Nightly Thoughts...

And I guess all we really need is one question to actually get us thinking, but it is always up to us whether we want to think about the question or just dismiss it and keep on going...

And so today after a long day I got a message from an old friend, a friend that had moved back to her home country when we were still teens and now time has passed, life has happened and she was wanting to know how things were going, she was a best friend during those high school years but time and growth have happened that it appears harder to have a conversation with any of them. As much as I love them and I am here to listen to them, the time that was not spend through the years just letting each other know what was going on seems to have caught up with us and the easiness in which we were able to strike a conversation is no longer there. 

Anyway... enough of that because I am sure everyone has gone through that at some point, you stop talking and communicating with someone and then suddenly you try again and all you get is small talk, something that most people are ok with but unfortunately I am not.  All in all my friend asked me why I had moved to the city I am living in now, why so far away from family and some friends that were left behind, it seemed incomprehensible to her that I would just go out on my own and find a new place when socially we all want to always be around people we love and that are familiar to us even if those are no good for us.

I sat here and just wondered how to answer her, no answer would have ever suffice to explain to her how I just really woke up one day and felt like this is where I needed to be and then went with it.  It has come to my attention how hard it is for people to understand the concept of going with your gut, of following your bliss, going where you feel you will be happy, whether that place is full of friends or not, whether there is family there or not, the place where your gut feeling is telling you to go is the place where you should be. 

Most people decide that they have to make everything fit for the purpose of making it logical right now, any move, any change in job; it all seems to be an issue of how much money will I make, how much family support will I have or how many more opportunities will arise from this move.  Life never seems to be about whether or not we will be happy doing what we are doing and the sad part is that now a days I find it not surprising when people look at me like I am a total weirdo because I just don't have a 5-year life plan that I am following.  

It is sad because life is not planned, it is also sad because when I say: "I am doing this because it gives me joy and while your offer of working in this company that has great benefits and great pay which will according to you allow me to buy all the things I (according to you) need, I would die working in a place I don't like, so I am sorry but I choose to be poor of money and rich in joy." I am looked at like a completely irrational person... I don't know when it was that life changed, I am sure that at one point human beings looked for joy rather than things and it was the amount of joy they had in their lives that measured their success and not the amount of things or the amount of money they had. 

But hey! I think I've written about this before right? Follow your bliss, you gut, your intuition... Lately in my own spiritual path I have been doing that more and more, and all I can say is that while it is extremely hard to let yourself be guided by something you don't quite understand, it has also been extremely rewarding and fulfilling.  I have learned a lot in the past few years and even recently, still learning to trust because as any other human being in this planet I want logic and I want everything to be connected at the moment I am doing things but life is not like that, life connects all the dots as you are living it. 

Last Sunday, another old friend contacted me (I guess one can say that there is something that needed reminding), this friend was one that I had worked with for a a few months a few years back, from a distance I have seen him achieve certain things in his life that anyone else would love to have, so far he has reached part of the potential I knew he had, just this gut feeling telling me hey that guy over there, he has the ability to be great! What kind of greatness he achieved was and will continue to be up to him.  So I am sitting there letting him know about how life is going (and this is one of those people with whom you can always talk and he will always listen, and it just makes you feel like hey it's all good and I get what you are saying, and that part of him has not changed) and he is letting me know how his life is going and then he stated how he had recently come to appreciate free time more, work was busy, managing people is harder than expected, things change when everything you and accomplish is not based only on your work but it's actually based on the performance of others. 

And so I said to him: This is why I do what I do, I might not have a lot of money, I might not have a brand new car, I might not have all the things that people say I should have to be happy, but I have joy, the only time I am not full of joy is when I am talking to people that are trying to tell me what to do. And so, I said, I have ended up with not too many friends and I have a hard time talking to people my age because they are all looking for that, they have graduated college, they want to get a good job, get married, buy a nice house, have kids and all that "good stuff" meanwhile I am here saying to myself, I tried that and life slapped me so hard when I went with what was supposed to be done and I was not happy, now, some of those folks my age have their good job, some have gotten a house and have the nice car, but the job they have is not something they really want to do and so here comes Friday and they are all getting ready to go out and party and go to the bar and get drunk because they just can't stand their job and they need a distraction (he was laughing while I was saying this and nodding, possibly because he is one of them) and I am at home saying to myself ohh I love my job I want to go and work some more and then that is what I do. 

But this concept is so hard for people to understand, it is not until they are about to die that they realize ohh I should have lived more and worked less, maybe my life would have been different if I would have not planned it so much and I would have done what I truly wanted not what would have given me more money.  It is so hard to understand that your fate is to die and that you don't know when that will happen but that whatever you do between now and then should be something that fills you with joy not with pain and regret.  That whatever you do right now is what counts and it is even a harder concept to accept that when you do the things you love the most then the money usually follows, it comes with it, you get good at what you love because you practice it daily without frowning at it, you love it so why wouldn't you do it? you want to work at it, you want to get better, it's not forced, and anything that is not forced and that is allowed to flow and is full of love it's always great! I don't think there is anyone that could tell me right now that anything that was created with love and passion is not a great thing. The energy it gives out is amazing and yet we refuse to do what we love and end up doing what we think we must. 

I've probably rambled enough tonight... point is though, follow your gut, your intuition, trust it, where you want to be right now, go there! Nothing is stopping you, life is about living it and doing what you love, when you do what you love you attract love.  Don't sit there and think that because parents have raised you to think that the goal of life is to acquire things so that you can have a safe retirement and no debt and blah blah blah, and that the only way to get that is to have a good job that your job might not be perfect but it's good as long as it pays well, mmm let me tell you something, those parents were about your age when they had you, and they are probably not at the end yet but just about to reach it, a period when everything changes and then the priorities change and then life is given a different meaning, time is more important because then it becomes quite clear that you don't have enough of it, and you look to spend that small amount you have left with the ones you love but we are busy being busy and so it is an endless vicious cycle, then death arrives and we regret the time that was not spent and the moments we missed.  And the flaw in all of this is that we all keep thinking that we will reach that age and that we will have time to do the things we do but we really don't, meanwhile we are missing out on the best things in life.  The song Cat's in the cradle by Harry Chapin puts this truth out there, but I guess it's just a song we sing until the time we actually decide to listen to it and get the meaning out of it. 

So, go do what you love, go where you want to go and don't worry about figuring it all out, even those who think that they've got it figured out are still trying to figure it all out, as one of my friends stated to me today: I will figure it out as I go along but I will be joyful along the way... 

On pain and suffering...

Woke up today to a message from one of my cousins, she had sent me the link to one of Kirk Cameron's documentaries, in the message she stated that it was a must watch and that she could not have said it better than the way he put it.
I decided to watch the one hour documentary which attempts to answer questions like: why do bad things happen to good people?, why doesn't God stop pain and suffering?, why there is death and sickness when there is supposedly a God that can stop all of it?, why doesn't God cure everyone?, and more questions among those lines.... eventually we get to the selfish question that every human being on this planet asks themselves when things are not going their way which is WHY ME?
Yes, yes I called you all selfish, the reality is that we all are, we are born that way because really when you think about it if we weren't we would not be able to survive, a baby wants food when it wants food and the baby cannot be told I am sorry you must wait because I have things to do, if you do that then the baby will cry bloody murder, why? Because the baby naturally and instinctively knows that it needs to eat in order to survive. However, as the years pass by we learn to not be as selfish, we learn to help others and we learn to love unconditionally, not love because we need something from another person but because it is a good feeling to just love. Now, some will argue that because we get a good feeling from loving then that also puts us in the selfish pile vs the non-selfish one, and yeah you can look at it that way but that is not something I will argue on this post.
So, I am sitting there watching this documentary and listening to Mr. Cameron pretty much recite the Bible, which he, as many Christians do, confuses the words written in them with the word of God. For the purpose of this particular post I am not go into a lot of arguments as to why that is not true but let me just say that:
1. The Bible was written by men, humans, let's say God did spoke to them and this is assuming God does exist (and I am not saying I don't believe God does) humans tend to interpret things and have the ability to change words to fit their own agenda.
2. Let's say that the words of the Bible are the words of God and God really did write this book, well the original one was written in a language that a lot of the people on earth do not understand and therefore it has had to be translated to many languages by many different people. In essence that book is merely a philosophical book which can give some answers to certain questions we as human posit that we have not been able to answer in any other way.

With that said... Let me continue...

Mr. Cameron starts with how the earth was created, how men were created, which as much as I like to go with what the Bible states and how God created this earth, there are just a lot of questions that are raised that the Bible does not explain, questions that each of us must answer on our own because really in the end all we can do is speculate. He tells us how Adam was supposed to protect Eve and how he failed in doing that because all he did was just watch Eve eat from the "forbidden" tree and did nothing to stop her, statements in which he seems to completely take the blame out of Eve and just put it on Adam. So, I guess it's Adam's fault we are all here living in misery right?
Well then he states how God, his God is all loving and forgiving, yet... God still kicks Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden and tells them now they will not live forever, on that note... even though God is all just, he also decides that it will not just be Adam and Eve that pay for their "wrong doing" (who would have thought that eating an apple would create such havoc) but every single human being will go ahead and have to pay for what they did.... Now that is like saying someone came to your door and killed someone you loved and then not only do we put away the person that committed the crime but we also condemn everyone else on this earth for the same crime even though they did not committed it. Now he does add that God is still just and caring and loving because he dresses Adam and Eve in animal fur when they become ashamed of being naked, later he adds that maybe it was God that said well you are acting like beasts (since they did not obey him) and now you will be dressed like ones... I understand that  that is Mr. Cameron's view but you can't have it both ways, someone so "perfect" as you seem to believe that God is cannot be both unforgiving and forgiving at the same time, you can be just and unjust, I mean really? Is this what they do when they talk about the Gospel?

He continues on with the story of Noah, and the Tower of Babel, and Abraham and as touching as it was to see him think about all of this because a family that seems to be close to him ended up losing their son to cancer after their child had been battling it for 10 years, he still is unable to really answer the question and instead most of the time he is just babbling about God and all the things he tried to do to make sure that we were taken care of and eventually lift ourselves to the heavens.

Here is the thing, when it comes to these kinds of questions of why does pain and suffering exist, unfortunately as much as we want to try and explain it with a collection of books written centuries ago, we really can't, the book tells stories about pain and suffering, most of which is caused by none other than us. Yes at the end Mr. Cameron states that we all have a purpose, one thing we have to fulfill, that life is a big theater production in which God is the Director, Producer, Screen Writer, etc... And we are mere actors, there is a philosophical text on this particular notion and it made a bit of sense especially since we really are not in control of our lives, everything we do is dependent on someone else, whether that someone else is someone closer to you or not, every decision you make in life, its outcome is not dependent just on you but on someone else because we don't live in this world alone.

So why does pain and suffering exist? We suffer because we want to, we suffer because we get attached to things, to people, suffering is a human emotion, pain is earthly not heavenly, we can say that God is not perfect because he created a world that is imperfect, so how can a perfect God create an imperfect world? A world full of suffering and pain? Change the view of the world you are seeing, the world itself is perfect, each of us was given the ability to choose and the ability to think and act the way we see it best, and each of us was created differently from one another therefore each of us will have different views and different ideas. It is because we are all created so differently that this world is not one bit of boring, we are here to learn and I agree that everything that we go through teaches us all a lesson each situation is different and therefore each lesson is different and yes I could sit here and talk all about what I have learned in the hope that you will learn it too and maybe live a happier life but if you are not willing to learn it by listening to someone else then if it is a lesson you must learn life itself or God will put you in a similar situation in order for you to learn your own lessons, some decide that they will learn others decide that they will not.

And going back to pain and suffering being an earthly thing... Have you ever just stepped back for a moment and really thought about all the other things that were going on in your life that were actually good? Life always sends good things to us, but as humans we are so self-destructive that when we see something good happening we believe we either don't deserve it or that suffering will eventually come from it and eventually it ends up happening because we expect it and then we find a reason to suffer. Whether it is that your job sucks, that you don't have enough money, that you are not healthy enough, that you might find out that you are going to have to battle a deadly disease (and on that note let me remind you all that life is deadly, we all end up in a grave eventually so saying deadly disease is kind of dumb) but we all always find something to complain about, something always sucks and when we focus on everything that sucks for us we tend to drown ourselves in this bubble of negativity which in turn clouds us and stops us from seeing the amazing things we have in life and we become ungrateful and intolerant of others and that in turn creates a lot of chaos in the world. It is not until the day that each of us starts to see life in a different way that pain and suffering will end, every single person on this planet must come to the acceptance that we are not alone and that we have to not just preach tolerance but practice it and I am sorry to tell you but not many people practice tolerance. And back to acceptance, we must accept that this world we live in, is perfect, a world where everyone would agree with everyone else would just be plain boring, a world where everyone was created equal would be extremely boring, a world where there were no "bad" things happening would be a depressing world because then how would we know what the happy and good things were? A world where sickness did not exist would not allow us to appreciate the times when we are healthy, those times that we often take for granted. A world where there was no death would not teach us to appreciate the moments we have now, even though most times we don't appreciate it and it tends to be the times when we completely stop appreciating those beautiful moments we have with close friends, family, nature that we get reminded that life is short and that death can come at any time so you might as well enjoy it.

Knowledge...

Issue at hand is whether or not we can achieve knowledge...
First of I suppose we need to figure out what we mean by knowledge? If I go by the dictionary's definition of knowledge then knowledge is acquaintance of facts, truths, or principles as from study or investigation.
And I think I will go ahead and just use that one definition of knowledge for the purpose of this blog because the question here is whether or not we can actually have knowledge, and based on that definition the answer would be yes, we can... however, is what we know as a fact or truth actually true?
In order for us to get to a "fact" first someone has to have had some perception of what they believed they could eventually prove as "factual" however, we tend to put so much energy and so much weight into the "facts" as we know them right now and create arguments to try and prove something is true forgetting that the "facts" we are using are just simple theories with, to put it simply, a lot of backing at the particular moment in time but nonetheless they are just theories.
Theories which can turn a simple conversation into a full blown and scary fight, the reality is that even though we can back a theory to the point of us calling it a fact so that we make ourselves feel better and give each other a bit of certainty, that is still just a theory, and the justifications we have used to be able to call it a fact can change at any point in time.
That is one of the reasons why we can never be certain of anything really, not even our own knowledge of things. Taking it one step further... In order for any of us to actually attain any "knowledge" we have to first be able to perceive something, in perceiving things each of use can have a different view of that particular something. All the "knowledge" we have was once someone else's perception, someone else who decided to call whatever it is we are perceiving whatever name it has. This goes even to any studies, we have a group of scientists who are following certain parameters in order to prove certain theories and then call those theories a fact. But the parameters that they are following, the rules one might say, were set up by someone else, someone that is not them, but that somehow got us to take those rules and use them as basis for any scientific study, and unless we look at how they came up with those parameters and actually are able to ask them what made them come up with this set of of rules (which really we cannot) we cannot possibly say with certainty that this is the best way, it is the best way that was adopted years ago and we just kept going with it.
And let's just say that way was in fact the correct way of proving theories as "facts" then those who are actually in charge of whatever "study" are writing their findings based on their perception of things, unless we are actually there, we cannot conclude with certainty that what they perceive is 100% correct, even if there was another group of people conducting a study in the same manner we cannot say that their findings are completely based on just their perception, we can argue that because there were a group of people who had done research on the same subject before that their perception of what they are working on might be skewed.
The point I guess I am trying to get to here is that it does not matter how much "proof" one has for a particular thing to be real or not real, that "proof" can change at any time, that "proof" is also based on someone's perception, a person or group of people who we don't know and could be essentially perceiving the world in such a different way than what we would perceive but yet they have found enough convincing evidence to make the argument that what they saw have made this theory of theirs a fact. And most times we don't even question it. We take it for what it is, we don't think about it, we just go with it. Our need for certainty, in a world where things are really extremely uncertain tends to lead us to believe things that are sometimes completely false. If we were to really think about this, it would lead us to the point where we would realize that we really don't know anything, and maybe that is a scary thing for the world to realize, to actually think about, we know it, we know that all we have is knowledge based on someone else's perceptions and we go on trusting that their perception will align with ours if we were to go ahead and follow what they followed to arrive to the conclusion they have and make that particular theory a fact, but the truth is that we don't know, and we can't find out, we just have to trust and if we don't trust in it then it becomes a really scary thing to think that what we know and claim certainty for is not really certain, which is what leads me to believe even more so in faith, whether it is on a higher power that is invisible and that is all mighty and powerful or whether it is on another human being, a group of people who have found a way to convince a significant amount of people that their theories are true.... And even when we find out that what we knew before and we thought of as an actual fact turns out by new evidence that was wrong we really don't think anything of it, we still keep everything else as certain, set in stone as some will put it, without the ability to change at all and therefore we assume and proclaim that it is the absolute truth, we don't leave the leeway that we should in order to learn to tolerate the beliefs of others, whether they can be proven or not, it might just mean that they can't be proven right now, but does not mean that they can't be "proven" in the future, nor does it mean that if it is "proven" in the future that later we won't learn something new and realize that what we "proved" was wrong.
So, can we ever achieve knowledge? Personally because knowledge is based on someone else's perception I don't think we can, but then again the more I think about it, the more I realize that we really don't know anything, it is that we think we know something that lead us to terrible arguments about what we think we know rather than wonderful conversations that could lead us to a different degree of understanding of each other. But hey! What do I know right? I just said we really don't know anything...

Because everyone just keeps talking about it...

For the past few days people have been bombarding the talk about suicide and depression. I've read many different articles that were written just after the passing of the dear comedian Robin Williams, everyone saying how we just don't know how much pain someone is in, he was someone who dedicated his life to making other people laugh and yet he somehow could not make himself happy. 

I've read an extreme amount of articles on addiction and depression and mental illness. All of which appear sometimes to be three different things and others they appear to be looked at as the same thing but with different names. 

People keep pointing out that if you are starting to feel sad or depressed you should reach out to someone and talk, the national suicide line phone number has now become a constant post that appears on every post about Robin's death.

And while I believe that is great to bring awareness, I also think that we are all missing one big point here which I mentioned on my last post, and that is that we are all living in a world that fosters feelings of depression. 

We live in a society where we are bombarded by sad news, depressing news all the time, what makes it to the news are the guy who stabbed his whole family because he says that was his destiny, the woman who threw her newborn down a cliff, the war that is going on between two countries (a war that has been going on for many many years), the beheading of children because they are of a different religion.  How can someone not get depressed when we are constantly reading or hearing stuff like this. 

Then you add the ideals that society has set as standards for living a full and happy life. Standards like you must have a house, you must buy a nice car, you must get an education, you must get married, you must make this kind of money, you must have good health, you must keep a certain amount of money in the bank, you are only successful when you keep moving up the corporate ladder, etc etc... A society that has the standard that says: everyone has to be the same but at the same time everyone must be different.

Have you ever stopped and think about how fucking hard that is? You have to follow certain guidelines which, as society says, will bring you happiness, and we go on and work on dreams that other people have had, we work so hard to get to that next step, to have the money in the bank, to have the family, to buy the house and yet when we get all of it we are still unhappy because the reality is that that was not really what we wanted to do in the first place. We put so much work and we stress out over the things we have not yet achieved and that society says we should have achieved by a certain age that we forget about what we really want. 

We listen to what our parents and peers have to say on how they've lived their life and we think because it worked for them (even when we see that they are not really happy) that it will work for us. We forget about what we want and we give more importance to the voices of other people rather than our own, and when we finally realize this it is either too late or we end up feeling alone in the world because we decide to do things differently and everyone else has decided to judge us. 

We are also living on a society who has been completely disconnected from human relationships, human contact, we no longer know how to read someone's body language because we are not around anyone to actually practice reading that. Our instincts that once would tell us that someone was in trouble or in pain are not being used anymore and therefore we are losing the capacity to go and help someone before they actually come to us and ask for help. 

Think about this... I don't know if it is true but reports state that Robin Williams wife left the house without seeing him that morning because she thought he was still sleeping, on a different room nonetheless. I keep wondering what would have happened if she would have walked in his room before leaving the house and actually checked up on him, not that I am blaming her because it's not her fault but what would have happened if we were more connected with each other rather than with devices?

We live in a society that has stopped listening because we are too busy reading and thinking that we can have 20 different conversations at the same time, we ignore the people we are surrounded by and that are right in front of us because others are trying to catch our attention. We decide that we will go ahead and use a text message to speak to someone we care about while we are also working or doing other stuff that does not allow us to actually stop for one moment grab the phone and talk. Basically we live in a society that gives less importance to people and more importance to things. 

So how can we be so astounded when we see that the rates of depression and suicide among Americans are rapidly rising through the years, we have done this, we have created this! How many of you actually put your phones away or actually listen to someone talk anymore... I get irritated because most of my friends now find it easier to text than they do to talk and it always feels when a conversation is not continuous (because that is what happens when you are texting, you get distracted and stop the subject and then try to pick it up later) like it is not important for any of them to actually take the time and stop to talk, yet here we all are asking everyone to speak up when we don't even want to give the time needed to listen. 

This society has also been teaching us that we must be strong, that we must get over things, especially things that society has classified as silly, even though things affect people in different ways, we expect everyone to react in the same manner to the same situation. The most ridiculous thing that I have yet to experience, not everyone is the same and while we hear that over and over we still expect everyone to be. And while it is true that you cannot help someone who does not want to be helped, it is also true that you cannot tell someone who is seeking help that they are seeking help for something that to you is silly because to them it is not.

We live in a world that judges us for the emotions we feel and that we show and yet that same world that laughs at us for what it believes is a silly thing our minds have created is now calling out for us to speak up and tell it when we don't feel right. That same world that has become a playground where everyone plays on their own and where everyone ignores everyone is now telling us that we need to speak up because it is ready to listen. 

The worst part of all of this is that this great awareness that has been created over the suicide of someone who lived to make others laugh but was apparently very sad inside will start to fade out in the next few days, and suddenly everyone will go back to their old lives and keep running towards things that will not matter when you die. They will continue to ignore and will continue make things a priority. They will go back to being unhappy and pretending that they are, they will go back to making fun of others' emotions until once again someone that touched so many lives will do the same and then the talk will be reopen, but it will all just be talk because not many will actually change their ways. 

I truly wish we could all sit back and accept how different we are from one another, how our differences is what makes this world so perfect, I wish we could all realize that the set standards that society has given us will not make everyone happy, it might make some happy but not all. I wish we had the courage to go after our dreams and not after someone else's, following our dreams and our hearts will always fill us with light. I wish people wouldn't judge others and cut their wings when they decide that they are going to take a leap of faith and follow that dream that everyone said would be really hard to achieve. I wish we could all fill our void not with worry but with faith, and most of all I wish we paid more attention to the people in our lives rather than the devices that surround us. Maybe if we did that, we would find less people depressed and more people happy. 

Perfection is about Perception.

I think I have probably said this one before, perfection is all about perception. What is perfect for you it's more than likely not perfect for someone else and vice-versa.  Unfortunately the world we live in is ran by the idea that what is perfect for most should be the guideline for perfection for everyone and in the end if that guideline cannot be achieved by one of us then we are told: "well, nothing is perfect."

So, wait? Does perfection really exists?

Yes, it does, and yes, it is all about your perception of things. To me, the world itself is a perfect place, you could not make it any more perfect. WHAT? Yes, I know, there are wars, there are things we consider unfair, yes people argue, yes people kill others, yes sometimes we look at the world and think everything is not fair when it should be so we say: the world is not perfect. But there is where my perception comes into place... See without any of the "bad" things that happen in the world, I would be less appreciative of the "good" things that happen in the world and in that same regard if the "bad" things did not happen then I would have no idea of what a "good" thing is, so to me the two go together and while I do get upset and angry to some of the "unfair" things that happen, I also know that I wouldn't appreciate it as much when I saw "fair" things happen.

What about people? Are people perfect? 

Again this all comes to a matter of your perception, and on that note: Everyone is fucking perfect!!! All of you are perfect!!! WHAT??? In my perception of things, every person in this planet has a role, no life is useless even the ones whose life we think are, even that mass murderer has a purpose. We all come here to learn something, and in order for each of us to learn we have to be put through different scenarios in life, and all those scenarios would not be possible without other people, even the "bad" people.

That's why some of us are born to parents who according to societal rules are far from perfect and that should have never been parents in the first place but they somehow became parents and we were lucky to have them and then as we grow older we figure out what exactly our role is gonna be, some end up making themselves better parents, others end up becoming criminals or drug addicts when they attempt to figure out the why oh why life was like that... And with either circumstance our soul learns what it needs to learn (at least I sure hope it does, otherwise it is believed that it will keep coming through the same scenarios until it does). 

There are others who are born to what society will call "excellent" parents, and then just like those lucky to have been born to parents that should have never been parents, they have to figure out what their role is, some end up becoming drug addicts or criminals because they think they have to be like their parents, just as "perfect" or the idea of perfection that their parents have created, while others end up being what society calls "well-balanced" and "emotionally healthy" human beings.  Either way each side and those in between have something to learn. Which is why I say: We are all perfect!!! All of us, our differences make us perfect!

This is what brings me to this question, one that came up yesterday: why is it that people suffer with the idea that they can never be perfect? Everyone is always looking for the perfect relationship, to build the perfect marriage, to raise the perfect kids, have the perfect house and in the end they all end up disappointed with the idea that nothing is perfect when truly we already are perfect! (And I know some will say well if we were then we wouldn't need to learn things, well... that is part of our perfection, we are beings who are always learning and that makes us even more perfect, otherwise we would just be boring know-it-alls and if everyone knew everything then this world would be just plain boring and in my perception of things boring is just not perfect...)

We suffer with the idea that we will never be perfect because we have been taught from the moment we are born of what perfection is, and when it is not achieved we are told: don't worry about it, nothing is perfect. And so then we repeat that to ourselves until we believe it and then just try to learn with it, or we end up depressed because we can never achieve perfection, it's impossible. See, here is the thing I've learned, because perfection is about perception, you have to leave behind the perception of the rest of the world around you, your parents included, and this is one of the hardest things you will ever do! and then you have to figure out what is perfect for you, what will work for you, what will make YOU happy, and then go out and do that, and whatever everyone else says it's just their opinion and not one you should follow unless you absolutely want to. 

Once you figure out what perfect is to you, you might end up realizing that you have spent a shit load of time trying to be the perfect of someone else's standards. All your relationships suddenly become something that either you would have never entered into had it not been for the illusion of perfection of someone else or something you would have never left and would have worked harder to make it work had it not been because it wasn't someone else's idea of perfection. This also applies for jobs and everything you do in life in general. For someone it might be perfect that you go and pick a major that you don't necessarily love or want a job in but that will land you a good paying job once you graduate and that's just perfect for them, but it does not mean it will be perfect for you, you might end up landing that "great" job with "great" benefits and pay but you won't feel fulfilled and it will suck, at which time you will wonder if you did the right thing or not, but let me tell you something... If you are not happy then you did not do the right thing.

Same goes with trying to get the perfect house, raising the perfect kids, perfect marriage, who the hell decided to put in writing what exactly a perfect marriage is? For some they have the perfect marriage with someone they only spend 5% of time at peace with and the other 95% of the time they spend arguing and trying to fix the problems that arise every day and for others they find it that it is perfect for them to have a marriage where no one is arguing and everyone agrees on everything. Which one you choose is really up to you and no one else. But it is not until we actually figure out what our ideal of perfection without the ideal of perfection of others (and if I am forced to put it in different words: what will bring us happiness and joy to our lives without the input of others) that we will actually be able to change our perception of the "perfect" world and begin to walk in the path that will lead to our ultimate happiness, it will be then that we can begin to accept ourselves of how we are and we can begin to live a little more freely and with less stress and more joy.

Three kinds of people...

I am not a fan of categorizing anyone, but in the past couple of weeks I have realized that there are three kinds of people, and I am talking about it in a spiritual sense here, you can basically put each person you meet in one of the following categories:

The "Good" kind:
I put good in between quotation marks because the reality is that every person has a little bit of "bad" or "evil" in them, we are not 100% good and that is ok, but the "good" people have more good in them than they do bad. These are the people who have the ability to make you smile just by them smiling. The people who have an aura, a field of energy, that always draws you to them and when it does you just feel good and at peace with yourself. These are the people that even when they are having a bad day they are still able to make you smile somehow. These people are also ones who like to see the good in the world, the good in everyone, usually they tend to trust more, especially the people that are closest to them and because of that they tend to get hurt more but in the end they always pull back and never lose that hope and faith which always radiates out of them and spreads wherever they go.

The "Bad" or "evil" kind:
Again in quotation marks because we all have a bit of each side right. There are people in the world who are only out for themselves, these are the ones that care about absolutely no one else but them and what they can get out of a situation whether the situation is good or bad. It is about them, there is no remorse in their actions whatsoever, some of you might say: well this is the psychopaths out there and there is thankfully not many of them plus they all end up in jail anyway and I will tell you: yes, the psychopaths and sociopaths are in this category but not all psychopaths and sociopaths turn out to be criminals, some of them go through their lives trying to "steal" the best out of everyone. These are the people who you meet and you always feel like there is something not right about them, there is always this bad nervous feeling and you end up ignoring it sometimes because it usually makes absolutely no sense at all... Some, if not most of us are taught that we have to give people a chance to show us what they are made of and how they truly are, with these kind of people you will always just see what they want you to see and what they need you to see in order to get what they want. These are people with whom you have to be very careful and just be more aware of how they treat others and not how they treat you, it is how they treat others that will show you exactly who they are.

The third and what I believe is the most dangerous kind of people, the Neutral kind:
This is what the world is mostly filled with, the people who can go either way depending on who they surround themselves with. The saying "tell me who your friends are and I'll tell you who you are" is what applies to these people, the good kind of people are not easily influenced by the bad because the good always want to do good, they always weight in the options and what is best for everyone involved, the bad people will always want what is best for themselves no matter what that might be or who it might hurt. But the neutral people, they can be easily persuaded to one side or the other at any given time, these people, when you encounter them, spiritually you don't really feel anything bad or good about them unless they are influenced by a good or bad being in their lives at the time you meet them and even then you don't quite make up the energies they throw because essentially if you are one of the good kind of people then they sort of absorb that energy and you feel as if they are not a threat. And that is why this are the most dangerous people you can ever encounter and unfortunately the ones that you will encounter more often than not. People that are easily persuaded one way or the other and that are usually targets for the "evil" that hovers around because it is easy to use them for your own gain and evil is always looking for those who will easily bring them what they need.

With that said, I started to think if one could ever be completely safe from any of these? I have seen all three kinds and been surrounded by all of them at one point in my life and it has been hard lessons that I have had to learn from each encounter, but each has taught me something and I hope that I never forget it. For the "bad" people I have encounter, I have learned that the majority of times the worst you can do is fight with them, or fight back if they are trying to fight with you, they feed on this energy, it makes them more powerful, more aware of what is going on and makes them extremely careful which in turn keeps you from finding out who they really are. It's best to stay away and listen to your gut when you meet these people and you feel uneasy about them, but if you can then the more you observe them the more you will learn, strategy is the best way to win when it comes to them. With them you just really have to take a step back and pretend you are watching a movie.
The good kind of people are the ones that have given hope back to me, that there are some that really care about others and really want to make this a better place, that there are others that want to inspire, be balanced and look at both sides of situations without judgement and with a lot of objectivity. That there are people that really could change the world if they did not doubt themselves so much. But that is the soul of the good person, they are always thinking they could have done better, they could be better and that everything they do can affect someone else in a way they don't want them to be affected, and they always doubt after they have done something good whether that something was good for everyone, even if it is not good for themselves, everyone else has to be ok. The best lesson they teach is that you cannot always make everyone happy but just because you cannot make everyone happy it does not mean you are hurting someone, that we need to try really hard to doubt ourselves a little less and in the end rely on the faith and hope that it will turn out alright no matter what.
And the neutral people, the most dangerous of all three... Because they are easily influenced by outside factors, these are people that if they are under the influences of a "bad" person or being, they are also able to be influenced by a "good" person, and if you find that they are being influenced by someone bad then while being careful if this is someone you care about you will be able to influence them in a good way. They are not looking to hurt anyone but they have the capability to do so without remorse when someone bad has taken "control", they are able to be cruel just as much as they are able to be caring, they are what you will find the most in this world and because of all of that, these are the people you need to learn to live with and be the most careful of while at the same time be a good influence in them so that they are more of a person that does good rather than one that does bad.

Making sense of planning Life

I feel like I have been waking up lately with every random thought I could possibly have and I am feeling like I can't keep up with myself... So here is the one for the day:
Does life makes sense? Do we need to make sense of life in order to live a fuller one?
Truth be told, life rarely makes sense, in fact life never makes sense, but of course it is our human nature and curiosity that is always thriving to make sense of life, make it all fit, figure it all out. Why did I go in that direction when everything seemed to be telling me to go in the other, I did not listen but it just made no sense to go the other way so I went this way instead and now I am late for work...
I've learned that the more we try to make sense of how life works the more time we lose actually living life. I keep saying to leave in the moment, I don't plan, I rarely do make any plans, mostly because life has shown me that plans will change, you can plan your entire week, your entire month, your entire life and in the end when you look back nothing, absolutely nothing went according to plan and that never makes sense to us, we figure we can control everything around and make sure that with hard work and dedication our plans come through and we reach whatever goals we have set for ourselves, then everything falls apart and we get pissed off that life is unfair and we did not get back what we were hoping for.
The reality is that when you are planning things you are only planning based on the things you can and will do, you are not taking into consideration that you are not alone in this world, there are billions of people out there that can affect the course you are on. Then to top the billions of people, there are also billions of living things that can also affect the road you are planning on going into and then to top that you cannot predict any natural disaster that can happen while you are on the road to reaching your goals.
All of it can change your plans in a matter of seconds, why? Because everything that happens to us is a learning experience, we get to that point and we learn something new and when we get this new information we decide whether we need to change things or we end up due to circumstances adapting to a new way of thinking.
Which is why I no longer plan things, unfortunately that has put me in a constant battle with the world because most people like to plan, they want to know what will happen next, it is their way of saying "hey! I am in control of my life" and that makes them feel better, it is a natural thing, we are born with the need to feel that we are in control and no one else is, so when I am asked to plan out something and I don't, people tend to jump at me and then suddenly I make absolutely no sense.
I have had people actually get really angry at me because they want me to go ahead and plan out where I will live, where I will work, what I will do next and I just refuse to do it, none of them understand why and it makes no sense to them, but it does to me. Why? I realized that the only thing I have control over is the decisions I make in life, I have no control over the outcome, I am fully aware that I am not the only living creature in this world and because of that I will encounter things in the road of life that will make absolutely no sense to me but if I stop in the middle of the road and start contemplating and trying to make sense of them I will end up either causing an unnecessary accident or I will end up getting hurt, I just have to try and keep going even when things make no sense. This is something I have learned, life decided to teach me this lesson in the hardest of ways and sometimes I forget because again I am (or at least I still think I am) human, I once had plans, I had my whole life planned out, someone would ask me where do you see yourself in 5 years and I could tell them with absolute certainty where I would be in 5 years time, then 5 years came and I was no where near what I had said 5 years before that. I had worked hard for the things I wanted and in a matter of a week I ended up losing them all, something I had not planned on doing, it just happened and it made no sense, still it doesn't no matter how hard I try to make it make sense, the only thing that I can go back and say I did differently back then was that I had stopped following my "hunches" because they made no sense, they were illogical thinking so why follow them? well then I didn't and as people say: "shit happened", so after years of falling down the same hole and asking myself why I did not go with my hunch because I knew I shouldn't have done that but I did it anyway because logic had to win... I decided to just go for it and try the different approach and went with my hunches and guess what every time I went with my hunches everything turned out fine, it never made sense, it still doesn't make sense, but then again I have been on both sides of the spectrum and Life itself doesn't make sense.
Life will never make sense, life has a way of giving you directions and you have the option to follow those directions (hunches) or not follow them, what happens after your decision is made you have no control over, sometimes I wish we did but we really don't, it is a hard lesson to learn and it is really hard to change the way we are hardwired to think and act, I still battle it myself and find it a lot easier to just ignore other people when they start trying to get me to plan the next thing I am supposed to do according to them and just hide away for a bit to try and avoid the stress it causes me to try and stick to a plan because really I don't know where I will be tomorrow, I really don't even know what will happen in the next minute so how can I possibly plan out one week of my life, a month of it, or even years of it...

Just a random thought on love.

I'm feeling a bit romantic today, I guess that's the word I can give this feeling, just thinking about love which I have been thinking about a lot more lately than I've ever had before.

What is love and why is it so powerful, we have yet to figure that out but love is not selfish, love does not hurt, love gives all and when we find that, it becomes the most scary thing, because it's not about how many things you can do together, how much money you have, how much sex you have, it's about the things you do for each other without expecting anything in return and that in itself is scary.

It's scary to thing that another human being is willing to do anything for you and expect nothing in return, that's usually just love that our parents give and even them don't really do that, our parents always expect us to be our very best. 

It's scary to think that someone you know has seen all your flaws, has seen you at your worst, has seen all the bad and good you can be and they won't judge, not one moment will they look at you in judgement, you might think they do because we tend to judge ourselves harshly but they never do. Finding someone that accepts you, all of you, all that you are and is not bothered by it at all, someone that just knows that's you and if you weren't you they probably couldn't love you as much... That's a hard thing to find, a hard thing to accept once you've found it because it's almost unreal! 

We always think how could someone that has seen my all, good and bad, still want to be around me? But that is love, some say love is blind but it is not that love is blind, it is that true love accepts the other person exactly how they are, its only goal is to make sure the other person is happy and their happiness brings you happiness.

But it is a scary thing because with life things can change and being human means we will try our hardest to protect ourselves from getting hurt, so we build walls, we run, we hide when we find someone that's all willing for us, that's so loyal to us but never asks us to be loyal to them. That form of true unconditional love is so unreal, that you find it only in fairy tales.

So we say this is too unreal, it must not be real and because it is not real I should just stay away from it, let me run, let me hide before all this happiness happens because if it happens and it turns out that it was all a lie then I will have no saving.

The thing is that no matter how hard one person tries, true love is hard to hide and it's even harder to pretend that it does not exist, you can see it in their eyes, they light up when you make them smile, they light up when you smile and they get sad when the thought of losing you comes to mind because as humans we always think about loss, we have learned that nothing lasts forever, one day people die and they are no longer physically around but we must always remember that the memories we made with them will always remain and no one can take that away from us.

Once I thought: there will always be new things that come along, there will always be new people, new places to go, but there will only be one time, some are lucky and end up experiencing it twice, when you will meet someone with whom no matter what you are doing or not doing, the rest of the world does not exist, someone who makes you smile just by thinking about them, that will drive you absolutely insane because they can be the most annoying person in the world, yet you can't stand not having them around, one person that will be able to open the walls you've created and that will come right in and make themselves at home, and they will see the house messy and things that need to be changed but they won't want to change them, they know that those things are what make you you and you are the best person you can be and because of that they will inspire you to be better, to do better. One person that will risk it all, that will help you keep going, that will shake you down when you need to be shaken down because you are not being yourself, that will laugh with you, one person that will make a huge difference in your life, one person that you will just feel like you've known them for your entire life. When you find that person don't let go, don't be afraid to jump in. If they've seen your worst and they are still around, if they have a key to unlock the walls that surround you because they kept persisting until they found that key, if they are someone you can just naturally flow with and the idea of ever losing them or not being around them makes you feel like there is a knife being push into your stomach, if the idea of them being unhappy makes you feel the same way then don't be afraid to jump in especially if they show the same amount of caring and love for you, you can replace everything else in life but those kinds of people that love you unconditionally they don't come around as often as you think... You would be very lucky if you get to experience it more than once. 

It is what it is... Whatever that might be...

What do we really know? Do we really know the meaning of life? Do we really know what we are doing? Do we really know we are alive? What if all of this was just a dream, what if we were all sleeping someplace and this idea that we have of life is just a creation in our head?

If all of this was just a dream then what would reality be? Or since we believe this is our reality then this becomes our reality, no questions asked? Do we have a purpose? Is our life already written in such way that we really don't have much choice because no matter what we do we would all end up where we are meant to end up at?

What if our lives are not really written, and we are truly the ones that create our own destiny? Do we then have to look at every decision and wonder and worry about whether or not is the right one? How do we know what we are supposed to do? If human beings are owners of life, but we have the gift of making sure we sabotage our lives every chance we get then how is it that we are all still here? Could there really be someone guiding us? And if they are and we go the wrong way but they decide to guide us again are we really free then or are we bound by guidelines to follow?

What is faith? Faith is not rational, but why is it not rational? Why must we want to rationalize faith? If we rationalize it then is it really faith? Do we really believe in a higher power if we try to rationalize its existence that unfortunately cannot be truly proven? 

I am alive because I can think, but what if we could think while we were dead, what if there is another body within the one I believe to have? Then would we really be dead when we died? How do we know that all that we know is true and correct and not something that we have just gone along as a discovery because the majority of the minds in this plane of existence believe it to be that way? 

Experience some say, but how do we know this is the true experience and not just a dream and in my dream everyone is going along with it so that I believe is not a dream but a reality? 

So many questions, and not really a lot of answers, just that it is what it is...