Reactors

Family and other loved ones can be like the fuel in our gas tanks, or they can act like a stuck emergency brake we have to release to move forward.

I've been blessed with supportive loved ones, but even they wouldn't have been enough to keep me going if I hadn't detached with love from several people who "brought out the worst in me." That's a rather irresponsible way of saying it, though; the truth is they were just living their life by their rules and I became my worst self in response to those rules.

My biggest mistake was thinking my stagnation or outright regression around certain people meant I needed to work something out with them; really it was a sign I wasn't being true to my own values (or just as often, hadn't fully worked out what my code was).

Much as I wanted to be independent, I was a follower (a reactor).

It's easy to rebel; any fool can charge a machine gun nest. Truly "leading" our own life in a way we can "live with" is our greatest challenge.

Flavor

Here's the kind of word play insight that tastes as good as homemade ice cream to me when I arrive at it: Over editing of flavor, when performed on a truly meaningful thought, can produce something quasi-independently important in itself, like: "Waste, want."

Context Dropping

The reason the modern world of thinking has been perverted by context dropping, or as logicians call it, the "fallacy of suppressed evidence," is that few people realize that all phenomena everywhere are interconnected. For example, if you search enough, you can discover meaningful relationships between, say, the color of a particular lipstick and the price of tamales in Tijuana.

Although connections between given phenomena may not be relevant to a particular issue, surprisingly often they are - we just won't allow ourselves to see ALL the influences at play in most cases. Thus context dropping is really a symptom of closed mindedness.

Fear

Fear.

What comes to mind when you read that word? Like love, the place of fear in our lives speaks Gettysburg Addresses - what fear means to us in this moment can reveal the roots of our values, needs, and more.

And somehow integrating what we fear with what we love can win inner civil wars.

Love

Love.

When you read that word, what comes to mind? A romantic relationship? A general attitude toward humanity? God? Family love? Friendship? Your feelings about yourself? Something else?

What "Love" means to us at a particular moment says a lot about us: our values and priorities at that moment; our lacks, fulfillments, desires & goals; our attitude(s) in general.

What better yardstick of our lives and our success than the place of Love in the picture?

(You might be able to measure many of the same things with hate, but why go destructive when it's so much more fun to create?)

On Becoming Who We Are

If what you see were always what you get, being a human being would be enough. There would be no need for self-improvements or adjustments of goals, because we "beings" would be rigidly related to existence. But to deal with life as it is, and not just as it appears to a limited "being," we need to grow and adapt, we need to become human becomings. Rigid beings don't fare well in a changing world, as rust, the biological cycle of life, and the evolution of cultural practices demonstrate.

Aside from physical changes beyond our control, our choices and fluid awareness seem to be the characteristics most distinguishing our becoming from our being - and the characteristics that take on the most human of flavors.