Let's talk about depression...

I have to admit that until about a few months ago, I had no idea what depression really was.  As a matter of fact I would be one of those persons who used the word depression very lightly.  I was also one of those persons who thought that depression was something you could just snap out of if you just started to think more positively.

I have to admit I was so very wrong!  And now that I have learned more about depression, I feel the need to apologize to those who suffer from it.  So here it goes: I am sorry guys.  I didn't know how an ill brain worked until I started reading about it.  I have to admit that I did not start involving myself in learning about depression until after I found out that someone I love very much suffers from a mental illness that has cycles of depression.  I decided to learn because I wanted to understand them as much as I could.  I figured that understanding them would better equip me to help them. 

What did I find out once I started learning about depression?  I found out that every time I have said "I am depressed" I really wasn't.  I was sad and I can say that I have had many periods where I have been sad, but being sad is not the same as being depressed.  I can tell you that because the depressed brain does not really snap out of the thought process.  The depressed brain is constantly thinking about what the person did wrong and how they did it wrong.  The depressed brain has an extremely hard time finding the good even when there is nothing bad happening.  The depressed brain does not like any kind of interaction, not because it is trying to sort things out but more because it does not feel like it deserves it. 

With that said, I have not ever been depressed.  The times I have been sad and wanted to stay in bed all day without any contact at all was because I needed to sort through my own emotions and thoughts.  It was because I needed to recharge myself before going back out there and talking to people again.  Each time I have been sad and have taken time for myself I have come back with solutions to whatever issue was the one that made me sad.  Each time I have been sad I didn't get stuck in feeling like I always do something wrong.  Each of the times that I have taken a time out from people, each of the times I take a time out from people is because I need to sort through my own thoughts and feelings and not because my thoughts and feelings are taking over my entire life.  

That's the difference with depression.  A depressed brain is an ill brain that takes over an otherwise healthy person.  The depressed person does not just simply snap out of the depression; if they force themselves to do things, they do so while constantly thinking that whatever it is they are doing is not good enough.  The depressed person cannot just simply grab a self-help book, follow its guidance and suddenly see life differently.  I know that they will want to and that when they can't often times they feel more of a failure.  I cannot possibly imagine how that must feel to someone because to me is very easy to find the positive in any situation.  I know that if I am not finding it, then all I have to do is stop talking to people about it and sort through my brain on my own.  A depressed person can't really do that... Being alone trying to sort things out only makes depression worse, not better. 

So, why did I want to talk about this today?  This is simple really... Because of stigma.  There is so much stigma out there about mental illness and there are too many people suffering from it.  The stigma we have about mental illness and our lack of education on it is making people not seek help for it.  The stigma we have about mental illness is making people suffer in pain alone.  The stigma we have about it is making us treat those who have a mental illness without kindness and compassion.  

Now, I am not saying that a person with mental illness does not have some responsibility in seeking help and learning to manage their illness, what I am saying is that a person with mental illness has a harder time seeking help because we stigmatize their illness.  In this sense, we also have a responsibility to educate ourselves and to talk about mental illness in a different light. 

Why I say this?  Because the person I love has tried to seek help in the past and was confronted with that stigma and with very little support.  Once I found out that they were suffering from a mental illness and I started to learn more about it, a lot made more sense to me.  I have to say that I offered help and I offered support.  I offered to be there... My offer was not taken and in turn what I have seen is a decline in their mental health.  I know that I cannot force them to seek help.  I know that I cannot make them accept my support and I know that seeing the path they were taking (as much as it pained me to do so) I had to do what they were asking of me (even though I didn't want to) and walk away.  This didn't make me love them any less, but it made me think about how society views mental illness and how stigmatizing mental illness is not helping many people. 

In learning about mental illness, I found that those who had good support from family members and friends have been the ones who have successfully learned to manage their illness.  Those whose families didn't stigmatize mental illness and whose families were open to learning about it are the ones who have had more success than others who did not have the same support.  It seemed like even though it was hard for them to get up and seek help, once they did (because they had the support of others) they stuck it out and led as normal a life as they could.  

So maybe we all need to make a little change in our lives.  We should all talk about mental illness like we talk about any other illness, because that's all it is an illness.  We should talk about it openly and focus on educating ourselves and others about it.  We should learn to separate the illness from the person.  Mental illness is the only illness that is used to describe someone.  I don't know how many times I hear people say "she/he is just depressed" or "she/he is bipolar" or "she/he is anxious."  Imagine what would happen if we separated the illness from the person, what would happen if instead we said: "he/she has depression" or "he/she has anxiety."  How different does that sound?  How easier it is to then see that it is not that the person is that way but that the person has an illness that they are dealing with and need to learn to manage.  If we did that, the person would be looked at with more compassion and more support. 

I imagine that if my loved one would have had more support.  If more understanding about the illness would have been there, then my loved one would have an easier time dealing with it.  Then maybe they would have an easier time seeking help, accepting their illness, taking responsibility and learning how to manage it.  They would have an easier time accepting help and support when it is offered and would not be suffering in silence and alone.  Yes, I am fully aware that once they have been offered support and help that it is their responsibility to take it and no one can force them to... but I am also aware that an ill brain that has constantly seen the stigma of mental illness being used against them has a harder time accepting the illness and taking the necessary steps to seek help and support.

It is time we stopped looking at mental illness with fear and looking down at people who have it.  It is time we stopped stigmatizing it.  It is time we stopped making it controversial.  All we are doing by that is making things worse for everyone who suffers from it and making it worse for those who have a genetic predisposition to it.  There are great things that can happen when you are open about it and educated on it, therefore it is time we all learn about mental illness and became more educated about it. 

The Fear of Death

"Today you are alive and no one is beside you, but if tomorrow you were to die, many would come to see you.  Today you are alive and no one will give you a hug, but if tomorrow you were to die, no one would want to let you go.  Today you are alive and no one will give you a rose, but if tomorrow you were to die, they would send you bouquets and wreaths of flowers.  Today no one pays attention to you but when you die you will be popular for a full day.  They will post pictures of you on social media saying how much they love you, how special you are to them, and how they can't live without you.  Today you are alive and they make you cry, but if you were to die tomorrow everyone would cry for you..."

This is one of my favorite short poems.  There have been no truer words said.  Yesterday night I was talking to a dear friend of mine who can see the energy of spirits forming their image.  I had sent her a picture and she said that there was one hiding behind my door.  I was not surprised since in my years of spiritual practice I have come to sense many of them.  She said that this particular one almost looked like Death.  I said to her: ohh great!!! they are finally taking me!!! I am done with whatever my purpose of being stuck in a human body is.  It will finally be over and I am finally going home!  Happy Dance!!!

I decided to post that experience on Facebook, there was obviously a reason for it because to tell you the truth I already know how humans react to the idea of death.  It was not quite clear to me why that inspiration had come, until this morning.  I woke up to the song Over the Rainbow playing on my phone, I usually fall asleep to healing music every night and the loop of it continues until I wake up.  It has never been so that this song plays on the loop I have set up, but it did...  This song used to give me goosebumps because the person who wrote it, wrote thinking about heaven.  They were describing how home (heaven) feels, even though they didn't really say that out loud.  Most people know though, it is a popular song played when someone passes.  Anyhow, I went to check Facebook and sure enough, humans were commenting...

One of them had posted the emoji that is rolling their eyes, they know I am not afraid of death and that I am happy that this physical body I am in is not eternal.  But I know they don't like the idea of it and I know that they don't like to be reminded.  Then there was a friend of mine who is like a little sister to me, I told her to make sure to call me because I was leaving soon, she said I was being crazy...  Someone else was wondering what was going on... And then there was one that was probably the most irrational one, it was someone who only interacts with me on Facebook.  I don't speak to this person outside of my Facebook posts but for some reason they said they did not want to say goodbye to me yet.  That one started to irritate me a little because the physical absence of my body would really have absolutely no impact in their life, they don't even know who I really am, even though they think they know because they know one of my biological parents, but neither of my biological parents know who I am.

I stepped back from all that, grounded myself because feeling negative emotions means I am allowing my human self to take over too much, and then I smiled and laughed.  Humans are so afraid of something they don't really know about.  I was immediately reminded of a meeting I had last Friday where we all mentioned that with technology we have created this idea that our human bodies have to live forever, and if they don't then we feel this extreme pain.  It used to be that people died a lot more than they do now; I say a lot more because there were no treatments for a lot of diseases that would have extremely shorten a person's life but know there are.  Now, we are used to going to the doctor and getting a pill, a treatment, something to make that illness not progress as quickly.  We want people to live, we want to save them.  It can be seen as a noble idea but more often than not, it is a selfish one.

I have gotten into arguments for saying that, but I know I am not the only one who thinks that way.  I have been lucky enough to meet people in the past few months who see it for what it is.  A friend of mine and I were chatting the other day and she was explaining that her grandmother keeps going through surgeries she does not want only because she wants to make her children happy.  Of course, none of her children see that she is suffering and she is ready to go, they just keep pushing her to keep living.  I told her that I could not find one person who could give me a logical explanation why someone should keep living when they are in pain, the only reasons they could give me was their own selfish ones.  The person should live because there are many people who would miss them.  What about the people who still need them?  What about how their family will feel?  They are not thinking about anyone but themselves when they are thinking they want to die.  It was all emotional responses, I said to her.  Her answer was that someone should live because there are things they still want to do while in physical form.  I said yes! Someone should live because they want to continue to live, not because of what anyone else wants.

It is true, in the end the dead person is no longer suffering.  The dead person is free and the only ones who suffer are the ones who remain alive.  I wondered why this phenomenon happens because to tell you the truth most of the people who cry and suffer for the dead person did not even spend enough time with that person to feel that way.  Their physical presence was more than likely not something they experienced on a daily basis and therefore the idea that you would miss them to me seems irrational.  I now bring you back to the beginning of this post... the best reason I can come up with and the one that fits perfectly is REGRET.

Regret is one of the things that humans carry with them on a daily basis.  We are all always thinking that we have tomorrow to make decisions, that we have tomorrow to change something, we have tomorrow to talk to someone, we have tomorrow to spend time... And then when that tomorrow takes that someone or something away, we feel sad because we are hit with the reality that we don't really have that much time.  It is funny because every time someone dies, that is the mood of the funeral or memorial but then the very moment the funeral or memorial is over we go back to the same way of thinking.  It is why I don't like them.  I was taken to one last year and every one of the persons who knew the diseased would say something great about her and then would add how life is short and it should be enjoyed.  How we should cherish those who are still here with us and be grateful... I know that the majority of them went on after that to live just the same, until someone else dies at which point they will all say the same things.

Isn't it amazing though? Humans fear death because they fear loss, but they live their lives as if they will never lose anything or anyone.  They keep away from the people they love and who love them because they think they will all have tomorrow to enjoy it with them.  They stick around toxic people because they think they will have enough time to change their lives and enjoy it later without them.  They put themselves in situations that will require an extreme amount of effort only because they think that they will have time to enjoy themselves later.  They overwork themselves because they think they have time to enjoy the fruits of their labor later.  They get careers in fields they don't want because of the same thing... And then eventually it catches on to them that they didn't really have enough time.  Illness kicks in, death comes to visit, and suddenly it feels like all of it was time wasted.  Regret sets in and pain usually follows.  But God forbids we actually acknowledge every day that our physical lives are short and we actually take the time to let those we love that we love them.  Take the time to spend it with them, to enjoy them... We won't, we won't because even though we know we have short lives and that they could end at any point, we still deceive ourselves into thinking that we do have time.  That those we love will wake up tomorrow and we will have another opportunity, so it is ok to sit and think about doing that today without actually doing it...

We can get rid of the people who don't fill our lives another day, today is ok to answer them out of respect and out of courtesy.  It is ok to do the things we don't like today because tomorrow is another day and we will definitely have an opportunity to change things.  The truth is that we are not even promised the next second of life, so we should take the opportunity now.

Why am I not afraid of death?  Because I have taken the time to let those I love that I love them.  I have ensure that I did everything I could to spend the time with the ones I love.  I know I have done everything in my power to be there and to do the things that bring me joy.  Even though some of them have not wanted to be there or spent time, I made myself available because that is all I could do.  I have enjoyed every moment I have lived, even the bad ones because I have learned from them.  I have fallen many times but I learned, got up and kept going.  I left the bad taste of it behind and took with me the lesson which in turn helped me grow and do things better as I continued.  So, when the time comes I will go happily... I will go happily because I lived the way I wanted.

Police vs. Citizens

There has been so much violence reported in the past week.  We have people killing each other left and right it seems.  We have divided people into groups and then somehow we have put each group against one another.  It would seem that this is a new thing, we get surprised every time we hear someone has killed someone else.  Like it is an unbelievable thing for a human being to do, because why would a human intentionally hurt someone else?

In the past few years I have gone through what I like to call an enlightenment period.  I have begun to see the realities of life while also keeping faith that things are not all that bad all the time.  I have come to learn that the term humane needs a different meaning, that violence sells books, TV shows, and even the news.  The word humane means to have compassion towards another person or being, but there is very little compassion shown between human beings.

We are the one species that is capable of killing just for the sake of killing.  We have been doing it for years.  I was thinking about the animal kingdom and I have yet to see an animal kill another animal just because they could.  Animals kill each other to eat and survive, not because one of them was in the way.  Animals do not try to control each other, they just stay out of each other's way.  Humans could use a little lesson on that.  People kill each other out of jealousy, differences of opinion, or just as a form of control.

Even with rational minds, in the animal kingdom it seems we should be at the bottom of the list.  We can't accept each other, have healthy debates without someone insulting another person.  We can't have a different opinion because someone might get shot for it.  We can't have a different religion because someone might not like it.  We are so intolerant of one another that we divide ourselves in groups.  We become biased and take sides and then we wonder why there is such a thing.

Lately we have our attention between police officers and citizens, more specific African American citizens and the police.  A minority vs. a majority.  We are all in shock that this is happening and I wonder why we are in shock, this has been happening for years.  It is not just the police department, it is the justice system, the people who are supposed to protect others, politicians who are supposed to create the laws that supposedly keep people safe.  Instead of tolerating each other and talking about different ideas to make this country greater, we have been creating a separation between everyone.  One side thinks and feels they are better than the other and the other side feels oppressed by the side that feels they are better.

Then the side who feels is better gets hurt somehow because the oppressed side is able to get something change, so whenever possible the other side will punish the oppressed side harder.  This goes on and on in circles and it is never ending.  It won't end until we all realize that each of us needs to be more tolerant of each other.  It won't end until we leave the feelings of greatness and the feelings of oppression to the side and realize that under our skins we all look very much alike.  That each of our bodies will rot inside a hole in the ground.  It won't end until we stop diving people and realize that there are bad humans of every color, every ethnicity, and religion.  It won't end until we all accept that humans are the one animal capable of anything, that they can reason themselves to think that hurting someone else is a good thing.  History has shown us that and it seems that we still have not learned.

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. 

FedEx fucking sucks, when incompetence goes way too far...

I seriously can't make this up, after today I am seriously questioning how the fuck is a company like FedEx still in fucking business!!!
A package was ordered on April 3rd, 2015.  Said package was expected to arrive on April 8th, 2015 by 10:30am.  The arrival time was very specific, usually with carriers you see that the time of delivery is by the end of the day on a particular date. This morning I decided to check the FeDex website to see where the package was and if it was in fact on route to my house.  Their tracking system showed the package in Memphis, TN.  The package's final destination is Charlotte, NC.
I went ahead and I called FedEx and asked them where the package was, the response I got from their international department (package was coming from China) was that there were issues with customs and customs did not release the package on time, but now the package was released from customs and it was in a warehouse in Tennessee waiting to be transferred to cargo so that it could be shipped to Charlotte.
I asked when it was released from customs and the lady said it was released yesterday at 5pm.  I told her ok so it would be in cargo sometime this morning and it should be here tomorrow, she said yes it should be there tomorrow.  I said can you assure me that my package is going to be here tomorrow, she said well I cannot assure you of that because anything can happen and then she added: "the plane might not work and that might delay your package even more."
I said: So, you are telling me that the plane might not work and you don't have a different one that you can put the package on? She said: well, the package is waiting to be transferred to cargo so that it can be shipped to the final destination.  I said: Why is it just sitting there waiting? It was supposed to be express delivered and it's not like customs has it so it should be on its way to my house right now.
She had no answer for me other than no one should have promised the package today since anything can happen with the cargo and the plane might not work so the package would have been delayed even more.
I seriously cannot make this up and this is not where the story ends.  The tracking on the FedEx website says the package is in transit to Japan. So I called them again this afternoon.  The lady that answered me in the international customer service department said: Your package seems to be having issues with customs, and it is still in China.  I said: the lady that I spoke to at 9am this morning said that the package was in Memphis and that customs had released said package so it was just waiting on a warehouse to be transferred to cargo and it would be shipped to me so long as the airplane was working.  Cause I am guessing FedEx, only has one fucking cargo airplane that flies from TN to NC.
The lady said ohh no, it looks like your packages are in Anchorage, AK you are expecting two packages right? I said: No, I am expecting only one! She says: Ohh yes yes, it is in Anchorage and the representative you spoke to earlier should have started a trace  to see where the package is, that is when I told her that since the representative that I spoke with in the morning did not do her job and she seemed to have no idea what the hell was going on, to transfer me to a supervisor.
Exact wordings she used after I said that: "It seems like a trace for this package should have been opened this morning and since that did not happen this issue will have to be escalated to a supervisor, would you like me to transfer you to one?"
This is the part where you want to be able to reach through the damn phone and start strangling some sense into people... Finally I get the supervisor on the line, and the supervisor says to me: It looks like your packages are on their way to China from Japan, you are expecting two packages correct? I said: no, it is only one! He tried to fix that whole situation and said: ohh yes yes I was reading wrong, but your package is on its way to China from Japan.  I had to ask how the fucking hell did my package get to Japan, I mean one thing would have been for them to have accidentally sent it back to China right but the package had been in Memphis, then in Anchorage and then in Memphis again and from Memphis the package was sent to Japan, and now there was no estimated delivery time.
I don't know which one was the idiot that said it but at some point I heard: Well, the good news is that it did make it to the USA! Well, you fucking morons!!!! That it made it to the USA helps me fucking none because the package is no where in the USA...
Supervisor said he was going to finally open the trace and investigate where the package was so that I could get an estimated time of arrival, and that someone will be contacting me within 2 hours to let me know what is going on.
I got a call 45 minutes later and it seems like the more you fucking move up the chain of command of the Federal Express corporation the more incompetent they seem to get.  I asked where was my package, yet again... Ma'am your package is in China.  It somehow went to Japan and then back to China.  I said: are you going to tell me when the package will arrive here, cause it is not supposed to be in China, and could you explain to me how the package came to Memphis, and then went to Anchorage and went from Anchorage to Memphis and from Memphis it went to Japan and from Japan you are telling me that now China has it?  She said yes, it seems to have been human error and there is not much we can do about that.  I said so my package is in China now, she said: well we are waiting for China to open so that we can ask where the package is.  So you really don't know where my package is and you are telling me that you've lost it due to human error. She immediately tried to rephrase that, of course I did not let her.
So here is the bottom line:

1. A package was ordered, said package was being shipped from China to Charlotte, NC.
2. Said package made it from China to Memphis, TN in one day, the tracking of it (picture attached to this post) states that customs released the package.
3.  Package was then sent to Anchorage, AK. For those that do not know geography (like some of the people that work for FedEx), Anchorage, AK is on the opposite side of Charlotte, NC.
4. From there, the package was sent back to Memphis, TN to be shipped over to Japan.
5. From Japan it appears to be in transit to China and now we have to wait for China to open (because I guess China is close for business at the moment, even though it was 7am in China when I got the call from FedEx) in order to find if the package is actually there.
6. At this point, FedEx does not want to state that the package is actually fucking lost and they don't have the slightest fucking idea as to where the darn package is.
7.  For a company that only focuses on delivering packages all over the fucking world saying that this is fucking human error and counting it as just one fucking human error not the 4 different errors made while handling said package is beyond fucking unbelievable!!! This is not human error, this is fucking incompetence! Specially when handling a package that has a priority tag attached to it.  The damn post office does a better job than FedEx!!! That is saying something!!!!
9. The excuse that the airplane might not work and therefore it would delay my package a day or two, went out the fucking window when their tracking system states that the package had travel from one end of the country to another and then traveled to a different continent where it was not supposed to ever be in the first place, only to travel back to the original place... Looks like their fucking airplane (because it appears that they only have one) is working perfectly fine!
8. We have to give them credit for something, I mean they were even proud of the fact that the package had made it to the United States at some point, congratu-fucking-lations!!!

For such a huge company to have this mishaps happen so fucking often, is beyond unacceptable, they charge an extreme amount of money to deliver packages and they cannot even do their job right... This is not the first time this happens either, a while ago I had a package that was paid to be delivered on Saturday and said package was sent out within the United States and it was not even a great distance that the package was supposed to travel... Said package was delivered Monday afternoon, not even Monday first thing in the morning... Monday afternoon!!!!  That is the level of incompetence that this company has and in all this mess they cannot even admit the fact that they screwed up and they did it big time!!! All they can say is sorry for the inconvenience, you will receive your package soon... and what the hell do they mean by soon? Well apparently it means whenever the fuck they find it...

Religion, religion, religion...

What a wonderful topic this is!!! I just love it when I bump into someone that loves to try and feed me the Lord Jesus Christ against my will.
I was on the bus the other day and this guy was trying to convince another guy about finding happiness. I sat there listening to him talk about a book he was holding (no I had no idea what the book was about) then suddenly the guy states how people are so depressed and angry all the time because they are worried about how much money they are making, they are worried about getting a better car, better house, better things and that stress just takes the life out of you.  I had to agree with that statement, we do tend to put a lot of emphasis on certain things that in the end won't really matter, but then he decided to add that one piece of advice that makes absolutely no sense to me, the one sentence I have the most fun with as soon as it comes out of someone's mouth because let's face it... Whether you are a believer or not in a higher power, you can't prove or disprove its existence, therefore when it comes to God, no one out there can say for certain that he/she exists or that he/she doesn't exist.  He went on to say: In order to be happy you must first find God....
Sitting there I just looked at him and said: You must first prove that there is a God, otherwise how can you find something that you don't know for certain that exists?
And so it began, of course he was not able to do that, however his argument did not end there... He decided that he would use Robin Williams as an example of someone who had everything and decided to end his life anyway.  Mr. Williams had bipolar disorder and was also diagnosed with Parkinson's which ended up making things even worse for him.  Education is key when you are trying to argue a point, I don't think people understand that. So then he added: Who gives you the power to go ahead and take your life, who has told these people that you get to choose when and how you die?
Free will my friend, that is the power I've been given, according to the God that exists according to the book a lot of people follow for guidance, we are all given free will.  Free Will means we decide what we are going to do with our lives, not anyone else. As sad as it is to hear that someone was in so much pain that they thought there was no other way out but to kill themselves... well, that is one choice every single person in this planet has, the stigma that you will go to hell when you kill yourself needs to really stop because again first you have to prove that there is such a thing as a hell, and then you have to prove that hell is a bad thing, neither of which can be proven.
On that same note you will also have to prove that there is a heaven and unfortunately its existence cannot be proven or denied, so why do we continue to have arguments over things like this?
The idea is that people need to believe in something, (disclaimer: I do believe in God but I also know that since I cannot prove his existence I have no business trying to convince other people of his existence) we have an innate need to want some sort of certainty from life.  When things are not going the way we might want them to be going we need to try and find an explanation for it, when there is none we resort to things like this.  And that is ok, trust me I am not saying it is not, what it is not ok is to try and change everyone else's view of the world with a view that cannot be absolutely proven, this is to include science (yes I know I will be pushing some buttons here) but hear me out (or in this case, please keep reading)...
Scientifical knowledge starts with an observation, this observation is usually made by a human being, this human being then decides to go ahead and come up with a question about what they are observing and after that they come up with a hypothesis which they then have to run a series of tests in order to prove... Now in order to say that this pattern can give us answers that are absolutely certain, answers that have no option of being changed in the future, one must first believe with absolute certainty that humans are unable to make mistakes.
Some people might believe that scientists are unable to err, there is no justification for someone to believe this because I have yet to hear someone not use the words: "human error" in their vocabulary, and unless scientists are something else other than human, they are just as capable of making a mistake as any other human being.  If scientists are not human then I would like to know what they really are, maybe they are some higher beings in which case we would be coming up with a name other than scientists and would be calling them gods, at which point we would have the ability to say hey gods do exist and these are it.... Being that there has yet to be someone that would actually believe and say that, I am going to stick to the theory that scientists are human and being human means that you are bound to make a mistake.
Anyhow, this wonderful guy on the bus kept at it (I tend to love it when people do that) while he believes there is a heaven and a hell, and that hell is bad and heaven is good, he wanted everyone else to think the same and the only proof to it was "God's word" in this case that meant The Bible.  Humans are so faithful to this book, it is amazing how they don't think about how this book came to be.

1. The Bible was written several centuries ago, by humans nonetheless. I think we have established that human beings are capable of error, therefore believing in the words of this book is to me absolutely illogical. 
2. The Bible was also written in a language that is pretty much dead and then has been translated in I don't even remember how many languages now, by an extreme amount of people (also humans) who have translated it based on what they believe makes the most sense of what they are reading from a language that is not their original language. 
3. After being translated so many different times, the Bible is a book that can be interpreted in so many different ways, which is the reason why there are so many different religions based on that same book, each person read the book and each person decided there was a different way to interpret this book, each came up with their own set of rules and their own view created a new religion based on the same book.
4. To believe that there is only one truth and that you are the only one that holds said truth when there are possibly the same amount of people, if not more, that believe in something slightly different based on that same book is freaking ludicrous! 

I suppose I could list more reasons but really I think these 4 are enough to show that when it comes to religion every person needs to understand that whatever you want to believe in is a personal choice, something that makes sense to you, if someone is looking for their own answers then by all means tell them how you have come up with your own justifications for your beliefs and then let them come up with their own ideas and their own views.  No one has a right answer, not a certain answer and that is ok, the world needs to come to terms to being ok with the fact that the only certainty of life is that is so freaking uncertain. 

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.

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...

Let's keep the talk going...

I am glad that there are still people talking about depression, because the reality is that everyone has gotten depressed at some point in their lives but we all have had ways of dealing with those feelings. Everyone is different, so everyone will react different. 

I have talked to many people through the years and a lot of them will say how selfish it is to commit suicide, you are not thinking about the people that love you but you are only thinking of yourself, at some point in my life I thought that it was an act of cowardice to go ahead and just end your life because it is easier to die than it is to keep on fighting. 

Then I put a lot more thought into it and realized how is neither selfish or an act of cowardice, it takes a lot more courage to end your life than it does to live it because we are born with the drive to live. A newborn cries when he/she is hungry because they want to be fed, they need to be fed in order to survive and everything we do throughout our lives is mostly done because we have a need to live. 

Most people are scared of dying, most will not even talk about it, we grow up thinking we will live tomorrow when we fully well know that we really don't know that. We plan our future because we want to live until that point... So, in order for someone to go for it and end their lives, they have to be in so much pain that they start to feel that ending life it's the best option. For me, there is no other explanation for it. 

But what causes people so much pain? Why are we now living in a world where depression and suicide rates are so high? I kept thinking about how we are asking people to speak up if they feel lonely and sad, and maybe it's just because I have this ideal that there are things that can definitely be prevented if we don't wait until the last minute to say how we feel, and maybe I am looking at this the wrong way but I feel we need to look deeper and find out why it is that people are getting so depressed. To look at the world around us and maybe make a difference before getting a call or having to make that call saying I can't handle any of this anymore and there is too much pain so let me just end it. 

We live in a world that has forced us to prioritize things in a way that shouldn't be. We are raising children in a world where what matters most is money and things. We are living in a world where we are disconnected from nature and more connected to devices. We live in a world that has handed us devices that make us think that we have more time to do more things, to talk to more people and give every single one of them our undivided attention. We live in a world where those devices have become such a part of us that some of us have experienced panic attacks because we forgot our phones at home, in fact most of us will go back to the house to pick up their phone even if they are running late for a meeting, and the phone is not important to us because we might get a call from someone, the phone is important to us because with it we entertain ourselves, we ignore calls and instead we text numerous people, we think that having 3 different conversations going is absolutely great and we fool ourselves into thinking that we are truly paying attention to everyone we are "talking" to. 

We give importance to the wrong things. We work so hard to have certain things in life, we want the house, the car, the saved money in the bank, we tell ourselves that once we are "financially stable" then we will be happy, but we continue to struggle with it, because the more we earn the more we want and the more we spend, the more debt we get into, the more we become slaves to money and things, because we think that we have to reward ourselves with the better car, the bigger house, the better phone, the new computer, etc etc for working our asses off in a job we really did not want to do in the first place but that we took simply because we were going to make enough money.

People become truly miserable living that way and yet they ignore it, they ignore it by repeating the above, when I get this I will be happy, when I get that I will be happy, meanwhile they are missing out on the things that really do make them happy. Those little things that fill you with so much joy that you shine, those things end up getting ignored because we are focused on the next thing, the next goal, the next raise. We forget to chase our dreams because we want to chase money, we dream of money, we have been brainwashed to think that all of our problems will be solved with money and we forget about the people. 

People are what matter, not the quantity of people we have around but the quality of them, the dreams we have are what matter not the money that you will get from reaching those dreams but the satisfaction that your soul gets from doing what you love. We are sitting here telling everyone to reach out when they are sad, and about to commit suicide but most of what I see being posted is a phone number for the National Suicide Line, and I keep thinking: boy! the world is changing in some way that I really don't like, we are saying here is a phone number of someone that will answer the phone because the persons you love the most and that you want to reach out to were too busy to pay attention and the likelihood that they will answer the phone is so low that we need to have a dedicated line of certified counselors (that don't know you at all) try to convince you why you are important in this world and why you need to keep living, because the people that should be reminding you of that every day got too busy chasing money and fame that ignored the signs of depression you started to show months or even years ago. 

I feel we don't just need to ask people to speak up, we also need to ask ourselves to listen. I feel that we need to pay more attention to the people we love. I feel we need to start prioritizing differently. We need to change the way we do things and we need to start living life, so that we don't get to that depressing point of having to reach out to someone for help when it could all have been avoided. While it is true that depression is a chemical imbalance in the brain, it is also true that we are creating that imbalance not just by focusing on the wrong things but also by thinking we can do more than we actually can. We are now in a world that allows you to somehow (and this is the only way that I have of describing it) collect people, we now, in some part of our brain look at people like things, without realizing it. Our children are being raised in that world, how many teens are on Facebook and looking at their "friend" count? How many adults are doing the same? How many put so much emphasis on it? The more we have the more popular we are and somehow we tell ourselves that will makes us feel better when it really doesn't, we are living in a world surrounded by people and feeling the loneliest we've ever felt and we ignore it. 

There is a famous Robin Williams quote that says: "I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It's not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people that make you feel alone." That is the world we live in now because we are putting too much emphasis on the how many rather than on the quality of people, and to me that is one of the biggest recipes for disaster. I am not saying to you quit social media and focus on the people you love, I am just saying focus more on the interactions you have with people, focus more on the people that really matter to you, make the people you feel are important in your life feel that they are that important to you. Don't let them feel like they are alone, give them time, there is no better way of showing them that you love them than by giving them your time. When we start to realize that a job is really not that important, that things are really not that important because the reality is that you can replace both those things but you can't replace the important people in your life, that's when the world will start to be different. When we actually start doing things to change this behavior of slavery towards things rather than just telling ourselves that we are going to do that, then we will see a change in the world. When we start changing ourselves rather than waiting for the world to change, that is when the world will start changing. When we stop ridiculing people for following their dreams and not the money. When we start doing the things we love rather than saying hey let me work right now as much as I can right now, save money for retirement and then I can do the things I love while ignoring the fact that we don't know if we will get to live to that age and we should start living and doing the things we love now. When we start to be grateful for what we have rather than being focused on getting more. When we stop talking and start acting, then the world will change. 

I really wish people would pay more attention to those around you, those you consider important in your life, I wish we stopped using the "I'm too busy" excuse to not make that phone call, I wish people didn't just say "you are important in my life" but actually showed it, if we did that then maybe the world would be less depressed and less people would commit suicide or even attempt it. I wish people would encourage others to really follow their dreams and what makes them happy, maybe then we would have less depression and more happiness. I wish that we spent more time actually talking than typing a whole conversation out.  Most of all I wish people would actually look at themselves and have the courage to admit when something is wrong rather than ignoring it until it becomes too heavy to bear. 

So not just tell people to speak up, they need someone to be there to listen, someone that they know and that really cares about them, the ones you love need you more than your boss, the ones you love need you more than they need the things you will be able to buy them for Christmas after all the extra hours you decided you needed to work. The ones you love need your time and you need theirs, don't fool yourself thinking that when you get that next raise you will be happier, that the people you love will be happier not being able to spend time with you because now that you got that promotion you have to work more hours. Show them that they are important and let them show you that you are too, don't ignore the call for that person you love, it does not matter who they are, mom, dad, significant other, sister, niece, nephew, cousin or dear friend... Stop getting so caught up in living to work and start working on living, I have a feeling that if we all did that we would be a lot happier and a lot less depressed...

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. 

RIP Robin Williams

As I am sitting here unable to stop crying because of this lost to the world, a lost of a person who made people laugh for a living, he was one of those actors who truly touched people's lives with his gift and yet he was so sad inside.
I keep wondering what he must have felt, how much pain he must have been in, so much pain that he figured it was better to inflict more pain to himself so that it will all end.
A lot of people say that taking your life is a sign of cowardice and at some point in my life I thought so too, but when you really think about it, you realize that no one likes to be in pain and those who have attempted suicide or have actually succeeded at taking their lives must have been in so much pain at the moment that they found the courage to hurt themselves just so that their pain would end. They must have felt like they were being tortured and they just wanted it to end.
Most people will never understand that pain unless they have been through it, most think that you have to endure life and keep fighting, keep going, that you have to be brave and overcome whatever it is that is troubling you because someone somewhere has it worse than you. But to you that does not matter, because maybe those that have it worse than you actually were born with the ability to endure and deal with the things that happened to them in a different way than you and therefore those worse things do not affect them the same way they would affect others.
Today though the most prominent thing that came to my mind as I was reading my news feeds was that at the end of your life, once you are gone, everyone will remember how you made them feel, the smiles you brought to them, the laughter, your kindness. I kept reading posts from people who have met Robin Williams personally and people who, like me, were touched by his art, his gift, and not one of them mentioned anything other than the feeling they had by being around him. We live in a world where we put so much emphasis into obtaining things, into how much money we are going to make, into worrying about how much debt we have to pay, how nice the car we drive has to be, the title on the door of our office, trying to obtain an office and we rush through life giving all of this so much importance when in the end none of that is really relevant.  People today did not count how many cars Robin had, they did not quote how much money he made, they did not point out how many houses he had or how much each one was worth, they all focused on the times that they spent with him, the times they laughed and cried while watching one of his performances. The world we live in has made us to believe that the things that really don't matter should be the ones we focus more on, should be the ones we give more importance to, and in our constant battle to get those things we lose the connections to the people we are around and when we lose those connections we start to believe that we are all alone and when we feel alone and give into loneliness we invite depression to set in. When we invite depression to come into our lives we start to give it power and we let it over take our life and fill our life with more pain than we can handle.
When we allow ourselves to focus on all the wrong things we forget that there are others who need us, we forget that just helping out someone else, even if it is just listening to them for a bit, can give us a bit of hope and can spark a light in us that we can't get from things.
Think about this for one minute, what are you mostly struggling for? What is it that is making you unhappy? and then think about whether that will matter when you are dead. Think about those who bring a smile to your face when you think about them, take a moment and thank them for being there, take a moment to let them know that you are there if they ever need to talk. Take a break from your crappy job and spend time with the ones you love. Make that phone call, send that text. Connect to the world! If we truly want less people to hurt themselves then we need to start getting connected to the world again, not just through a screen, because through a screen your emoji will never be able to show exactly how you feel. Go out there, hear the voice of the ones you love, some might be thinking that they are alone right now and that they've been forgotten and they might be opening the door for depression to come in and with your call you might make them feel better.
How about we don't just start talking about depression and what it is and how we need to talk about at the moment we feel like we can't handle the pain anymore, how about we talk about how we can prevent getting to that point. How about we open up and we talk about how we feel to those we love, how about we also start listening to those we love when they start talking. Let's prevent people from getting so far into a dark cave that they stop seeing the light that shows the way out. Let's not just talk about it, let us take action on it.

Faith

I guess today I am more "inspired" than any other day because my seems to be super busy contemplating a lot of things.
What is faith? What a wonderful question that is... As a kid I grew up thinking that faith meant that I had to go to church every Sunday, study catechism, read the bible and believe in one God, if I did all of that then I had faith.
As I grew older and started learning about other Christian based religions I was taught that faith was the believe that if you do what the Bible says to do (which is believed to be the word of God) then you will always be fine, no matter what happens to you.
Most people believe they truly have faith, they all repeat how they trust that they are protected by God, the Universe, Spirit; however a few moments after they say that and something "bad" happens they start wondering why "bad" things happened to them, they start praying for the things that they have already stated that happen because God has a plan. That is not faith.
Faith is the true believe that no matter what happens it will be ok, it is the blind acceptance of life the way it is. Whether you believe in a God, Gods, or don't believe in anything higher than yourself, faith is something that comes from within you. Faith is a feeling so strong that it brings you peace when you truly experience it. Faith is the ability to take that extra step into the unknown while everyone is telling you that you should not do it.  Even when yourself is filled with doubts, you still go for it, that is faith and faith says that it will turn out fine no matter what happens when you take that step.  What needs to happen for your best interest will happen and you know you are guided.  Because you know this you go ahead and take that next step blindly, knowing that it will turn out in your favor no matter how it seems at first.
I've learned that very few people have the capability to have true faith, most have just hope and a religion they follow.  They just hope that everything will be fine but they don't trust that it will, they think faith is religion and that is just not true. They confuse hope with faith when they are two different things. As Jim Carrey once said: "hope is a beggar, hope walks through the fire and faith leaps over it", so different and that is why having true faith is so hard, because in order to have faith you don't only have to believe that everything is going to be fine you also have to take that next step.  You have to believe in yourself and believe that the universe is there to make the things you want to happen happen. That is so hard to do, to believe in ourselves and to push ourselves to do it.  To believe we deserve what we want and then once we embark on the path to our dreams to actually have patience to work and wait for them while the universe is taking care of the things you have no control over.
So, have true faith! Trust and believe that everything will be fine in the end because it will.  Trust your inner voice however crazy it might sound and just go with it.  When you have true faith you learn to see the world in a more positive way.  You learn the patience that you need to see through your goals, and no matter how hard it ever gets you learn to keep on pushing and not let yourself be brought down.