Randomness

I was sitting here thinking: "One should not spend money they have not yet acquired or spend all the money they have acquired."  That is the problem America has, we are a nation of spenders; every penny we get paid we spend.  We worked all our lives to pay for things and then when the time came to retire we had nothing to live on, so what did we do? We cried out and said: "Government help us." What did the government do? They created Social Security and said well we are going to take money off your paycheck and save it for when you retire because you are not capable of doing that on your own. 

Then the years passed and the plan proved to be flawed, there were not enough money being taken out of one person's paycheck in order to provide for that person's retirement, and people were living longer than government thought they would live.  Now, Social Security is not solvent and my generation will probably not get to ever use it.  Whose fault is that though?

 

Partly is our fault, our society is bred to be spenders.  We live off the idea that we can always get a new credit card, charge what we want and pay it later.  We believe that eventually we are going to make more money and then when we make more money we spend more money.  As I was sitting here thinking why in the hell do we do that? And all I could come up was because we are unhappy. 

It is a human condition to get rewarded for things we don't want to do, we go on a diet and after one week of eating only herbs we say: "Well I have been good this week, let me buy me an ice cream."  It is something that comes from many many generations ago, we clean our rooms because our parents promise that we will get something in return, the reward for stopping what we were doing (having fun) and doing something we do not like. 

And then as we grow older we are marked by our parents telling us how we have to make a living.  A child comes with a dream they have, they want to be an artist and the parent will feed that dream until the child reaches a certain age and then the parent will say: "You are too old for that, you need to think about how you are going to make a living.  You cannot make a living by being an artist."  This gets repeated so much that eventually the child ends up going to college (something they did not want to do) and studying something they did not want to study, and then getting a job they did not want to get. 

The child, now an adult, was conditioned to go and work at a job they will never enjoy but that "pays well."  So they go to work every day, they are miserable because they don't enjoy what they do, at the end of the work day or the work week they go home in all their misery to find something that will make them feel better.  Video games, alcohol, drugs, shopping, food... Anything that will reward them for doing something they did not like to do. 

And so there goes the money they make, they believe that they deserve to buy the video games, the alcohol, the drugs, the food, because they did something that was draining and that they did not enjoy.  Every few months they have to take a break from their jobs because "they deserve it", "they've earned it", they have worked so hard for so many months that now it is time to spend money on a vacation.  But wait!  They are still paying off the last vacation that they took, and then what? Well the credit card is almost paid off so we can use it again right now.  Then we will get back to our miserable jobs and complain about having to pay them off.

After this I was thinking: "what if the reason we have so many depressed people and angry people wanting to kill others all the time was that we are all so miserable because we are conditioned to do things that we completely dislike?"

Could you imagine a world where the child is never told that they should just make sure they go work at something that will pay them enough to live and instead we tell them to go follow their passion and put focus on that.  Tell them that yes it will be hard work but that it is something they can do.  Teach them that hard work is not despised when it is something we love to do. 

Then probably we would have less alcoholics, less drug addicts, less angry, depressed, and violent people around.  Because they would be focus on doing something they love to do and not something they have to do in order to survive and then maybe all these different things they spend money on would never be an issue, that extra money could be put away for retirement.  It could be put away to pay off a house so you do not have to worry about paying rent when you are no longer able to work.  It could be invested and made more rather than just spent.  People could even help each other more rather than compete with each other so much. 

Maybe if we learned how to be and remain happy and full of joy then we would not cry and cling for the help of the very people who thrive and advance their lives by making sure we continue to have the same problems. 

Being Grateful

And so it happened that after being away from one of my social media websites I went in just to check on a message I had been sent and a wonderful friend had tagged me on a status, the idea was that he was nominating 3 people to write 3 things they are grateful for each day for 5 days.
And yes it did not mean I had to do it, but you know what I figured hey! It's a great idea and a great exercise especially since as humans we have the tendency to complain about things and look at them in such a negative perspective that we forget that some things we complain about we can change and the ones that we can't change are probably there as a lesson we must learn whether we want to or not, therefore it should not really be a big deal right?
As I started thinking about three things I was grateful for yesterday, I realized that I just kept adding to my list, there were not just three things I had in mind but several of them, and possibly this happens to me because I am just an avid thinker and if someone gets my mind started on something I just keep on going, so I figured I would make a slightly larger list and would actually make this list about things most people are rarely thankful for because they see those things as negative things and they tend to have a concept of a Utopian society that if existed would probably be extremely boring and in a way possibly depressing.
So here I go:

1. I am thankful for each person that has come into my life and intentionally hurt me somehow.
   Each of those persons, while they did some damage they also taught me a few lessons, lessons that had they not hurt me the way they did I would not have learned. Thanks to them I have learned how to spot good people, it was not easy but I learned there are certain things people who are out for themselves always do and say that those who are not don't do. Learning the difference has really helped me improved my life and taught me that it is not about how many people you have around but about the quality of the people you have around and when you get rid of the bad people, the ones that are left (even though they are not too many) make life even better! They have also taught me to be thankful for the few good people I have around, they made those people even more important and more valuable to me and that alone has increased the level of gratefulness towards those few good people, so much so that it seems I keep attracting them somehow and keep getting rid of the bad ones. 
2. I am thankful for sickness.
   Yes, why would anyone be thankful for that right? Well, let me tell you one thing about sickness... Anytime I've gotten sick it has been because I am working myself too much and I've learned that it is my body's way of saying "hello!!! you need to step back and relaxed a little" it is when I don't listen that things get worse. Today my little one woke up without a voice and coughing, I had a sore throat, the first thing I wanted to do (which is usually what the first thing most people do when they don't feel good) is complain, why ohh why am I getting sick and my daughter is getting sick after just one week of school and when I have so much stuff to do, meanwhile all I really want to do is go lay down in bed and sleep it off... Then it hit me, I needed to slow down a bit, she needed to slow down a bit, we both have been in this different way of living and just going along our lives on our own time throughout the summer and now we have to adjust to the schedule that is set not by us but by other people and the adjustment will take a little bit of time, and it's ok, it's ok to just take a small break, better to take a break than to get even sicker. Not only this but sickness reminds me of the times I am healthy and reminds me to enjoy those times even more, same when I hear about other people's sickness, it reminds me that it could be worse, it reminds me that I am not invincible, that I am a mere mortal and whether or not I feel like crap my job is to enjoy life as much as I can even when I am really not enjoy it much. 
3. I am thankful for the struggles that life has given me.
   Yep, I am definitely thankful for that, the struggles I've been through have taught me to see life in a different way. They have taught me how uncertain life is and therefore have allowed me to live a life where even if I plan certain things when things don't go as planned (and 99.9% of the time they really don't go as planned) I don't dwell on them too much while most people do, we want certainty in a world that is completely uncertain. We all want that, we want to be certain of things even though we know that there are no guarantees... ok there is one guarantee, you are guarantee to die, but you don't know when, where or how, everything else is not guaranteed, everything else depends not just on your decisions but on the decisions of billions of other people that live in this planet and are (I believe) connected to one another. So yes, I am thankful for life's struggles, they've taught me to live with less anger and less stress and to prioritize things in a way that most people don't.
4. I am thankful for death.
   Death is often seen as something so negative, especially when it happens to someone young and that has not "lived" to what most people would call a full life. The thing is that as I stated above, death is guaranteed for everyone, whether we believe it as a reality or not, the concept of someone dying and passing on is the same for everyone and it will happen to everyone. My acceptance of death and that it can come at any time reminds me to live life too, whether things are going great or they are not going so great, knowing and accepting that I can die at any time has made me see life in general and the life of others in a completely different way, a way that I've come to painfully realize that the majority of people (especially people my age) don't really accept because they are stuck on the believe and hope that they will be alive tomorrow and the next day and the day after for many many years to come. Some even create anxieties about dying and go about their lives worrying about the things they do that might kill them so instead of living they are pretty much dead before they actually die. The older generation though, most of them, and psychologically you get to the age when you accept that death will come and so that's when they actually start living each day, yes they have their complaints but they come to an understanding that life is limited and so they worry less about certain things like debts and actual things, but most tend to always go back and express with regret how much they wished they would not have put so much emphasis on those things back when they were my age because then their lives would  have been fuller. Even when you read about what is something that most people regret while they are dying it all comes down to the things that we as young adults believe we have to put so much emphasis on right now that we forget all the actual important things that we should be doing. 
5. I am thankful for debt.
   Yes, yes, WHAT? Most people want to get out of debt, they really just don't want to be in debt at all. But see we live in a society where we have been taught that we have to borrow money in order to buy certain things that we "must have" we get into extremes amount of debt, as students we use loans to pay our way through school, then we get out of school and we are worried about how the heck we will pay those loans. We complain about the loans, we complain about the car payment, we complain about the mortgage payment, the credit card bills... the list goes on. But what we don't realize is that for every single dollar we have ever borrowed we have actually acquired something we wanted at the particular point in time that we had acquire the debt, whether it was our education, or the new car or the house, but we wanted those things. Even if we say ohh hey I got debt for hospital bills, well you went to the hospital because you wanted to get healthy. Or I got into a lot of debt because things broke down in my house or my car, or some sort of natural disaster happened, still you wanted to fix those things that you originally wanted and with those things that you acquire comes a greater sense of responsibility because now you have more things to take care of. Anyway... to my point, debt has taught me to live a simpler life. There was a point in my life where I could walk into any store and I would get a huge credit line because I made enough money and I had excellent credit, but then shit happened and everything was lost in a manner of days, it all went to hell so I was forced to live a simpler life. The simpler life is not a life that most of the people around me are ok with and therefore is a constant battle to get them to stop telling me that I need this or I need that but... It has been worth it to me, and had it not been for debt and the complains of others about their debt, I would not be able to live simply and work towards memories rather than work for things. It really is freeing when you think about it. 
6. I am grateful for injustice.
   Yes, yes, I might be completely insane on that one, how can one be grateful for that right? Well... Let me tell you something, without injustice I would not know or enjoy those times when something just happens. And even though in my view of things each person has a slightly different concept of what justice is and the "reality" is that deep down we all have a collective concept of what justice is, and that concept changes as we evolve as a society which is why most times we can't even define what justice is, we tend to give examples of what it is, but we would not have those examples if we did not have examples of injustice.

So there... I am sure there are more things I could think about that most people would want to completely get rid of and do without because hey, they are not so good things for them and therefore would never think about being grateful for them but there is always something that those things teach us and the lessons we learn are part of the life we are living right now and one should never be ungrateful of the lessons we learn. In the end that is what we are here for, to learn, and the more that we fight the learning experiences the more we will be put in situations where we will be forced to learn those lessons, the harder we will make our lives and the more grateful you are for the things that happen to you the more positive you will begin to see your life...

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...

You think too much

People always tell me that I think too much, personally I feel people don't think enough! And all I have to do to prove that is look at my newsfeed on my Facebook and tweeter, all the different things people post, say and do.

Unfortunately lack of thinking is what gets all of us into trouble, I don't care who you are if you don't think about what you are saying, doing or about to do then you are bound to make a big mistake. 

Think about it! How many times have you gotten into an argument with someone because they just did not put in the effort to think about what you wrote or posted and ended up misunderstanding what you were trying to convey? How many times have you done something and someone did not put the effort into thinking about maybe asking you directly why you did such thing or maybe just put in the effort into thinking that if you are not harming anyone then it's none of their business what you do and should focus on thinking on ways to make themselves better!

This is usually what happens to me, and I'm sure someone will misunderstand all of this and say well I think all the time about all my problems and all the problems people have caused me so I think enough... Mmm no you are not! You are worrying and not thinking enough because of you were thinking enough you will come to an understanding that any problems that have already been caused can't be undone and therefore all you have left to do is move on and try to find a solution. If you think about what other people have caused you then you are still not thinking enough! You can't change people but you can change you, you can move on and get rid of those that have caused you pain and don't have the ability to change or that just really don't want to, if you were thinking enough you would come to realize that all you can really do is learn from the experience take what you have learned and move on....

How many times I've had people misinterpret what I've said or shared and later called me a hypocrite or tell me that I shouldn't share the things I don't really believe in... All because they just don't think enough! 

So seriously in my view people should put more effort into thinking about what they are doing and saying, I see all these kids and people doing all these stupid stupid stuff and wonder what the hell were they thinking, when the reality is that they really were not... 

The moment I was unexpectedly surprised by a Tim Burton's movie...

I've been working on a cross stitching project for quite sometime now and about a month ago I have finished the face of one of the characters from the picture, I still have ways to go, and really when I started it I had no idea how massive this thing would be, and I really did not know how it would look in the end cause all I really had was the original picture for it and not a finished product.

The cross stitch project is a picture from the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas, I finished miss Sally's face and I have to add that she is just stunning!!! I love all the colors that this thing has, but the more I see her face the more I think of the movie. I have to admit that I am not a big fan of Tim Burton's movies mostly because the trailers always seemed so darn dark and scary, and as a kid I never watched The Nightmare Before Christmas, it was not until this year that I actually sat down to watch the movie and I have to say that while I am still not a big fan of his movies, the meaning that I got from this movie was something unexpected and a bit refreshing...

Yes, yes I know I'm babbling now and it's like get to the point woman! So what is the meaningfulness of this movie according to me?

Well, first let's take a look at Sally, she is basically a creation of a mad man, created to keep him company and to be his servant, nothing more than that, she was a slave, she is confined in a room and not really allowed to go out into the world... But of course just like in any movie, you have to have that one character find a way out and save themselves because otherwise.... well who would watch the movie?

Then there is Jack, ohh silly old Jack Skellington, The Pumpkin King! The one that is praised by absolutely everyone in Halloween Town, everyone looks up to him, and you would think that Jack would be extremely happy about that, but he is not... And the reason Jack is not happy is because he has fallen into routine and lost all excitement, all he ever does is scare people on Halloween.  Jack is a wanderer, he wants something more, something new and exciting that will fill him up with joy and excitement and that will take away that lonely feeling he has, but no one else sees this, everyone else is excited about the same things over and over and they don't even question whether or not there is something more out there; except for Sally, Sally knows how he really feels, because she feels the exact same way, she is missing something too and does not really know what and she wants to tell Jack that he is not alone but she just does not know how.

There goes Jack falling into Christmas Town and then trying to explain and understand what Christmas is, trying to find that light of happiness and excitement of something new that he saw in Christmas Town by all the people in there, in his desperation to find something new, exciting and happy, he decides that he will take over Christmas just to get that excitement back, so he decides to become someone he is not in order to fill that void, here is the problem, anytime one tries to become someone they are not, whatever excitement you get from that "new" thing, fades away really fast, but Jack decides that he is going to go for it anyway since to him he can make Christmas even better! 

Sally is the only one that knows how much of a bad idea this is, and she is the only one that fears for Jack because she knows that this cannot end up well at all, poor old Sally loves Jack so much and she tries to tell him how bad of an idea it is and how wrong it is but Jack does not listen to her, he decides to ignore her and give her something to do, finally all that's left for Sally to do is go ahead and do what Jack asked of her and she does it because she loves him but she knows that Jack will end up getting hurt. 

Then Christmas Day comes and all that Sally can do is hope that what she has predicted will happen does not happen but as Sally expected it turns into a complete disaster, Jack still giving away gifts believes that all the children are thankful for them, and that all the people are actually happy with the gifts but because he is so into his own delusion he fails to realize that all the people are actually ready to take him down because they all know that he is not the real Santa Claus and instead of bringing cheer and joy he is actually scaring everyone, finally once the people take him down he realizes that it was a bad idea all along, but now he has to try and save Christmas, meanwhile Sally is listening how everyone already knows that Jack is not the real Santa Claus and she decides that she must help him, she goes and puts herself in danger to try and get Santa out of the Boogie's house and well.. she ends up getting trapped to later find out that Jack was taken down.
Finally after Jack realizes that he has to go back and that he should not have tried to be someone he really was not, he goes back to Halloween Town to get Santa back, and that's when Santa tells him that he should listen to Sally, because she is the only one that makes any sense there, then Jack looks at Sally and realizes just how much Sally cares about him, enough to have put herself in danger to help him out. In the end he sees that all he was looking for was right in front of him and the patience that Sally had to stick through all of it finally paid off, because in the end he saw they were meant for each other, they are the only two that saw things differently in Halloween Town and the only ones that could understand one another...
The movie shows us how sometimes we fail to see what's right in front of us, that any time we try to be someone we are not things don't turn out right, in fact things get messy.  And Sally, poor old Sally teaches us how sometimes we must be extremely patient in order to achieve something, that sometimes we must let the ones we love fall and get hurt because we cannot teach them everything, some lessons they must learn on their own, and in the end maybe they will learn and come around and maybe they won't but all we can ever do is just let them figure it out on their own...