Honesty

The whole politically correct way of thinking has polluted us.  We have become so determined not to offend someone that we have completely let go of our own values.  I have discovered in my life that it is far better to say what you really mean than to beat around the bush and placate someone’s ego.  If I like you, you know it and likewise if I don’t you will also know it.  My friends all like that quality about me.  They never have to wonder what it is I am trying to say.  I am ready to give my opinion on any given subject and am not afraid of getting my feelings hurt—though sometimes the truth does hurt.  I am not one to hold a grudge about a person expressing their opinion and do not get the concept.  When I see something that is wrong, I have before hurt myself to prove a point.  What I mean by that is that I will stand on a principal that I believe strongly all the way…I am flexible though and if I am shown that my way of thinking is wrong, I will change my perspective—I am not France though!  Sometimes, it is not about who is right, but standing up for my values and being willing to take peripheral damage as a result.    Where would we be as a people if we had been candy coating the truth?  We would probably all be speaking pure German or Russian by now…for clarification English is a Germanic derivative language as opposed to being a romance—Latin—language.  I guess the bottom line is, let’s stop being so supersensitive when someone says something.  Odds are they did not really say anything false; they just have an issue with finesse.  Really, when was the last time you heard the unadulterated truth?  It probably was something you really needed to hear and may not have been understood had it not been done that way.  I guess what I am really trying to say is that I am not interested in someone being my friend because I know how to flatter them, but would rather someone like me for who I am. 

What happened to Christmas??

Seems like every year the Christmas rush starts earlier and earlier.  I think I know why.  The following is my theory.  Back in the 1940’s and 1950’s there were a tremendous amount of people being born due to military men returning from the war.  Many people in that time had it very tough financially.  The children of the 1960’s and 1970’s, as a result, did not benefit materialistically.  Money was short.  When those children of the baby boomers began having children, they made it a point to make sure that their children would not want for anything.  Another part of the theory is that because both boomer parents usually had to work to make ends meet, then new generation of parents (gen x) felt they had to buy their children things to make up for the lack of parenting their own parents gave them.  Christmas gifts began to get more and more expensive and elaborate as a result.  The economic boom created from this made the retail outlets start to get earlier and earlier in order to maximize their sales potential.  Thus the Christmas season starting in October, before Halloween by the way, has become the norm and the true meaning of Christmas has fallen by the wayside.  I think that this year, and subsequent years, I will make it a point to not spend money at Christmas.  Not because I am cheap, but because I think that the real reason for the season needs to be revived.  If you are a Christian, then the birth of Jesus and the symbolic gifts of the magi should be nothing more than that—symbolic.  If you are Pagan, then the season of Yule is supposed to be a celebratory feast that symbolized a successful harvest and the rebirth of the year.  The gifts given were to be nothing more than a token of the past years prosperity and symbolic in nature.  Yet here we are.  All of us poised to spend on average a full 2 weeks’ salary on useless, non-appreciated, trivial trinkets this year.  This madness needs to stop but i fear that we as a world culture, have made it a necessary vital part of our economy’s that if it were to stop, the world depression that we are currently in, would necessarily dip again.  So we are at an impasse.   We either continue the deprecation of the meaning of Christmas or we plunge deeper into our worldwide depression.  It really is a no win situation.  So perhaps, a compromise is in order.  I propose that we not set ourselves into debt to buy things that will go unappreciated, but rather make it a point to purchase things that we (they) need and present them as trivial token symbols of our good fortune, as they were intended to be.  We should spend time with our families and revive the meaning of Christmas. 

As a side note, I was one of those children of the 1960’s-1970’s that was mentioned earlier.  I cannot remember a time that my parents did not try to do their best to ensure that we had something to open on Christmas day.  I can honestly say that my parents did not fall into the whole buying useless things trap. We, as children, did not always get everything we wanted, but we had what we needed.  As a parent, I do not generally fall into that same trap of spending myself into debt to make my kids happy, though they do get a gift card from me every year.  I practice token giving rather than materialistic giving.  You see, I have not forgotten that the holiday is not about how much I can spend, but rather how much love there is in my heart.  Perhaps, everyone reading this blog can do the same thing.  

Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Happy Christmas, Happy Yule, Merry Yule, Happy Kwanzaa. 

May your cup never be empty and you heart always be full. 

Free Choice??

I had an interesting thought this morning…I realized that sometimes we have to be in places we dislike in order to get where we need to be…and was presented with another perspective—that sometimes it Is just bad choices.  It is a confusing concept to write out, but I think the answer to this dilemma could be answered or based on one’s life philosophy or even religious view.   Regardless of the religion, be it Christian, pagan, Hindu, Buddhist or whatever else, there is always a god figure which has exclusive control over your life and where he/she/it wants you to be and become.  Many times, the impact of this concept of destiny cannot be seen until after things happen that would make one question it.  For example:  Joe is living in a place thinking that he went there for a job when in reality he made a connection there that will enable him to do something that he holds as a life desire.  He really loves to paint landscapes and at his job (which has absolutely nothing to do with painting or art) he happened to meet a person that connected him to an art gallery owner (that person’s childhood friend) that just happens (coincidence?  I think not) to love his particular take on landscape painting which got him the opportunity to show his work, thereby making him a famous artist.  Some would consider this whole scenario as a group of coincidences that just happened to elevate this person to a place he secretly wanted (and worked his way up to) to be anyway—I say pish posh.  In my spectacular opinion, a thing is meant to happen or it isn’t.  Does this mean that the coincidental folks are wrong?  No, not at all is the answer.  As I said at the beginning of this blog, it is a matter of perspective. The crux of this is whether you are an optimist or pessimist.  I consider myself an optimistic pessimist.  That is, I am in a positive frame of mind most of the time, though sometimes, I cannot help myself and will wallow in my self-pity.  That being said: I am also a firm believer in pre-destiny (that which is destined to happen) and that my choices are not free choices.   Regardless of your own level of optimism, there always seems to be a guiding hand to what you are doing vs. what you want to do.  We live in a culture that nurtures this concept of fate and pre-destiny.  We have all heard the phrase that it was “God’s will” that this happened or that you were “fortunate” in that case that it wasn’t worse.  These all lend credence to my own philosophy.  Kind of ironic really that I am writing this blog in the hopes that I get discovered when I truly believe that it will happen if it is meant to happen.

Poetry in Our Lives

One of the most frequent comments I get about my writing, relates to my poetry.  The comment is usually something along the lines of “I wish I could write poetry like that” and my typical answer is “you can…it is not hard.”  It is merely a frame of mind.  Typically when I set out to write poetry, I will take a feeling or emotion and translate it into words.  For example, if I were to feel like writing about depression related to love loss I might start out with something that we all have experience with and word it in such a way to invoke that feeling or sympathy of that emotion.  A good start for a love loss poem might be…stranded on the shore of pain, I am awash with longing, bathing my bleeding heart, in a puddle of self pity…see not that hard…you get from the first line that one feels abandoned or stranded…the second line represents the feeling of wanting to be where one was before…the third line represents the emotional damage done…and the last line represents ones current emotional state…nothing there that every person has not felt at one time or another in their lives.  Another way I like to begin poetry is with a mental picture of some place or scene that has meaning to me…for this example I might think to use a field of flowers with a tree standing in the middle somewhere…oh and a happy rock not far from the tree…now that you have the image planted in your mind…let’s write…a soft breeze carries the fragrance of summer, wrapping it around the guardian and his minion, standing tall and waving in the breeze, casting a shadow as the day wanes…see not that hard…the writing puts one in a field of flowers with a soft breeze carrying the perfume to the guardian (the tree) and his minion (the rock)…though the tree and rock are not mentioned specifically…they are implied and would be further expanded upon in subsequent lines.  The important thing is to create something from your heart.  Poetry is fairly simple to write and the cool thing is that the more you write, the better you get...so go make some poetry in your life…

Change

Over the last 200 years or so, the US has changed.  The demographics and needs have changed and as a result, policy has changed.  The change has not always been painless, yet it has had to happen for us to progress.  I am pointing to the unpopular policy of slavery (1860’s) and the equal rights movement of the 1960’s in particular.  Today’s world is more technical than ever before and it will continue to progress.  Never in the history of the US has the television had such an impact on public policy as it has now.  When a person speaks publicly, the impact of those statements has an immediate effect.  What I mean is that just as soon as it is said, there are fifty different “experts” analyzing and criticizing what was said and what was meant and how it impacts what is going on.  These “experts” tend to have more influence with people because we have lost our ability to critically analyze.  If an expert says it is true—despite the fact that all the experts disagree—then it has to be true, depending on your political affiliation.  What happened to the time when people would say “wait…that doesn’t sound right” and we would question their position based on our own critical analysis of the facts.  Sites like Wikipedia and the myriad of blog sites have made inaccurate and generally irrelevant information easily quotable.  I think people need to take everything that is said in any public forum with a grain of salt—regardless of how many experts there are speaking about it—and use our own intelligence to study the subject from a thousand different perspectives, while at the same time keeping an open mind for the possibility that your own opinion may be wrong and then and only then, make an informed opinion.  It really is not rocket science.  The sooner we all learn to disregard the irrelevance and start to again analyze everything, the sooner we can make change happen.  After all the US has been a dynamic state that has affected outcomes and influenced countries worldwide.  May we again be at the forefront of revolution, questioning all policy, and making change happen…and remember, it might hurt a little.