A Variety of Thoughts About Everything

 Just recently I came face to face with my own mortality. I was very sick and the Doctor who fixed me said that if I had waited much longer then they might not have been able to help me. It was that close. Kinda got me looking at things again. And remembering some things. Some years ago a cousin of mine passed away. He was young, mid fifties, and it was not expected. One of my Aunt's had been complaining about him for years. Not real bad, just things that she felt were places where he was not living up to who he could have been and was, in her opinion, falling short. Not long after myself, my Mum, and my Aunt, were traveling and hit a store for things. As we were shopping she started talking about my cousin. And her whole tone had shifted. He was now a Saint who could do no wrong. As I was listening to her I was also remembering the way she spoke about him before. And I realized that neither of these people she talked about was the real person. Both of them were colored by her perc...

  I have a sibling that is a huge Trump Supporter. And before Trump they were already really unhinged on the subject of Politics. Really good person, except when disagreed with about politics. Then would absolutely lose their ever lovin' mind. Because of the total inability to have a conversation instead of an emotionally fueled tirade a lot of family members cut them off on social media and limited contact. Was/Is very distressing. And, in order for some things to make sense later on, I normally do not make this distinction at all, this sibling and I share a Father. We have different Mother's. I know their Mother and have a good relationship with her. And, to me, Family is Family. So, to me, a sibling is a sibling and I do not do the half shit. I just needed to put this out there for clarity on a later point. A little while ago I wrote a piece about the "election" of Trump to a second term called " America's Post Mortem" which you can read as I have li...

 I was in a Zoom NA meeting and I heard the man sharing talking about a "Tea Bag Moment". And what that meant in the given context was so much unaddressed things had already piled up to the point where he had no reserves left. So a Tea Bag hitting the floor was too much and the reaction was vastly dis-proportionate to what actually happened. And I reflected on this story. Looking back throughout my life how many "Tea Bag Moments" have I had? One heck of a lot it turns out. And it started at a very young age when I began denying my feelings, which lead to denying My Self. To unpack that a little bit, I began to stuff my feelings away rather than experience them. It does not matter why I did that at this time, just that I did. And denying my self, who I am as a Human Being and where I want to be in this life, I lost touch with that very quickly. I was trying to "fit in" to places I never fit so I had to be "someone else" in order to fit in there. I...

 I spent most of my life, growing up and a good size chunk of my, alleged, adulthood being Self Centered. And being totally unaware that I was self centered. I really thought that I was a good guy who cared about others and was giving. Alas, I was mistaken. Many years later I began a program of recovery from addiction. I started working the 12 Steps of Recovery as practiced in Narcotics Anonymous. And I began to get really uncomfortable. What the 12 Steps did, and still do, is peel away the fantasy of who I thought my self to be and introduced me to who I really am. What I found was totally at odds with the picture that I had built up, IE carefully crafted, of myself. And I began to see my total self centeredness. So let us define what it is we are talking about. Thanks to dictionary.com we can do this. Self Centered: adjective concerned solely or chiefly with one's own interests, welfare, etc.; engrossed in self; selfish; egotistical. independent, self-sufficient. centered in ones...

 I was watching an old TV show last night. A Private Detective show that ran from 1974 to 1979. There are a lot of fun things about this show and many observations that I can make from it. Here is one. The main guest that night was a woman who had just 40 years old. Was in denial about her age. And she was a "New Age" spiritualist. She was what could be called, in some traditions, a Seeker. She was on the search for something outside of herself to define herself by. And she kept going in for the Wise Man situation. A guru, or Spiritual Leader, a man, who espoused some way of "Being Spiritual" that was really just a way for him to suck people dry. And the episode showed how she was finally exposed to the truth about her latest guru and how it hurt her. And then, at the end of the episode, some time had passed, and the main character ran into her again at what, I think, was a bus station. And she was professing her faith in a major religion here in the states. Only th...

 Lately I have been seeing a whole lot of social media posts, from people I like and respect, talking about how now is the time to be nice to Trump voters. That if we are just nice enough, polite enough, understanding enough, that we can get them to see the complete error of their ways in supporting this idiot. And I keep thinking, "What F***ing Universe do you live in"? It has been five decades of getting gaslit by these people and their "sources". AKA Talk Radio and Fox "News". And, during that whole time we, meaning Liberals like myself, and Democrats, have been playing fair, trying to find common ground, working with them in order to convince them that we are Real Americans and have some good ideas if you would only see. And the result is this country has been dragged into cuckoo land. And we are almost complete in the process of becoming the Nazi States of America. As we have been trying to find the "Center" the whole political landscape has...

 When I was very young, less than one year old, my family lived in Toronto Ontario. Canada. My parents were members of an expanding organization that they truly believed in. Thus they had travelled a lot. For example, My two older sister wee born in Melbourne Australia. My oldest brother was born in Washington DC, my next brother was born in Opa-Locka Florida. And me, my folks were on a road trip and in was born in a hotel in Detroit Michigan. My next sister was born in Toronto. Then some things happened and my parents split up and my Mother got together with my Step Father. Thus my next sister, brother, and two sisters, were born in Unity/Claremont New Hampshire. My Father, meanwhile, had met a much younger lady and they had my brother Patrick, who later changed his name to David. Then my Father and his wife split up and she had three more daughters, whom I consider my sisters, and the whole family branch is complete. So roots were not really a thing. Now, going back to when I was...