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...

Only one guarantee in life...

I guess I love pondering about life... I was making my daughter her dinner and suddenly I was thinking about something that most people really think of as a negative thing, death. Most people look at death as something bad, we tend to mourn, we miss, we want to not deal with it sometimes and yet death is the only guaranteed thing that you are given. We go through life thinking that we are guaranteed all these different things, in fact we even tell our selves that if we do certain things we will guarantee that we will get other things we want like if you go to school you will get a good job, if you do well and work hard you will earn enough money, if you save money you will be able to buy a house easy.
And yet none of that is really guaranteed isn't it? You can walk in and get a great job but then it does not matter how hard you work you just don't end up getting that promotion. You can save all you want but that does not guarantee that you will get to buy that house, things can happen that can change all of that. You can work really hard and the money might not end up being enough. Life is unpredictable, and I have learned that I am unable to guarantee anything that I once thought I could guarantee that would happen, but there is one thing I can guarantee to everyone I meet, I can guarantee that they will die. I can't say when, where or how, but one day we will all die.
I think everyone knows that, but we tend to not really be aware of it which is truly a pity because when you think about it, how would we live our lives if we knew exactly when we and our loved ones would die? Would we live them differently? Would we spend more time with them? Would our priorities change just a little bit?
See, the reason we think of death as a negative thing is because when someone we love dies we are filled with regret, even though we don't say it, we don't acknowledge it, we regret the time we did not spend with them. We regret that phone call we did not make, we regret not picking up the phone when they called.
I remember when my great-grandmother passed away, it was one of the saddest days of my life. She helped raised me and I had moved away to a different country, she would send letters sometimes with people that would come and visit, she loved when I would call her and talk to her, that used to make her day, but those calls were very few, one because they were expensive and the other reason was because I was busy trying to get ahead in life, trying to be someone important, someone that would make enough money so that I could get to do all the things I wanted. Then the day came and I was not even around to pick up the phone to hear that she had passed, I ended up receiving a text message from a third person who was telling me "sorry for your loss." It was probably one of the most horrifying experiences of my life and yet even after that, I just figured it was the pain of losing someone who had gotten me so confused and once I sort of got used to the idea (because you never really get used to it, it will always come up if you think of them) and stop thinking about it, I went back to doing the exact same thing, trying to get ahead, make money, be important.
I never realized that I was already important to one person, I was not only important to them but I meant the world to them and I was so busy working and trying to be someone that I completely dismissed it. It's funny how it was not until a few years ago that I realized how much of our life we waste on things that really don't matter in the end, we worry so much and put so much effort on acquiring things rather than acquiring moments. We dismiss the people that are around us that love us so much and to whom we mean so much because we get so caught up in things, that's it, just things.
And some of the things we get caught up in are not even things we enjoy, we go to a job we hate because we believe that eventually we will be able to move up the ladder and get a better job, with better pay. We go to study something we don't like because we think eventually that one piece of paper will guarantee us a good job, with good benefits, with good pay. We forget the dreams we had as children because someone told us that it was too hard to make them come true. We end up living to work and we forget that we are here to work on living. We set aside the ones we love and we replace them with things. Then when their time comes we regret not having spent enough time with them and we dismiss that by saying death is bad, it's negative, it's sad. The truth is that death is guaranteed, death is something every single person will go through, whether it is by their own doing, by someone else's doing or just by nature taking its course, everyone will die.
I feel that the day I accepted that, I started living in a different way, one where most times it feels like I don't really belong in this world because most people don't like talking about this, they say it's too negative and too depressing and maybe that is true for them but for me, it is more depressing to see how much people miss out on because they think they have one more day to live. I see it every day, the moments they are given, they take each of them for granted, some people spend their lives trying to get revenge, others spend it trying to acquire things, others spend it trying to "become someone", they work so hard for things... And then there are those who are older and who have been where you are at right now, living to work, who now don't have to "work" anymore, and all they really want is a phone call, they will tell you how much they work in their life and now they are having health issues, they are too tired to go out, they wish they would have had more time with their loved ones and most of all they wish we could see that all that we work so hard for, all that we worry so much for in the end it all becomes irrelevant. They wish we could see that we are already important because we are important to them, because we mean the world to them and they wish we would just stop for one moment and think how today could be their last day and if it was then what would we say tomorrow if we got to see it?
And let's not forget those who are around our age, the ones who are working so hard to get ahead, what happens when a friend loses their life? They get shocked that their friend die so young, what about a close friend? Usually the same thing, but it is not that they died so young that we are shocked at because we all know that death is guaranteed at any age, we are shocked because we are reminded of it. But do we ever change our habits, or even attempt to change them in order to not have that regret when a loved one dies? Usually it ends up being that we mourn and we sort of learn to live without that person, and then the next one dies and we do the same thing, never acknowledging where the pain is truly coming from. Could it be a little less painful if we had spent more time with them while they were alive? I always wonder, when I say to myself I have so much to do that I don't have time to pick up the phone and call my grandmother, someone I mean the world to, what would happen if today was the day death took her? How would I feel tomorrow about not making that call today, it forces me to slow down, and while yes there is a lot that is going on and a lot that I have to do, I still stop and wonder about whether my time, the little time I have is being well spent or if it is being spent too much on trivial things, because if this was to be the last day I lived what would I want to do differently? If I say nothing, then I know I am on the right path, but if the answer to that question is something different than what I currently am doing then I know a change is needed.
With that in mind, with knowing that you are guaranteed your death, what would you do if today was your last day? What about the people that you love, if you knew today was their last day, what would you do, would you do something different than what you are doing right now? Think about it! Maybe there are changes that need to be made. :)

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.