creatures of a tribal nature and respond toward like minded tribes of peoples. I was born into a family that has moved from being politically left leaning to politically right wing. Now not all of my family has gone to the right but a majority feel compelled to do so for a variety of reasons that escape my sense of logic. However, they are where they are and that leaves me where I am. Naturally I have become less and less a member of my biological family and more open to new associations of people who are like minded. The new people in my life serve the function of close family despite the fact that this modern world has linked us at best through only limited ways of communication. All of this to highlight that we all need a sense of community in our lives and when we don't feel comfortable within our initial communities anymore we find new ones until we do find that comfort again. I have tried to live an isolated life as just an individual taking care of myself with little to no interaction. It did not work for me at all and although I do relish my privacy I still need to have a community of people around me to interact with. My point is that I cannot survive without community. I need it like I need air or water. This is how I rate community. Therefore, with the concept of community at the core of every decision I make about myself and others I am effectively maintaining and improving not only my life but most assuredly others' lives as well.

Courage wisdom and strength (#1151)

I am not saying anything new here, and I rarely do say anything new on this blog but I do reiterate subtle reminders about how we should interact with each other. Today is no exception. I like what I was thinking about with this post as the subject, that we matter each individually and collectively. To an even finer point, everything we do matters to an outcome, whether our desired outcome or to outcomes beyond our intent. I have found that trying to do every little thing right in my life, and by right I mean what makes my soul happy, is the key to how my life is destined. I do believe we can control our own destiny. What I perceive as the pathway of my life may be different from an outsider looking in at a snapshot of it, nevertheless, what I perceive is the most comprehensive evaluation of whether my soul is happy is mine, not anyone else. Again, what is my best method for keeping my soul happy? It is in what seems like the never ending little decisions and actions I allow myself or that come my way. Nothing is to be taken for granted. Everyday is filled with enumerable forks in the road. None of which needs to be taken any less serious than another. As the pattern of my life takes shape, then it is clear to me that I am following my desire to be the human being I want to be. I know the pressures of society are demanding and influential, however, what balance is made in favor of what? For me the expectations of society do not outweigh what my soul demands of me and it demands to be happy. My ego has had it's turn to make it's case in my life and it has come up lacking. Now I get to let the happiness of my soul have it's turn and all it has done is fill me with humility and peace, which has given me courage, strength and wisdom.

Reality, ignore it at your own peril (#1150)

It seems that our work is never done. Many have taken the tact that I've got mine so I don't need to pay attention to what is going on around me. I can just enjoy life and live carefree. That is a huge mistake in perception and action. It couldn't be much further from the truth. We are in a constant battle with forces that want to erase our current progressive society and return it to a cold and callous one of the earlier centuries. At no time in our history have such forces marshalled their resources to attack the very foundation of our American society, our democracy. While the allure of success and the benefits that brings, can distract us from reality, we are better off ignoring the pleasures of life as a first priority and focus on the damage being done to the inner workings of our rights and freedoms. We must return to our defense of our way of life as quickly as possible, since those who would rob us of them are determined and focused on their nefarious mission. I am not being overly cautious here, as I know it is hard to believe that some Americans would want to take our hard earned advances and reverse them, but they do. If we continue to not pay attention and just dismiss their slow advance on negating our rights, we will find we have less to protect ourselves with, from their strategy of dominion. Yes, there are Americans who still think that inequality is perfectly normal and not only that, worth fighting to maintain. We, as Americans, have not all risen to enlightened status together. There remains among us some very powerful Americans who want to return to the days where only a few and privileged elite rule our country in an egoistic paternal way. So my message here is if you keep ignoring reality for the sake of pleasure then you will find yourself alone and without rights and privileges you took for granted.

Money should never be greater than our Democracy (#1149)

Money has found a way to infiltrate our democracy in such a way that it is a real threat to destroying our democracy. So many powerful people keep proclaiming that capitalism and the free market are the sacred ideologies of our society while discounting democracy as an inherent obstacle in the form of our government. It really is a takeover of our fundamental civilization. For one, capitalism and free market theologies are parts of what make up democracy, not the overall structure. We also have forms of socialism that make up for the deficiencies in pure capitalism and unfettered free markets, such as social safety nets and health and safety/economic tempered regulations. Without which, a purer form of capitalism and free market manipulations would reign, and benefit those most adept at greed induced psychopathy and destroy many more who are not. Democracy fulfills many equalization ideals. When full participation is installed all who participate can help to shape our futures. I know that here in America we don't have full democratic participation both from political/security exclusionary policies and a lack of individual will on the part of many of our citizens. However the case may be about our current policies of exclusion/apathy about our democracy, we are still vulnerable to our democracy being subjugated by interests that have neither democracy at their core nor equality. Our vigilance in the current face of an onslaught by powerfully wealthy forces must keep us on our toes and recognize that our democracy is not a guarantee and it could be swept away incrementally without us being aware of the subtle changes going on around us. Know this, the forces of money who have an agenda to de-democratize America are at work and you can see the evidence every time some social or political dynamic comes up where a loss of some type of right is being advocated for.

Candy store or sweatshop? (#1148)

What is your view of what reality should look like? Are we born to have to struggle to stay alive or are we born to be caretakers of each other? I am sure it is somewhere in between but where exactly? The only way we will ever find out is to understand our natures and to understand the existence we are born into. It seems that basing conclusions on these two obvious dynamics has been overshadowed by our own sense of dogmatic beliefs and a mindset of being deserving. Instead of being wide-eyed and humble by our own conceptualization, we tend to skip that part and just plow ahead as if we were the ones who created this all. We did not create anything except what has happened between us since we first arrived into existence. Existence was already here and our own place in it has yet to be logically derived. It shows an obvious immaturity on our part that we are being led, actually allowing ourselves to be led, by those representatives, mostly, who have little respect for the unknown that defines our environment and how we actuate our place within it. Boldly ignoring our natures to allow our minds to wander to conclusions that highlight our mastery over those things we can control. Just because we can control some things does not give us license to treat that responsibility with such a cavalier attitude. The greatest wisdom any of us could display is humility. When will we understand that courage and strength come from our perfect serenity? We are not anything else other than human and understanding what it is to be human is all of our first step toward knowledge. I want to see our existence reflect more of a candy store reality with no sweatshop mentality, however it seems that others want the opposite and even refuse to understand their own premises for their conclusion.

My mind's eye (#1147)

The one sure fire way to keep from losing my perspective is to never forget what I hope and wish for the future. I can do that because I Imagine our world in it's best light. I look through the haze of the present and all the confusion going on around me and maintain my mind's eye. My mind's eye, That place within me that sees without using my two physical eyes. It is the place where everything is possible. Not only possible but expected and certainly attainable. Of course in reality outside my head, the real world exists. The real world has not the vision to rise to the level of optimism that my mind's eye does but the foundation for the vision to exist is possible. Sadly though the two of them are far enough apart to make them inconceivable at this time. But I do remain hopeful that at some point in time in our future, my mind's eye's vision and reality can close that wide gap and become nearly one. So what is this particular boy to do about reality in the meantime? Work to express the distinctions that exist and help to make them less distinct. I only have the rest of my life to offer but it is something and with a purpose, it can be effectively formidable. How I use my influence in shaping understanding toward better policy is the question, not whether I can or not. It is up to me to be responsible for what I do and how much effort I put into whatever dynamic of expression I choose. Certainly being cogent and efficient in my message of the vision of how I see a better world goes a long way toward how successful I am in expressing my vision, but knowing where my foundation to begin with is, and knowing what I can do, makes me happy in the idea that what could be and what is, are not unbridgeable.

Holding myself back (#1146)

If there is one thing I know about myself it is that I want to do things. I am currently under a doctor's instructions to do little to nothing while my shoulder surgery heals, yet in my opinion I am progressing well and I want to do more, my mind and body are pulling toward doing more but I am successfully, so far, holding myself back. I keep remembering that if I do what I am told to do by the doctor I will likely get as much out of the surgery as I can and that will effect me for the rest of my days. If not, then I may well reduce that amount of hoped for recovery even further and have to live with that for the rest of my days. It all seems logical that I should do as my doctor advises yet there is within me a stubborn streak to disregard his instructions because I feel better than I think I should feel. lol. This is just not confined to my personal life either. There are times when I can jump the gun on some things before fully evaluating my true position. It is how I operate and knowing that is key to me being able to pause and reflect on the impulsive decisions I am urged by myself to make. It is like I am two sides of the same person. One with the sense of immortality and the other that knows for certain, without a doubt at all, that I am mortal. So here I sit thinking about all the things I could be doing and doing none of them. I can still use my mind as much as I like and apparently that is what I am doing here in front of those who read this. Yet, in the meantime I must keep a vigilance on myself to make sure I am not allowing myself to step across the line as to how much I allow myself to do. Soon I will be able to go back to being my in-the-moment-self without restricting myself to ultra-light duty and another week or so should do the trick.

How we treat the lesser animals (#1145)

This subject is always a bit of a heart breaker. Sure, we do many great things for our less than human brothers and sisters in the animal kingdom, but we also continue to treat them as objects instead of evolving species. We are not so far removed from our own evolution to know that any help a species can get from us will also be a catalyst toward them evolving faster. I am not one of those who think that a dog of today will be the same as a dog of a thousand years from now. We are all sentient beings with limited amounts of thought and foresight. As we treat ourselves, will always be amplified as to how we treat the rest of the animals on this planet. Our evolution has not reached the higher plane of consciousness we need to be able to be true caretakers of this planet and it's inhabitants. Our present history still shows we are unfit for being caretakers of ourselves let alone other species. We are getting closer but are not there yet. The old ways of doing things before the explosion of enlightenment are still with us. In many ways we tend to negate progress and logic in order to favor ways that are comfortable and established, regardless if they are out-dated or illogical. As we continue to struggle with our own identities and processes for living, we are also muddling along with how we treat our fellow animals. Improvements in their care are abundant and the concept that life is precious is beginning to come to a majority of us, however a lot of folks are still encapsulated in the idea that we are masters and every other species is at our mercy. Instead of being at our mercy, our other animal species should be at our care. A perfect world is impossible on this little planet of ours, but trying to make it perfect should be our purpose regardless of the odds against us.

Open arms equals happy hearts (#1144)

The strength and goodwill within us who see life as value beyond measure is what separates us from others. We have found what has always been right in front of us, that each of us is unique and deserves, even demands, that reality. Others have chosen the allure of value represented by influential power or monetary gain or even adulation as our highest value. Such is the world we live in and the actions we are instilling into our society. I can honestly say that greed is an illness that perplexes me because of it's obvious coldheartedness. Greed is not ambition, it is a lust that has no control over it's outcome. It is one thing to be under the spell of an illusory feeling but to be under it constantly for hours and hours on end is almost impossible. It takes a decision to be greedy, a strategic and intentional decision. Has the loss of humanity so inhabited some of us that we cannot find our way back to our own sense of goodness? it is a weakness and why I say that open arms equal happy hearts is where strength and courage live. Even in those few times when we are used or manipulated in our goodness, we can still rest on the fact that we were not the ones who failed. Cynicism has become a symptom and somewhat involuntary reaction for many folks who have had things taken from most of their lives and this is their way of trying to get back at life in general. Our society's sad state of affairs is a conclusion based upon many false premises that we live, although they are against the very grain of our natures. To move out of the cycle of greed and it's comprehensive effect on everyone else, we must just stop the madness and embrace our better nature to open our arms to everyone and let the best of who we are live. It takes courage to be made a fool of sometimes but the payoff is that sometimes a really marvelous thing happens, someone else gets to see and for a moment live where we all really should be.

The necessity of the human species (#1143)

In the Universe, of which there is no known limit, I can positively state that we humans have a role to live and it's purpose is all within our natures. We did not devise our existence here, the Universe and it's unknown forces of life-giving did. Whether by accident or some design, we are here with the natures we have. We and our natures could not have come from outside the Universe so we are made up of what is from within the Universe. Now I may get some arguments on my last statement but logic and physics seem to back my position so I will go with it. As such, being a part of the Universe and it's percentage of bits and pieces, I can only conclude that our natures of compassion and curiosity, which are our two main natures, along with survival, have something to do with the rest of the Universe. I am linking thoughts here much in the same way logic is linked by premises to get to some rough reason for our existence. Since no other known species has our unique quality of advancing innovation and technology to the point of rationalization and self-determinism without another physical entity sovereign to stop us, we are it when it comes to deciding how we apply our abilities to the Universe. It is as if the human species is the only species capable of exploring and analyzing the unknown without a predetermined outcome. We are the ones writing the rules and the history of our environment. Naturally, we are cautious in our approach to discovery of the bounds that encapsulate us but nonetheless, we are not hindered by anything that we can find solutions toward. We decide what and if, when it comes to our destiny. The Universe has it's own physics and laws that must be respected but they do not obstruct our concepts of over coming them when we do.

One cannot buy wisdom (#1142)

Wisdom is not a commodity that can be bought if enough money is applied. Wisdom is earned and then granted by those who see it's manifestation. For someone to claim that they have wisdom without direct proof is hogwash and an attempt to hoodwink others. Unfortunately, in this particular time of ours, there are several who have enviable platforms for broadcasting their opinions who do just that, claim they are wise. They don't come out and say it per se, however, they attempt to convince us of political, economical and philosophical positions using hard to discern, but nonetheless faulty logic. The rules of logic are quite sophisticated and based upon the intricacies of language. If most of our population is not proficient in our language, then the intentional grifters, yes, many who are conscious of promoting false logic are grifters, can act as if they are wise in order to promote their brand of influence. Nothing that is illogical has our interest at heart but how can we know when we do not understand the rules of logic? Simply, deductive/inductive reasoning states, (If A, then B). A more specific form of reasoning goes like this, (If and only If). When and where these rules apply takes time to reason out and just looking at examples can help to teach those who do not have formal training some basic helpful and insightful concepts. My friends have often questioned why people follow the illusion of wisdom some have over others. What always brings me back to square one with their question is that they have fallen for an illogical premise that has gotten them to an illogical conclusion. We humans are wired to learn from our natures of curiosity and when that curiosity is not given the apparatus to function in a logical world then we all suffer because we all are in this together. A helpful link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic

A political philosophy of kindness and solutions (#1141)

I could easily have entitled this the opposite but why should I start my day out in negative thoughts when I could do it this way and list the positive nature of political leadership. Political leadership begins with assessing the reality of how our political policies are doing in the areas of education, health and safety, economics, social equality etc... In doing the evaluation, we must never forget to keep what is the best interest of our democracy as the guiding theme. For me, the beauty of our Declaration of Independence is the famous sentence that establishes a baseline for basic human rights: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Our US Constitution was also written such that it could be amended to make it more perfect to our society as it grows and matures. All of this is to say that we need to change with the reality of new experiences and innovations. As our society faces challenges we must be ready to alter our present to accommodate a better future. What has happened instead is that change has not been embraced despite the fact of it's reality. Some who control our government choose to revert back to old solutions that are comfortable to some but bring discomfort to the many. We need forward thinking souls as our representatives as they will be at the ready to adapt our society as needed in a way that utilizes wisdom and kindness as solutions instead of brutish tactics that allow for suffering as a remedy. We are an optimistic species and not maintaining our optimistic kindness in the guidance of our society is antithetical and anathema to who we are.

Buckle up and hang on for the ride of life (#1140)

I often have used a saying and it goes like this, (I am just a passenger in the car....l). My little way of using a joke to define my reality. It is true, I am just a passenger in my own life because my life has a force of it's own and many times it carries me wherever it ends up. Certainly I do navigate as much as I can and hopefully good sound practices and principles I hold of value help me in the journey but the force of my life has it's own engine. As I do go careening off the walls of my immediate existence, metaphorically of course, I get to see and feel up close what really matters to me. My decisions are based upon what I have instilled within myself as appropriate with just a touch of daring. it is who I am and everyone else should also learn to know who they are as well. But even more than learning who we are, is being ready to live who we are when instant decisions come our way. If I react as I should then the foundations of my life are strong, if I don't then I still need to examine the confusion that is still within me. It is a process that we all go through and only living enough time to gain perspective will be our remedy. This stuff is important because as we will all find out soon enough, life really is too short. Just when we get most of it figured out we have hit older age and the hubris of our youth has become just fond memories. The most important thing the young can do is to keep from being distracted as much as individually possible in order to build as strong a foundation in order to live a more meaningful and purposeful life. I was not able to heed this message I give but then again, I did not have anyone who was of an intellectual insight around to present the principled example. Sadly, it seems that many youth are having the same problem of finding good examples of principled people's lives to exemplify.

Our lives are always out ahead of us (#1139)

There is no going back. As much as the allure of the past draws me in, I cannot get past the fact that the past is gone and only my memories remain. Although I say only my memories, I do respect the power of my memories to captivate and seduce me. The best of times from my past have the greatest hold on me and given that my present and near future hold less than sterling times, I am susceptible to how things "were". Being human is not an easy task although the alternative is not thinkable. I am torn between so many differing emotions at practically the same time that it can all get a little bit confusing. What keeps me balanced and in control however is my reasoned and trained behavioral practices of calming myself and letting the passion of my emotions subside until I can think clearly about what I have just remembered. Our hearts want what they want and that is precisely what can get me into trouble quicker than anything I know. However, emotion on my end does not mean emotion on the other's end. I reconcile that and using logic move on to other thoughts and actions. What one beautiful idea I have come to realize as true is that I am just a visitor in my own life and the force of my life will carry me where it will go despite the feelings I acquire along the way. I will get to love and lose at love as a consequence of being alive and experiencing the outcome of such things will be as they are and not as I want them to be. I can only hope that maybe sometime in my life I will be gifted with a requited passion that equals or surpasses mine. Regardless though and unless maybe until then, I will keep having powerful memories that enchant me but not control me and I will keep looking forward to the future to see what new and exciting adventure awaits me.

Fighting hard not to lose ground (#1138)

It seems that everything I do is in some respect a reaction to not wanting to lose even more of what I have already lost. I am certain that I am not the only one who is reacting to current events from a purely defensive position. Our society is experiencing an austere period in which most of us are being forced to do with less while some of us are gaining more at exponential levels. The short sighted adventure we are currently experiencing can't last and the sooner it is reversed, the better our society will again become. One thing this illogical austere era has pointed out to me is that I fight for what I have, not for what I could have. This is important in the sense that what I have is real and therefore much more important to me than some hoped for reality. Just as important as well is that I am much more ready and attuned to battle to the last breath. When we are cornered or at our last stand, it is when we become our most ferocious. What really bothers me though is that we have gotten to this place without our own consent. It is like we have been herded and were willing to allow ourselves to be herded without a care. So much trust we have put in others to do what we think is best for us. How utterly foolish! Something else that should come of this is that we will start being responsible for our own lives and not leave it to others. The days of coasting through life on the backs of others is over. No one should be left with any other understanding. We have our own interests at heart and to think that others will also is nonsensical. The battle to keep from falling further behind is still raging but many are waking up to the damage and when we finally get everyone's attention on this problem. the solution shall soon follow.

Strength in numbers (#1137)

The only way to combat the divide and conquer mentality is for us to stay connected and keep our common resolve in the forefront. For reasons that are unfathomable to most humans, there are some humans who wish to build a world around their idea of reality. We must not allow them to do that to us. We are still the majority by far and to relent and let them to purposely change our reality to fit theirs is not worthy of our species. I cringe when I see or hear their calls for us to be less than what we are in order for us to sustain any type of decent society. It is absolutely ludicrous for the many of us to have to give more of what little we have in order for us to maintain the few advantages we have. All the while the few who bleat this unequal conformity are the very ones who have so much that they feel no loss of sacrifice in their process. It is astounding to me that humans who seek to destroy what gains our society has made over the generations are given positions of political and judicial power over us. We majority of many need to stick together in our current dilemma and at least satisfy ourselves on general goals of progress, not regression. We have many disparate ideas about our futures but for the most part our futures have progress in them and that should be our foundation in the least. Those few who have instigated a campaign to reverse the modern trend toward education and enlightenment are doing a disservice to our generation and the coming generations as well. Not even taking into account the ones who have sacrificed on the altar of hope and peace to improve the lot of those who would continue to carry the mantle of freedom. There are many of us who continue to sound the alarm against the tyranny of indifference, receding policies, fear and selfishness. But we all need to take the lead in denouncing, defending against, and discarding the backward ideas of the naturally illogical few into the dustbin of history.

People who don't trust themselves (#1136)

I know this one, it had happened to me. I was afraid that if I gave myself a chance I would become something I was afraid of. I didn't trust my inner core to be me. Well, I have fought that fight and with some humor have realized that it was more fear than reality. I am me and what I hold dear and true in my soul. Nothing can change that is what I found out so I didn't need to be afraid to be curious about the unknown. Not only curious but objective as well. Whenever I let being afraid of something determine what I will do, I take from myself a little bit of who I am and throw it away. It is truly dishonorable to allow fear to dictate what it is to be me. I do have a sense of pride in myself and allowing some obstacle to inhibit me is to deny myself the human right to explore and learn about what this existence is all about. That men just over 500 years ago finally decided it was worth taking a risk and sailing off into what was thought a flat Earth, toward sure death, to prove that maybe the Earth was round and not flat, underscores what I am saying here. Without being able to move beyond what fear can do to us we limit what we perceive as reality. It is the same with me and who I am. If I cannot trust my nature enough to believe that my principles for living are really mine then I have lost what it is to be me. I will never allow myself to go back to those doubting days of mine where life was more theoretical to me than actual reality. If anything can be learned from fear it is that it is a thief and fear will steal from us all who we are in order to conquer our souls and diminish us to plant life, just waiting to be influenced by everything else. I am a human and as such I determine my thoughts and actions as a course of my free will. As such, I am master of all that is me and not one bit less, regardless of fear.

Do we expect more from ourselves? (#1135)

How much is enough? Seems like a common question we all face from time to time. Are we satisfied with what we do and what we expect from ourselves? Mostly, I do allow myself to be satisfied with what I try and/or accomplish. That is what got me thinking about this subject. I am selling myself short to myself when I think I have done enough in most cases. I need to broaden my expectations of myself to beyond the serving of my own interests out toward interests beyond me. By doing so I am not trying to inflate my ego, on the contrary, I am seeking to expand my humility. It is just that I do believe that my capabilities, not unlike everyone else's, has greater potential than we realize. The human experiment has had several millenniums to discover what our parameters are generally, but more specifically, we are still experimenting. I will not sit back on some foregone assumption of what I can or can't do as the basis for how I live. I am one of those pesky envelope pusher, you know the kind that tries to get a little bit more out of himself, simply because, for the most part, I don't know when to stop. My stubborn nature helps me to see that I have more within me that is not being used and that piques my curiosity. These days I think of myself as an experiment that has a foundation of unlimited permutations. Not only am I open to expand my knowledge base but I am open to pushing my limits for action. I know that as a human I am only capable of so much but what is the limit of this "so much"? I am a human data processing entity, with emotions and drives that interconnect in ways that make categorizing what I am capable of difficult at best, even given historical data about we humans. The real wild card though is that my mind is relentless and just when I think I have had enough, I go and do just a little bit more.

Being kind is not a chore it is a way of life (#1134)

Being kind is not a game where scores are kept to see who has the most knidnesses given. Kindness is a way of life that reflects an inner peace we have found. Kindness is a manifestation of that inner peace. If you are being kind in order to fulfill a strategy then the effort has lost it's purist intent. Most can see right through phoniness and no one should be fooled into believing otherwise. I would rather someone not be kind to me when it causes them inner grief to do so, instead they need to work on what is ailing them spiritually, find their peace and then let the kindness come from them. Some may think that being kind regardless of motive is usually a better situation than no kindness being shown but I disagree. I live in a world of harsh realities and when those realities are blurred by confusion or deception, then the realities become that much harder to diagnose and apply solutions toward. in other words I would rather have someone cranky and unwilling to be kind so that I can adjust to that truth and help find a solution. this pretending stuff is nothing more than obstacles to a better way of life. It takes a well rounded person who is willing to be of a noble persuasion to allow themselves to put others first. Selfishness is the great barrier to kindness and addressing selfishness as a consequence of behavior will at least let each person know what they are choosing to do. I do not do kind things for the sake of advantage, although in my youth I did. Then I had no idea that I had a choice to be different than those cynics I associated with. Today I do understand that I am the navigator of my destiny and having peace in my life and showing it through kindness is the course I have chosen.

Once we get past putting ourselves first (#1133)

The great understanding of our lifetimes is that if we can find a way to see the world first and ourselves second, we will have hit upon the secret to having a wonderful life. There is nothing that draws people into your life like you putting them first before yourself. I have found this to be true, especially as I have gotten older and less interactive in the public at large. My world has slowly shrunk to just immediate folks that I am comfortable with. But even then, I try hard to look at them with an eye toward, what can I do for them? My life has problems that need to be addressed, and I do address them but not to the sole exclusion of others. Sometimes I have to put my problems on the back burner so that I can help with some others whose problems are greater and more pressing. It is not like I have some great power or resources to do all that I would like to do but I won't let myself have a bad conscious thought by doing nothing either. I try and trying is all I can do sometimes. yet, by not being the selfish person I could be I have room in my life for others to know they can count on me. I have some of their respect and that to me is value that cannot be measured. I look at all humans as having something special about them and giving them the chance to express that specialness is the other side of being trusted. My little circle of acquaintances is strong in the bonding sense since we have come to know that we have each others back. That isn't just for old friends but for new friends as well. We all share this existence and that we can also share each others' abilities to be there for each other makes this life that much easier and enjoyable, once I got past putting myself first.

Today's Republicanism needs psychiatric help (#1132)

Where did they go wrong? Can so many of the Republican voters be so angry and hateful toward others that they would sacrifice their own best interests in order to exact some painful revenge on all of us? America used to be the society of vision and created opportunity for that vision. What we have now is not vision but a society yearning to apply retribution to ourselves as a solution to our problems. What is the psychiatric term for inflicting pain on oneself or others in order to find relief? I have spent way too many hours trying to talk with some folks who can only see a retracting of our society back to a place where progress, compromise and modernity are an evil in themselves. What does that tell us about too many folks who would choose to lose a quality of life in order to punish others they don't even know? A complex of thought that has confusing logic to it. Many hours with a therapist may well unearth some common themes for the act of cutting one's face off in order to spite one's nose. Over-kill and backward. Instead of searching for solutions based on where we are, these obtuse folks would rather destroy where we are in order to rearrange and build a society that does not reflect free-will or equality, peace nor justice. It is as if they have given up on knowledge and would rather confine thought to some very basic rules, leaving us as a group of herded humans with no passion for intelligence. The greatest threat to Democracy are those who cannot or will not accept that we all have the right and the ability to define our own lives without being told that we don't. When others, who have given up on intelligence and knowledge, expect the rest of us to do so as well, we then have a duty to protect our Democracy from those who would destroy it.

The importance of courage (#1131)

I find that courage has a real place in every moment of our lives. The courage I am referring to is built upon the right and the good. I attending meetings where the phrase, "The courage to change things that I can", has become a settled principle within me. Yet to find the areas where changing things for the better can occur, I need to employ courage. Even in areas where fear is dominating, courage can still happen when the fear that is blocking us is overcome through courageous thought or action. Again, even in the little courage we express, courage can have a profound effect. It isn't hard to have courage either. When we incorporate the values of virtue, we actually diminish fear in most situations and gain confidence to express our courage because it is the right thing to do. Fear is all in our heads and if we choose to find courage there instead, we have come a long way toward fulfilling a sense of purpose in ourselves that cannot be easily manipulated or destroyed. We humans have an immense capacity to highlight our better natures if we would only choose to do so. We in this existence have formed a society, that can have our principled values at every situation, but for the ones who wish the status quo to remain the same. Power, influence and capital acquisition and maintenance seem to be dynamics that some in our society work like crazy to continue. It is as if something in some human beings has broken and they are unable to see a vision of the world where the human being is the greatest force and not some material or psychological illusion that gives only artificial advantages. We all need to let go of fear and embrace courage as a way to affect a more perfect society.

New challenges same solutions (#1130)

Everyday something seems to pop up in my personal life that unexpectedly requires me to utilize my objectivity in order to find a solution. As in almost every case however, the solution is one I have used in the past. A different variation of it but still the same general rules apply. I suppose having the perspective of experience and trial and error in my past has made dealing with new challenges somewhat routine, it is still good to know that the solutions available are the tried and true ones. In other cases, such as community and societal challenges, the same old solutions are not the answer. We have grown and matured as a society in ways that have outlived past solutions and new ways of looking and addressing challenges need to be formulated. This brings me to a point of concern I have for the politicians we have in our society. The act of having a job as a politician seems to be more important than the actual act of working to find solutions for our society. The stability and prestige of being a paid representative has siphoned off the people who see public service as a means to create a better society in favor of people who see being a paid public servant as a means to enhance an ulterior motive. I say this because instead of having people in office who want to build on our great Democracy, we have lesser souls who only see problems that our Democracy has created. It is the glass half full/ half empty analogy, instead of taking what is still a work in progress and strengthening it, we instead have many who wish to destroy what we have and offer little in return. The optimist has possibilities for improvement, whereas the pessimist has nothing less than corruptible imaginings. Somehow we have allowed our society to be overtaken by pessimists and the damage they are doing is harmful to us but even more so harmful to our future.

Simmering determinism beneath my despair (#1129)

Two emotions colliding in one space. Within me is the dark despair of helplessness to change reality on the ground where this reality is horrific. Alongside this despair is a determinism that is simmering in effect because I know that the reality is horrifically wrong and I so desperately want to change it. With no outlet to change anything I can only write about it to express my feelings. The disappointment I feel in our species in times like this can only be measured by the inverse outrage I feel. The outrage is steely within me. I am specifically referencing bloodshed perpetrated on people who are only trying to find the same liberty and freedom that I have. This dilemma that is somehow irreconcilable through a logical or even common sense process has me stymied in that our species has established rules for interaction that at times prohibit intervention where human rights are blatantly being abrogated. Our society is a failure in this regard and any serious discussion about this failure has been at best elusive. Natural rights should always trump national rights. The absurdity that is our current policy when national rights trump natural rights is the bane of our existence. It also displays our immaturity as a species to govern in an existence where we are, apparently to this point, the sole sovereign. Again, the disgust I feel is real and at some point I will need to vent it from the bottom of my lungs out into space as loudly as I can to release the ill this reality has attempted to infect me with. Ashamed I am that our little biological/psychological presence has come up so short in the maturation of thought and action when it comes to violating each others natural rights with impunity.

A new day a new beginning (#1128)

This is one of the reasons I love sleep so much is that getting tired and falling asleep allows me to wake up with a renewed vigor for life. Sure, sometimes I also wake up with a dread about what I have to do next but mixed in with that occasional dread is a way of thinking that looks to find solutions. Either way, I am renewed. It is strange to me how I have changed over the years in almost the exact opposite of logic :) Now I look forward to sleep as opposed to early in my life when I never wanted to sleep. Funny how experience and perspective change what we think is absolutely right at the time into the exact opposite later. I guess when I was young I thought of the world as the greatest place ever and I didn't want to be denied a bit of it. Juxtapose that with a young combat troop knowing they are going into an almost certain death situation. I will come back to this. I suppose my feeling of living every moment had a lot of validity, but what I have found is that the quality of my living is effected by my sleep. When I sleep when I am tired I benefit from it, I wake up and go into my day. When I don't my irascible nature comes out and the quality of my awake time suffers. I put less emphasis on missing those seconds when I am sleeping and more emphasis on the moments when I am awake and fully refreshed. It does all boil down to quality, not quantity. Anyway, how I was able to make a discussion out of this is wild but back to the point about the young combat person knowing they are going to face almost certain death and the thoughts that must go through their heads about not wanting to die yet before they have even had a chance to really live must be an excruciatingly experience that goes against every fiber of one's will to live. Always the perspective and how things look from other eyes.

We are only as strong as our weakest link (#1127)

The importance of the one can never be undervalued. There is always one thing done by one person that has some profound effect on what reality becomes. That is why it is always necessary to do the right thing whenever possible. It may just be your turn to set the destiny of humanity on course, hopefully, a correct course. I know, how can one person who is insignificant in the big picture of life make any difference at all? That is the question, how! It seems that insignificance is not the determining factor. Many have come out of nowhere to become the face of change most advantageous to us at the time. No one has a lock on being the next person to changing our lives. But to make sure we are ready to become that person, we must prepare and live our lives like we are going to be that change. Regardless of whether we do succeed at changing history, our lives will have affected others around us and if the positive vibe of who we are/were affects them to be the same then subtly we have been in the loop of keeping the possibility of change moving forward. If the weakest link is left unattended, then a break in our species progress becomes even greater. That is something we can all be a part of, not letting our fellow human travelers go untended. I look at the way Ants work together to support and build their colonies and I know we are even better in doing so because we are more enlightened than a group of Ants. Certainly we must prove it but we have greater abilities and advantages, so why can't we perform at a greater functionality than a group of Ants? It seems that we have lost our sense of and vision for community as a priority. That is to our detriment and changing that by each of us being ready to be the next great change for humanity is a great place to start.

The wrong vision hurts us all (#1126)

There are those among us who see a future that does not exemplify freedom, liberty, justice and equality. Those who do not have these principles at the heart of their vision for our future are doing us all a disservice. Those who have had the benefit of education and security from social ills are in a unique position to champion rights for those who are less benefited in the areas of education and security. Yet for so many who are rightly positioned, they seem to want to exclude themselves from those who are not. A distinction that has such descriptors as elitism and class based social structure. it is the bane of the less than courageous to opt for security from our species instead of creating security for all of us. The vision that hurts us the most is the one that looks inward and glorifies the individual without also attaching real priority to looking outside and creating room for the community of people as well. I am not against individualism but it must always be tempered with community. Both go hand in hand in our society. As well as in our psychology. We are human and in need of human contact. Not just certain human contact but the wide varieties of human contact that can only be found in the world at large. The great achievement of our species is our ability to communicate with each other regardless of geographical, social. economical and philosophical origin. To be less the ingredient in the pot and more the one standing outside of it and only stirring, we deny our nature to live life in the moment and experience the unexpected circumstances that make up the really relevant stories in our lives. Fear has much to do with our inward caving but fear is a thief and the time we spend in it is time we will never get back. Finding the vision that creates what's best for us does not include fear.