Posts

It's A Zen Thing

 In the winter of 1994 - 1995 one of my nephews, I have a lot of nieces and nephews, and his friends got tired of me bitching about winter. They told me one evening that the next day they were kidnapping me to a small little ski area known as Maple Valley. A little place long since closed. They were all snowboarders and they informed me that we were going to go there and that I was going to spend the day learning how to snowboard. They said that my bitching about not having anything to do and too cold and all of that had gotten really old and that I had to at least give this a try. If I didn't like it by the end of the day that I had at least tried and they would accept that. This was the winter before I started going to recovery meetings. I was lost. Hated myself and everything else. Was not in a good space. So we went. And by the end of the day I knew that they had won. I was hooked. Damn it :-) And they were surprised at how well I took to it. And for the rest of that winter I w...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Human Becoming

 We are all Human Beings. Yes. Even You. No matter how much you or I am in denial of this, it is so. And we just keep on Being all the time. And whether or not we are Being someone whom we can be happy with or not is completely up to us. No matter our past circumstances, what happened to us, who we are Being Right Now is up to each of us. No exceptions. So many of us settle into a way of being at a very young age and never evolve after that. And there is nothing wrong with that. For most people they have become someone that they can be that is familiar, that is comfortable, even if the only comfortable part of that is the familiarity. And there are really no surprises left in their lives. It may or may not be very workable. And it is the known. And for so many of us it is the familiar known that may not be great over the unfamiliar unknown even though that unknown could be fantastic. Or, rather the devil you know over the angel you do not. And then there are the fewer numbers of pe...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Hero with a Thousand Faces

 The title of this blog is also a great book by Joseph Campbell. I highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone who is interested in History as told thru Stories. And the history of stories. I will be touching on many of the same themes that Campbell covered in his book, probably much better than I. The difference being I will be talking about us today from a very personal perspective. In the book what Joseph talks about is the Hero's Journey. And if you want a great example of all the elements of a Hero's Journey then watch the original three Star Wars movies. "A New Hope", "The Empire Strikes Back", and "Return of the Jedi". That is a standard Hero's Journey straight out of Joseph Campbell. For me, I think we all have to possibility within us of a Hero's Journey in our lives. I believe that every life has at least some of the elements of a Hero' Journey within it. In Campbells work he breaks it down into three sections and each h...
Post a Comment
Read more

Reality VS Excuses

 For a little over a year now I have been following a young lady on a few different social media platforms and a Telegram, phone app, channel. She lives in Kyiv, the capitol city of Ukraine. In these places she documents her experiences of living in a country that is being invaded. Living in a city that is under constant missile and drone attack. She shoots photos and videos of being under missile attack with her cat. Photos and videos of the aftermath of these attacks on her city and country. And her and her cat. She is tired a lot. She also shoots photos and videos of her daily life. And I am struck by how normal they can appear. She goes to get coffee. Goes to work. Goes to places where she can hike in nature and try to be detached from the reality that is living in a war time city and country. Of just living her life to the best of her ability during a very difficult time. A few days ago the President of her country fired the Minister of War for reasons that I have no clue abou...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Stranger in the Mirror

 In the late 1990's a Television show appeared called Babylon 5. I found it after it's run was over. I very much liked, and still like, this show. It was Science Fiction, with a prewritten 5 year story arc, good casting, good writing, and good acting. In my opinion. In this show there were two very advanced races of beings. One was called the Vorlons. The other was called the Shadows. They were represented as being millions of years older and more advanced than humanity and the other "younger" races. Each race had a demand question. What I mean by that is a question that demanded an answer. It was in this question that they figured out who you were and how they could use you. For the Vorlons the question was "Who are you"? For the Shadows the question was "What do you want"? For most people these questions are very hard to answer. Even if, or especially if, we think that the answers to these questions are self evident. And, I also submit for your c...
Post a Comment
Read more

Law and Humanity

 I recently wrote about the importance and the use of the Rule of Law. And I am still absolutely committed to the idea that the Rule of Law must be paramount. Not the rule of the strong. Not the rule of the rich. Not the rule of the "elite". The Rule of Law. And I also want to write about The Rule of Law and Humanity. I believe that Law and Humanity must not just co-exist. They must be intertwined. So often throughout our history the law did not have any Humanity in it. For example, in the United States Slavery was legal and people were property that their "masters" could do anything they wanted to. And helping slaves to escape, teaching them how to read, those were illegal. During Jim Crow time in the United States it was not legal, per say, to lynch Black People. Although it may as well have been. The people who were supposed to enforce the law were on the side of the lynchers. So it may as well have been legal. During the time of the Nazis in Germany it was legal...
Post a Comment
Read more

Nuremburg Trials

 In November of 1945, with a big part of Europe in ruins as a result of World War Two, the Allied Powers, France, The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Soviet Union, and the United States of America, convened a "Special International Court" in Nuremberg Germany. They chose this location as it had been the location of many of the largest Nazi rallies during the early Nazi regime. And they really wanted to make clear, thru this symbolism and other things, that the Third Reich was DEAD and gone. In the subsequent trials they tried the people who were still alive who had been leaders of the Nazi machine and many of the functionaries who carried out the orders of those leaders. In the initial trial the defendants were 24 Nazi leaders who were indicted on charges of Crimes Against Peace, Crimes Against Humanity, War Crimes, and Conspiracy to Commit these crimes. Of those initial trials 21of 24 defendants were convicted. In subsequent trials more were convict...
Post a Comment
Read more