A Variety of Thoughts About Everything

 I was on the phone a little bit ago with a friend. They were really broken up. Had just found out that a mutual friend a few towns over had died by, almost certainly, foul means. I called a few people in this town to get better info. Was filled in and DAMN!!! The friend was someone that had struggled for a long time with addiction. In the last few years they had pretty much fallen off the map. Me and my friend had seen them last year on a bike ride when we basically kidnapped them to come out for a few and talk. Was the last time I spoke to them. I tried calling a few times and nothing. According to what I was told they had just started coming back to meetings and seem to really want to get their life together. Was going to meetings, had a sponsor, was walking every day for health. Doing things that point to willingness. Which had seemed to be missing in the past. And it was not enough. Because, from what I have been told, and believe based on the information and the sources, this...

 We have all heard it said, many times I am sure, "Money can't buy happiness". And technically this is true. However, there are things that money does which promotes the space to be happy. Maybe not buying Happiness, sure promoting it's possibility. So what does money do that helps provide space to be happy? It helps to take care of the basic life necessities that without there is no hope of happiness. A single Mother who has to try to figure out how to keep the kids fed, warm, and clothed, while trying to juggle paying for food, clothes, and heating fuel, while keeping a car that she cannot afford to replace on the road so that she can work, trying to choose what she can pay and what she can put off, has no hope of happiness at all. Just dreadful worry. A single Father trying to decide how to feed the kids while keeping up with astronomical medical bills from one kids sickness while staying at a job that has no benefits because that is all he can get has no possibili...

 A little while ago I got off the phone with a friend. It was a continuation of a, rather heated, discussion that began at an event last night. The discussion landed for me as a continuation of me be told by people my entire life that "You are too loud. You are too intense. You cannot be like that. It makes me uncomfortable". Because I have had that told to me for as long as I can remember. Or, at least, that is how I have perceived it and how it has felt to me. 😇 And for most of my life I have tried to fit into these boxes of what other people have told me that I need to be. Quieter. Less intense. Less assertive. And I never was able to form any connection with my authentic self in that way of Being. When Being what I am told that I should be then it is impossible to Be who I really am. After a lot of years of Being a Fraud I finally began the process of Recovery. For me this recovery is the practice of the 12 Steps of Narcotics Anonymous. I have done some other things as w...

 We have started having a discussion in our society about Mental Health over the last decade or so. I think this is a good idea. I like that some celebrities have opened up about their own mental health issues. My two favorites are the 2 Windsor Princes when they talked about what happened to them when their Mum died. Because that helps to create space where other people can open up about their mental health struggles. I have mine. The 2 that I deal with are Depression and PTSD. And if you do not believe that you can be affected with PTSD when you have not seem Military Combat then you really just do not understand. Traumatic Events happen to every person. Some are affected by this stronger than others. For the longest time mental health was a taboo subject. It was thought that these were just weak people with no moral fiber who were attention seeking. or lazy people who did not want to work and were trying to leach off of society. And some other fables that people took as true. So...

 So many of us, myself included, would have a very hard time answering this question. We are never taught any tools to be able to discover this. I find that rather disappointing for myself. For, I believe, that this life that we are living is totally a journey of self discovery. And we have many things that point to this. My favorite is a quote from a Shakespeare play put into the mouth of a character called Polonius, "This above all: to thine own self be true. And it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not be false to any man". And I ask, if we are not equipped to seek our own true selves, in fact we live in a society that demands we conform to their ideals, then how in the hell are we supposed to do the whole being true to our own selves? It is not impossible. It is difficult. Another great way of looking at this comes from Star Trek Strange New Worlds. A character named Captain Angel, a Pirate whom I hope we see more of, says to Spock "I think there's mo...

 This morning I was reading an article about how a lot of Solar and Wind Farms are not coming to fruition because of 3 things: There is a years long wait in the approval process The price to get connected to the electrical grid is often enormous The grid, as it is, does not have the carrying capacity for the load that is coming. It can barely handle what we have now. And, just to be clear, 1 and 2 are mostly caused by 3. And most of this is caused by political idiocy. There is a party in American Politics that stands in the way of any progress. We all know which one this is. We are on a death spiral in our Infrastructure because of the Hedonistic Refusal of one of the two parties to actually Govern. All they can do is Obstruct. We need to have a Massive Infrastructure Bill passed by Congress. The President would sign it in a second. That Bill needs to finance improving the Electrical Grid to a Smart Grid with a huge expansion in it's carrying capacity. It needs to fix and upgrade o...

 "If I were loved, as I desire to be, what is there in the great sphere of the earth, and range of evil between death and birth, that I should fear-if I were loved by thee." by Alfred, Lord Tennyson Love. It is what we all desire. To be Loved. It is one of the strongest, if not the strongest, desires of Humanity. It is also a survival mechanism for the Human Race. Yet I find that there is so much about this very primal emotion that is misunderstood. So often we mistake other things as Love. So what is Love? Dictionary.com says Love: noun a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person. a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend. sexual passion or desire. SEE MORE verb (used with object),   loved,   lov·ing. to have love or affection for: All her students love her. to have a profoundly tender, passionate affection for (another person). SEE MORE verb (used without object),   loved,   lov·ing. to have lov...

 Forgiveness. To Forgive someone. We humans have some messed up ideas about what this means. I went to the dictionary and all it has to say is "The Act of Forgiving". Bloody stupid. Tells one nothing. So I am going to give you what I think on the subject. Let us start by examining some of the ideas that I used to have about forgiveness to see what it is not. Forgiveness means forgetting. It most assuredly does NOT mean forgetting. One should never forget the behavior of someone that has hurt them. That does not do you or the other any service at all. Forgiveness means that I am letting you off the hook. Negatori. One is responsible still for ones own actions. Nothing that I do can remove from you that responsibility. Forgiveness means we are friends. NOPE!!! I can, and have, truly forgive someone and still not have them in my life. If a person is not making any effort to become someone who will not perform those actions that hurt me why in the world would I invite them back i...

 I have always felt that the most important thing for any person is Family. And, what does that mean? So I went to dictionary.com and looked it up. And this is the official meaning of the word Family: noun,   plural   fam·i·lies. a basic social unit consisting of parents and their children, considered as a group, whether dwelling together or not: the traditional family. a social unit consisting of one or more adults together with the children they care for: a single-parent family. the children of one person or one couple collectively: We want a large family. the spouse and children of one person: I'm taking the family on vacation next week. any group of people closely related by blood or marriage, as parents, children, uncles, aunts, and cousins: to marry into a socially prominent family. adjective of, relating to, or characteristic of a family: a family trait. belonging to or used by a family: a family automobile; a family room. So this talks a lot about Genetic Families...