A Variety of Thoughts About Everything

 There is a truism that, as far as I can tell has been true forever, each generation complains about the generations that follow. And the complaint is always the same, "This generation is ..." and in that "..." is always, they are not enough of something, or they are too much of something. I remember when I was young, we were called slovenly because we had long hair and did not wear dress clothes a lot. Jeans and T-Shirts, often with holes and no sleeves. That was just one of the ways we were Not and/or too much whatever it was. And here we are now, denigrating the generation that followed just like our parents and grand parents etc did. We, who thought we were the ultimate Rebels, turned out to be just like our parents. And we are doing the same exact things. And, while it was bad before, damaging to relationships, today it is far worse. In this day of mass communication and social media it is much more damaging. So why do we condemn the generations that follow us?...

 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. ...