A Variety of Thoughts About Everything

 I have always had a good memory. For as long as I can remember existing I remember things. And I must admit that at times my memory is a blessing and at times it is a curse. Like all things. Over the years as I have done work on myself and compared memories with people who have been in my life forever I am struck by how true the old saying about memory is. IE, every single person sees the same event and each one of them experience and remember it differently. Very personally. For example, the Police consider an eye witness account as the least useful evidence in a case. Because people see thru their own filters and not reality. There are very few people in this world that can see what is in front of them without bias or interpretation. And who can then accurately convey what it was and not what they thought it was. And, over the years, I have had to face something for myself as well. My memory of something can change over time. As time goes by my feelings can change the reality of...

 Through out time there has been one thing always true, no matter how it happens we are all going to die sometime. there is no escaping it. And the ways we die are varied, Sickness, War, Murder, Accident, etc we all are going to die. And, in the end, if we escape everything else, age is the final arbiter. No matter how lucky, healthy, safe, we have lived our lives, death comes for us all in the end. Old age is the final stop. I remember reading a book some time ago, Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom, where Morrie, the man in the title, knew he was dying and knew, within a very small range of time, how much longer he had. And he said to Mitch, "Everybody knows they are going to die, but no one believes it". That is a pretty profound statement. And it is so true. Look at the society around us. Especially Western European American Society. We do all these things to prolong our lives and make no effort to prepare for after. We make wills and try to make an appearance of knowing...

 Spirituality has been part of the life of Humanity since we first began to be able to think and speak. It was, in part, Humanities way of trying to explain a vast and wonderful Universe that scared the living daylights out it. And very quickly Religion was birthed from Spirituality. The two have walked together, in an increasingly uneasy "alliance", ever since. It was, and for some still is, thought that they were one and the same. The difference, in my experience which has formed my opinion, between the two was this, Spirituality is all about a personal relationship with something greater than one's self in some fashion. Religion is about codifying a set of rules and behaviors and then enforcing those codes, with a person as an intermediary and interpreter between a person and their relationship to something greater than themselves. As a little side note, it is said in the recovery world, "Religion is for those who are afraid to go to hell. Spirituality is for peop...

 For a very big chunk of my life I felt like a failure. It was not something that I talked about or allowed myself to think about. As far as I was concerned, way deep down inside that totally unacknowledged part of me, it just was the way my life was. There was no need to think, discuss, or do anything about it because that was just life. A very fatalistic point of view. And I went thru life Being A Failure, performing actions that gave me the evidence I needed to prove myself right. A very Self Defeating circle. Essentially my life was circling the drain like a toilet bowl that has been flushed. And I felt like there was nothing that I could do about it. And everything that I did and felt reinforced that feeling that there was nothing that I could do. But, of course, there was something that I could do about it. And one day, in my young 30's, I began that journey of transitioning my life from circling the toilet bowl to being something that I could actually feel was worth living. ...

 As I am here this morning looking back on the year that, in the western tradition, is passing, I am, once again, struck by how much it is in my relationship to others that my life gains any meaning for me. And yes, I am fully aware that this is meaning that I choose to give it. This past year, like every year, and any moment that I choose to reflect on, had many challenges. And joys. And moments of meh. And everything in between. Another words, it was a pretty standard life. And I am reflecting on the quality, and quantity, of the relationships in my life as well. Some of those relationships are tolerable. We can be in each others presence and not get on each other. And there really is not much more to it than that. We do not have much in common and may not even like each other as human beings. That is a very small number. And some of those relationships, many of them, are casual. We get along and like each other. And we don't spend a lot of time in each others company. That is mo...

Those of us on the Center and Left side of the Political Spectrum are sitting here and keep wondering why, with a pretty good plan to make American lives better, and an opponent who can only offer a vision of a Dystopian Nightmare to anyone who is paying attention, never mind all of the Criminal and Seditious activities, Democrats keep losing elections. And there have been a lot of different idea put forward as to why. And some, probably most, of them actually do have some truth to them. And none of them are ideas that I think should not have attention paid to them. And I think that most of them miss the mark to some degree or another. So let us look at how we got here to start. In the 1964 Republican Primary a man named Barry Goldwater won the nomination to run for President. He was the one who finished the marriage of extremism with the Republican party. Among other things he was a fan of the John Birch Society . Lyndon Baines Johnson handed him his ass in the 1964 election winning 4...

 Growing up I do not remember a time where we actually spoke about truly meaningful things. We were, and are, a loud and boisterous bunch. We are talking all the time. And we often talked about some really intelligent things. Our conversations could be dizzying in their breadth and scope And yet, when I was young and for much of my "adult" life, we did not talk about the truly important things. Those things that were truly important. The things that would tear one up inside. I remember one time, when I was about six or seven years old, something happened in my house that occurred for me as overwhelming and too much. And I just lost it. Crying and yelling in total frustration. The adults in the house shut me down real quick. I was told that I "had no right to inflict my feelings on others" like that. Or, How dare you say that out loud. Isolation and despair became a part of my life. And that, of course, stayed hidden from everyone else. And especially from me. I stuf...

 For many years in my life I had no idea what I stood for. I had some sort of idea about things that I liked. And they had no real standing in my life. You see, I was a chameleon. I changed my actions, attitudes, and behaviors, to fit the people that I was around. I never stood for anything that you did not also stand for. It made for a very lonely experience of life. Sooner or later, mostly sooner, people saw that I was pretty much empty of any real conviction. I also had no sense of my own identity, of who I was as a Human Being. And, in the end, I was surrounded by people just like me. No real conviction, no real sense of self, just anger and self pity. After I began a journey of healing I found out that this also was, by necessity, a journey of Self Identification. And, over time, thru the 12 Steps of Narcotics Anonymous , a lot of reading and reflecting, and a journey thru the Landmark Curriculum for Living, I began the process of healing and discovering who in the world this...

For most, if not all, of the first half to three quarters of my life I lived in a world where I was never responsible. It was NEVER my fault. And the excuses and blaming of others just flowed out of me. If it did not show verbally then it showed in my actions, attitudes, and behaviors. Eventually, I began to start to take responsibility for my life. And it has been a process. It has taken a long time and a lot of internal work. And today I am responsible for my life. I sometimes need to reclaim responsibility after falling back into the old way of being involving excuses and blame. And that is getting less and less as time goes on. And as I am looking around me today I am seeing that there is a large chunk of people both in this country and around the world who do not want to be responsible. They are looking for the Strong Man Savior type of person to save them. And it occurs to me that if you need a savior then you are not being responsible for your life. In fact, when I was being not...

 When I was young I developed a set of really unhealthy coping mechanisms to a life that I did not like and scared the living heck out of me. One of the biggest is I became a Reactionary. Instead of having a considered response to anything I had an emotional reaction to everything. They were automatic and required no thought or consideration. I was like a push button automaton. Everything I felt, said, and displayed just rolled out. No thought required. And for many years that is how I rolled. And I kept wondering why my life was a mess all the time. As I began a journey of healing and discovery I had to learn how to Respond instead of React. And when all I have done in my life is react then replacing it with responding is difficult. To say the least. And just to clarify, a Reaction is an automatic response that requires no intellectual effort, no thinking, and is preprogrammed, and usually fueled by emotion. It happens instantly. A Response is something that does require thought. ...

"What chilled and almost cowed him was the union of malice with something nearly childish. For temptation, for blasphemy, for a whole battery of horrors, he was in some sort prepared: but hardly for this petty, indefatigable nagging as of a nasty little boy at a preparatory school. Indeed no imagined horror could have surpassed the sense which grew within him as the slow hours passed, that this creature was, by all human standards, inside out—its heart on the surface and its shallowness at the heart. On the surface, great designs and an antagonism to Heaven which involved the fate of worlds: but deep within, when every veil had been pierced, was there, after all, nothing but a black puerility, an aimless empty spitefulness content to sate itself with the tiniest cruelties, as love does not disdain the smallest kindness? What kept him steady, long after all possibility of thinking about something else had disappeared, was the decision that if he must hear either the word Ransom or ...

 So many different times in my life I was in a place of misery that I was not finding enjoyable at all. In my negative, at that time, view of life I was not finding any part of my life uplifting or enjoyable. And I had no idea that it could be any different. I just figured that this was my life and that was all there was to it. Nothing was ever going to change. Pretty bleak way to exist in life in my point of view. Many years later, or ago, depending on the perspective, I began my journey of life. And I say began because I feel that I was not truly living before this. I was merely existing. Going through the motions one could say. And as I learned how to be a Human Being I began  to see that all along I had been making choices about how to live and, more importantly, who I Am as a Human Being. And even though those choices were made not knowing that I had choices I was still making those choices. By default. It is kinda like the old thing in court, Ignorance of the Law is no e...

 I remember when I was young, probably in my preteen years, I had this fantasy about being a Rock and Roll Drummer in a band. I obsessed over that idea for several years. So one day my Step Father handed me this square thing made of wood with a round rubber pad on it. It was a gift, I think for my birthday. And I had no understanding of what this was. He tried to explain t me that this was a drum pad. And that this is what new drummers started with to learn timing etc. And he was correct. I now believe that he went to a music store and the people there had explained all this too him and he had given me that to help me to get started based on their advice. So I believe. I will never know. This did not look like a drum set to me. This did not look like anything having to do with learning how to be a drummer. And it was definitely NOT what I wanted. And today I feel badly about this. After all, my Step Father, Henry, was doing the best he could to help me realize a dream that I had. A...

 "Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. But I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey, and reminds us to cherish every moment because they'll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we lived." Jon Luc Picard, Captain/Retired Admiral Starfleet (Played Marvelously by Patrick Stewart) When I was young, very young, the word Time had no meaning for me. It was the moment that I was in that was important. A day was an incomprehensible eternity. I could not fathom what that meant. It did not matter, to me anyway, that I had no concept of time. After a bit, a few years I began to get a stumbling concept of time. It began when I started noticing that each day, while long, was not infinite. It had a beginning and an end. And, after some more time, I began to distinguish hours, minutes, and seconds. My sense of time and it's meaning began to flesh out for me. Later on in life, when I ...

 For the last few weeks I have felt myself slipping into a depressive episode. So I, of course, did what I do best. Ignored it, denied it to myself, and pretended that I am just fine thank you very much and how are you doing? I am not just fine thank you. I have been having to deal with depression for most, if not all, of my life. And I have not done a really good job of it over the years. The last several years I have gotten better at it, and I am not real good at it. As people who have been reading my writings for a while know I grew up in less than ideal circumstances. Not blaming anyone, we all do the best we can. And sometimes the best we can do is not that great. Just as true for me as anyone. And in those times we did not talk about things. Especially not mental health. The stigma around mental health issues was even stronger then than it is now. And it pretty potent still. So I learned, at a very young age, to not talk about things. To stuff them away as to be unseen and un...

I was talking with a friend on the phone today. A person that I have not spoken to in a few years. We used to talk on a regular basis and then life happened and we drifted in different directions. Nothing bad. We just stopped talking. And he was talking about being married now, which I had known about, and being a Step Father in a blended family, which I had also known about and had not really stuck in my head. And as he is talking about this, especially around Christmas and other Holidays when everyone wants to celebrate with this child, I was also hearing the Joy and Pride that he took in being a Positive Role Model for this child. As he was talking I was reflecting back on my growing up in a blended family like that, with a Step Father, with family that was not biologically related to me, and reflecting on my very different experience. I have written enough about my growing up life in other places for you all to know what I am talking about. A brief summary, it was very different fr...

 When I was young I felt like nobody cared about me. I was totally wrapped inside my head and really felt like I was alone. That nobody cared if I lived or died. And this was a really interesting dichotomy. I knew that people in my family cared for me, yet I never felt like it. And because of many different things going on within the family it was easy to live in the world of "No one cares" and "I may as well be dead". And that was the world that I lived in for a long time. It was a very lonely world. A very empty world. And then, I began to learn how to be human. I began to unlearn  being self centered and began to learn how to care about others, to empathize, to like myself and others. I still have a long way to go on all of those. I cannot practice any of these things any where near as well as I can discuss them. It is an ongoing, and very Human, journey. And I began to really feel like there are people in this world who care about me. About me as me and me as a ...

 September Eleventh Two Thousand and One. We all know what happened that day. And after, as the information about the people who had done those acts of terror came out, I made myself very unpopular in some circles. For I began stating, "I understand those guys". Because I did. And still do. When I was younger I had a very well developed sense of Injury. I had hurts. And they were legitimate. Not made up. However, the wrongness in them was that I held on to them long, long after the fact. I lived inside my hurts and never let them go. As a friend of mine once said, "I took good care of them. Fed them. Burped them. Changed their diapers. Made sure they could grow good and strong". And, for me, those hurts justified a lot of really bad behavior on my part. Later on in life I began the ongoing process of becoming human. And one of the biggest things that I had/still have to do is check my sense of injury. And I saw, and still see, how easy it would have been in that tim...