Traveler's Log

Grief. It has a purpose. Grief normally occurs in response to change. Grief extracts us from the routines of our lives that we may better focus on adjusting to the circumstance that has driven us from our normalcy. Grief is an integrating emotion that opens doors to the hearts of others that we may receive their support and guidance when we are blinded by pain. Giving ourselves permission to grieve is giving ourselves permission to rest, to accept help.When we learn to manage our grief, to integrate it into our lives rather than avoid it; grief becomes a dark sprout reaching out into the many aspects of our lives, drawing in nurturing support and distributing it deep into our being through it's roots woven into the full essence of our inner selves.

If instead of embracing grief, we choose to see our grief as an enemy; we are ironically closing the door to our own heart in the moment grief has acted to unlock the doors in the hearts of others. When our hearts are "safely" locked away out of reach of other's support; we do not rest, but rather toil. This then becomes what people later have defined for them as "unresolved grief." Left unaddressed, unresolved grief becomes chronic grief, otherwise known as "depression." While not the sole cause of depression, unresolved grief is certainly a path to arriving there.

There is a sense of safety when locked away behind our grief. Grief can become an excuse for our failings. Grief becomes an insulative blanket protecting us from the unknown. Like a person in bed with a cold snuggling in under blankets we curl up under it's protection for grief becomes the only emotion within which we feel safe at such times, if only for it’s reliable familiarity. Just as opiates serve a purpose numbing our pain and our mind after a physical injury that we will slow down to heal with minimized risk of compounding the injury; so does grief do for us the same as we recover from emotional injury. Rather though, grief numbs our emotionality with our mind. The similarity continues further. Just as our opiate inhibited bodies can fail to recognize when the drug’s protective use is becoming damaging abuse, so also can a mind inhibited by grief fail to recognize when the protections of grief creating a space for contemplation become our prison; creating instead, subjugation. Once subjugated in the prison of grief it, more than anything else, becomes a defining element of a person's identity.

A person may be a doctor, a plumber, or a musician in their identity. They may simply be identity driven by wealth, fame or talent. In every case though, a soul imprisoned by grief will be seen as "lost" being the overreaching defining characteristic of who they are. Once imprisoned in unresolved grief other emotions are no longer trusted with only the grief seeming real. Without the emotional resources to connect to others and resonate with them interactions become lopsided. Isolation deepens now as people naturally begin to pull away and resume normalcy in their lives. Though this is a healthy act of self care it will often be seen by the numbed mind through minimized emotional processing as a personal act of insensitivity. "They don't care anymore." The prison walls get thicker. The spiral continues. It is for these reasons of grief's potential for counter-producivity that faith is a critical component for success of navigating our way forward.

While it is a valid association of faith that can be helpful, I do not speak of "faith" in a strictly religious context. My definition of "faith" is that of "hope without evidence."

Other important components of successfully navigating through grief are an open mind and flexibility. Here is how it works for me. I have faith that something good can come from any action I take. In the depths of depression during the divorce that ended the 38 year relationship with my wife I made a promise to myself that I would walk my new neighborhood before going to bed - no matter what time I was going to bed. The area I took up residence when I moved out of our shared home is a beautiful place of well maintained 100 or so year old homes under a great canopy of ancient trees. It would be a walking meditation toward peace of mind.

I made this promise not because I read an article in some personal health magazine saying it is good for my body to have cardio, or because some psychological study said it was good for my mind to walk in one environment or another. I did it because I had faith getting outside the house, getting out into the world in some way, is how I would find positive outcomes. I had faith that this one act would get me out into the possibilities of the world around me and out of the air stale with grief in my immediate surroundings. I did not narrow my options to "I will lose 5 pounds doing this and feel better," or "I will transcend my problems in a meditative contemplation as I walk." I simply had faith that if I kept my promise to self, got out into the world in this way each day (or night), something good would come of it. I did not attempt to define “good.” I was flexible as to what the outcome could be and open minded about recognizing it.

The walks were a mixed bag. With few exceptions I did them every night for more than a year. We have four seasons where I live and I went on walks regardless of what any of those seasons brought about. I did these walks in shorts and flip flops, I did them so bundled up that, seeing me, one might think I was wearing the padding to train attack dogs. I went on walks in a downpour during the dead of night wearing boots, a duster and a wide brimmed hat that I must have looked like I stepped out of an Alfred Hitchcock western, if there were such a thing. Though I often had many reasons to not walk, and often there was plenty of evidence I could have embraced that it was a pointless exercise, I kept walking in faith that goodness comes to those who call on it.

Much of the time it was just a "one foot in front of the other" walk. Like a miner working a claim there is chaff to be sorted if gold is to be found. On my walks, away from the congestion and pace of the rest of my life, I found answers. I was open to the feelings that arose and those feelings came with answers to big questions, like "where did I go wrong?" "What was my role in how it all fell apart?" There were answers to lessor questions as to how to resolve conflicts that had arisen, what to do for continued employment, and what really I might want to do with the rest of my life. On these walks I found a park and in that park I found a location that felt spiritual. In my newly discovered spiritual retreat I felt connected to something larger than myself. I would feel that no matter how large my problems, there were other forces around me of much greater magnitude. A reassuring aspect of feeling small in the face of the universe is that my problems would at these times become even smaller than I felt in the face of the universe around me, insignificant even.

Sometimes the walks worked against me. In the midst of my divorce, feeling all alone in the world and that my one great goal of creating a real family had eluded me, I would walk past the homes of my neighborhood imagining smiling mom's serving warm dinners to happy children as they spoke affectionately with the family patriarch who was joyfully being informed of everybody's day. Those sorts of thoughts were damn near debilitating at the time and a real test of my faith in the walks. As I look back now though I realize that those painful moments were validation of the truth of my goals. My grief was not centered on how difficult it had become to do my job, or how my image was going to be tainted by divorce, or all the money I was going to lose. The evidence of my pain sources was validating. I had not conned myself to believe I was acting virtuously in pursuit of superficial goals. My pains, my sense of loss, was over the destruction of the family I had worked to achieve. I was not agonizing loss of my material gains “the ex would be taking from me,” but rather the implosion of my goals for love and family. The source of my grief, my sense of loss was rooted deeply in having lost exactly what I believed myself to be working toward throughout my life. These painful walks may have felt as heavy, toxic and valuable as lead, but the thing about lead is that when found; it often means gold is nearby.

The good that came out of these walks was more than just the ethereal. I also made a friend along the way. It was the result of us both crossing paths often enough on the same walk it became comical. Finally, on our last incidental meeting of the walk we stood and talked for almost two hours. We have gone on walks and talked ever since.

This faith I speak of goes well beyond this one promise to walk. Faith is interwoven throughout my life, back to my earliest memories. "Just go to the store" when feeling too ambivalent about life to want to do anything has often resulted in encounters with cashiers and other shoppers that have brightened my day. Just going to the party I dreaded has produced some fine evenings that would have otherwise descended into grief spirals in the gloom of my own living room. "Just go for the damn ride" when in the depths of depression, afraid to go for fear of discovering yet another thing I used to love having fallen to Anhedonia, has gotten me out on my motorcycle only to have me return with joy in my heart.

My darkest hours came a couple years after the divorce concluded. I felt I was fully imploding. My body and mind were both betraying me on the backside of having experienced years of stress and illness difficulties. The common consensus among my healthcare providers and friends alike was that life had finally become too much and I was suffering a breakdown. It had all gotten so bad that my physician came to walk with me on a Saturday to help me make sense of what had become incomprehensible. We walked for a couple hours into the foothills and talked of my options. I decided to go in-patient for a 6 week program. This felt like I was giving up that last trace of any life plan that was left. The last of my identity was vaporizing. As far as I knew, after having lost the family I so desperately wanted to build I was sacrificing the career I had spent nearly 40 years building. I was also giving up the last of the savings I had left and going into debt. The program was expensive. I did this with only faith that committing to an action in pursuit of something better than giving up entirely would provide opportunity, if I just staid open minded and flexible. If I had faith.

The outcome was the discovery that I had, as was literally stated in the explanation given me, the two worst possible molds in my home. My liver, pancreas and stomach were functioning abnormally. My brain was impacted causing cognitive degradation and emotional instability. I had no resilience to stress and my immune system was weak. I was constantly exhausted. I later learned that the previous occupants of the home were dealing with bizarre illness issues before they decided to leave and the previous occupant to them did die in the living room of the home. I am certain that my choice to give up the last of anything I knew, owned or hoped to achieve out of faith in the good that comes available with action saved the one most important thing I had left to lose - my life. Friends all around me, near and far, came forward to support me in ways I never imagined.

While some of my worst fears did become reality in that I will never return to my career and most of my previous long game career  goals are unlikely to be realized now, enough good and opportunity arose from that decision made in faith that I can move on to hope - faith with evidence. The friendships, the knowledge gained, the opportunity for productive introspection that all came out of that decision to surrender the last vestiges of my familiar life are invaluable. A truly priceless outcome is that, against all odds, and impossible to predict, during this process I met the life partner I had given up on even existing.

Grief is not "bad" in and of itself if, like with opiates, it must be managed mindfully; with faith. Being open minded to the fact that goodness comes to us in many forms and seldom as we expect is vital to our well being. In my experience homeostasis seldom comes to us from a life design built of our intellect. We must have the flexibility to embrace that goodness however it appears. It is in acceptance that we are able to make productive use of the love and support grief generates in the space it creates, then move beyond it — in faith.

Journey on ...

We are problem solving creatures. Awake or asleep, our brains are continuously problem solving, even if those problems are as simple as answering questions. Do I have time to stay in bed a bit more? This simple question can involve a plethora of calculations we do so handily we take them for granted. What time is it? How long is my commute? Is the traffic likely to be heavy? How hungry am I? Can I grab breakfast on the run to buy a little more horizontal time? What am I going to wear to work? Do I need much time to pull today’s wardrobe together? On and on and on the questions cascade, each requiring their own calculations over weather, refrigerator contents, fuel level in the car; all to answer that first fundamental question about when to swing one’s feet to the floor.

The problems we solve scale. Often times a problem feels too big to tackle. Unaddressed these matters pushed aside can become a prison that over time closes in on us until the metaphorical air grows thin and we literally begin to lose clarity of thought. This point of our lives can be compared to being imprisoned. For me if I think back to any time in my life I have experienced a sense of being imprisoned, whether it is having been grounded as a child, strapped into a hospital bed for 6 weeks or in military basic training; the perceived loss of freedom and mounting frustration feels very much the same as when perceiving being trapped in a life situation. I think of the factors that construct this situational prison around me at these times as my repressers. While a represser is commonly a person, such as a relative, spouse, a co-worker, manager or acquaintance, they can also be memories or emotions and fears, real or imaginary.

As in the real world, escapes from our metaphorical prisons are most commonly pain motivated. A sense of not being able to take anymore, or having nothing left to lose is usually the driving force behind taking on the previously insurmountable barriers so effectively contrived by our repressers. So also like the real world prison, not having a plan for continuing on once outside the walls will soon find us back in the same prison before we are even fully aware it is happening.

When we feel stuck in life we often externalize our imprisoning factors and relinquish control to them until the pain of doing so becomes greater than the risk of overcoming those factors. I have seen over and over again where people escape their life prisons only to end up right back where they were, or worse. I attribute this to people only overcoming the first of four necessary steps to fully get beyond our self imposed “prisons.”

Real growth, and not just situational relief, is a four phase process, and never actually ends. These phases in summary are:

• Escape - Liberating one’s self from their repressors.
• Recovery - Growing beyond the influences of past repressions.
• Discovery - Becoming self aware of one’s own values, needs and wants beyond the influence of external forces.
• Pursuit - Moving forward in life, beyond enfeebled repressers, in pursuit of goals born of one’s own unique identity.

In a bit more detail:

Escape is the act of extracting ourselves from whatever circumstances are holding us back and preventing an effective pursuit of our fullest life. Escape is generally going to be pain motivated as an act of running from something. It is often said that the we should always run toward a goal and not be running away from anything. Sometimes running away is enough. Sometimes we just need to get away from existing circumstances in order catch a breath, regroup and figure out the rest of our path forward. Escape does not have to be a black or white action steeped in drama. If for example one feels trapped in a difficult relationship or a dead end job; jumping up, packing bags or emptying the desk to just escape in the moment is unlikely to be effective at anything more than temporary relief. A spontaneous break to plan for a larger change and line up help to support transition to the next phase can however; be very effective. Escaping without develpoing a plan is simply running away.

Recovery is the healing that comes after our escape. Recovery is a period of learning. Recovery is when we learn about the aspects of self that created the situation we escaped. “Aspects of self” is essential to an effective recovery. Unless we are contemplating previous events to better understand our current state and best effect change, contemplating what we cannot change, like the past or the perspectives and attitudes of others, is no more effective than trying to fly a rock as a kite. Any other contemplation of the unchangeable is a waste of valuable energy. Recovery is when we make changes to our own perspectives, attitudes and habits to effect a stabilizing life balance that prevents re-occurrence of the imprisoning circumstances we escaped. Recovery establishes a nondestructive status quo.


The previous two phases end with that momentary pause where the momentum of having been shot out of the cannon fades. This is the point we must spread our wings and continue our flight forward by new means for entirely different types of purpose. While goals are certainly an aspect of the early cycle phases, in those phases we are primarily motivated to eliminate pain from our lives. Lifting repressive burdens applied by our repressors can feel like rapture, it is however a moment in time. The next phases are about moving forward and making peace with life that we may move more deeply into knowing its treasures. The old tools to bring us to this moment will fall away to new approaches, new perspectives. One cannot move forward seeing the world anew if they remain committed to doing what they always have from perspectives they've always had.

If recovery is about learning the aspects of self that perpetuated pain and altering those aspects to close those doors, discovery then is learning what in our lives brings us joy and opening those doors. For many, a critical constant in this phase is giving ourselves permission to to be ourselves, permission to feel joy that is unique and specific to ourselves. We are pack animals by nature. Spending time with a well defined group can be validating and supportive. Inordinate commitment to a nebulously defined public can strip one of their individuality. Two key factors of discovery are, in this order:
Giving yourself permission to honestly explore your unique joys and desires.
Purposefully assessing what in life truly brings you joy and peace.
Pursuit - Giving yourself permission to experience and enjoy those self discoveries. At this point of our cycle the repressors exist only in our own minds. We have escaped them and learned what in ourselves opened the doors for them to be a part of our lives. We have closed those doors. These things are true by definition or we would still be in the early phases. It is here in Pursuit that we remove the repressors from our mental and emotional gateways to paths that are uniquely ours and we enjoy. This is when we are again the child that lets go of the proverbial coffee table to stand on our own for the first time. This is when we again put curiosity and desire ahead of fear and inhibition.

Once one moves through these phases and embraces their outcomes they will have laid claim to that aspect of their life that was once denied them by their repressors. The more areas of life addressed in this process the greater ownership we have in the entirety of life and the less dependent we become on the whims and influences of others. It is an iterative process and each successful iteration brings with it a greater stability of peaceful existence far more resilient and persistent than the momentary jubilation of being without burden so often confused with being happy.

Journey on ...



 

 

Today as I type this WeBlog entry I am drinking a smoothy made from coconut milk, yogurt, ginger, spices and various fruits. These ingredients have come from sources all over the world. They were brought to local stores, each requiring the sum effort of thousands of people to design, build and sustain. Considering the effort behind the transportation, including creating the vehicles, then the raw material harvesting and fabricating to make any of this possible; the big picture becomes too big to even contemplate in detail as one large system. Just for me to have a morning smoothy, let alone being able to have that smoothy in the pleasance of my home comfortably heated on this blustery Winter day, requires an unimaginably complex system of cooperative interdependence.

As I sip my morning beverage there is a squirrel nibbling on some treat unknown to me outside my window. There are vast differences between the squirrel and myself. 

My life is afforded many conveniences owed entirely to the human intellect unique to our species. Though it is unlikely the squirrel and I will ever sip coffee together (I prefer tea), we share much in common, as we do with all other living creatures on this planet.


We must eat to survive. We are driven to procreate. As with many of our planetary co-occupants we have instincts to form in hierarchical social structures. All of us creatures that are mobile on our planet as we ride around the sun together strive to avoid, and move away from pain. Alternatively we also all move toward pleasure. Centuries of analysis using this differentiating intellect of ours has repeatedly concluded that this is all biologically driven, for all of us creatures of this existence.

My point is that though our intellect is a defining human attribute that has constructed a civilization allowing me to have a morning smoothy using out of season fruits and spices, some that cannot even be grown where I live in any season; we are not excepted from the natural order of our most fundamental home. We are creations of this earth and as such, are subject to the natural laws of this earth and no less. I'm not taking away from the fact that we are miraculous creations of this Earth, nor that we can do some pretty amazing things within those natural laws. All the same though; products of the Earth and subject to its laws.

Under the umbrella of the laws of nature are the laws of animal conduct and beneath that are the laws of human nature. Animal Conduct defines the fundamental motivations feeding into the value set of all animals on this planet. These would be the motivations to eat, sleep, procreate and simply to survive. In all cases it is a law here that one thing must die that another may live. Whether it be a deer hunted in the woods, cattle raised on a ranch or a carrot plucked from the ground, death begets life. Every sentient being sleeps to it's own schedule and procreates to it's own rituals. These are the laws of Animal Conduct in nature.

Every animal type conducts itself differently to satisfy the natural laws of its existence. Those are the laws of its specific nature and in that space are the laws of human nature. Though ours is a complex nature that can be hard to discern for its overlap in conduct and distortions imposed by maintaining a society, human nature still most definitely is very real. Lions hunt. Squirrels gather and deer graze. We as humans both hunt and gather, though unless at a Las Vegas buffet; we do not graze. These aspects of our nature can be masked by our farming and grocery distribution practices, but that even can be seen as an exercise in gathering at the very least.

Unlike bats and horses we are horizontal sleepers and unlike deer and elk that sleep in the open we are more like bears and badgers that seek shelters to rest. We are among the animals that do our predominate sleeping in 24 hour cycles. As in most of nature our drive to procreate, or at least perform the acts and rituals of procreation, is powerful. Also powerful is our nature to function and feel empowered in a hierarchical social structure. Establishing a sense of predictability, often thought of as "control," where territorialism plays an important role, is also deeply rooted in the psyche of the brain-bearing animal. Environment and situational change requires energy hungry adaptation by the brain, which seeks to conserve energy by establishing predictability.

Not unique in nature, but experienced strongly in human nature, is our desire for sparkly things and toys to stimulate our intellects in addition to our emotional states. "Sparkly things" in the context of this writing is not limited strictly to those items that literally reflect light into our eyes, but also those things that glimmer in our intellect. For some that intellectual glimmer could be triggered by an exotic sports car painted in flat black, or some high end footwear, neither of which actually reflect light in any way.

Beneath the nature of a species, in our case human nature, lay individual values, and this is where things get dodgy. Our values define the unique paths we as individuals take to satisfy the common objectives of our shared nature. For example, we must all eat. To satisfy this need we take paths as hunters, shoppers, gardeners, restauranteurs, vegetarians, vegans, omnivores, carnivores and many more; all satisfying a need to satiate in ways that feel right to each traveler on their path defined by their values

It is in our nature to crave a sense of belonging, to find “our people.” We gather in groups of common interest, goals and values seeking the companionship of others whose journeys parallel our own. Even wildly popular individuals who seem to have hundreds, or even thousands of friends have an “inner circle” that defines their true tribe.

I recently read a quote of unknown origin that says, “Everyone you meet is working through a struggle you know nothing about.” I fail to see any way this could not be true with each of us moving through life striving to satisfy our natural inclinations by way of personal values while at the same time avoiding conflict with our tribe’s common interests. To have a smoothly functioning society we must restrain our animal instincts and function with social guidelines. One could not effectively operate stores if everyone simply acted in animal reflex and just took what we craved to satisfy our need to satiate. We could not farm if we did not temper our drive to create safe domains by peacefully relinquishing territory into rationalized boundaries. By way of our values and cost/benefit analysis we are able to modulate tensions created when we cannot meet the needs of our fundamental nature directly. Because we understand the benefits of our land boundary system in allowing for food growth, raw material harvesting, transportation and distribution; we willingly manage our lives in physical territories defined by our system rather than by the animal instincts to conquer and defend. It is when the system benefits are not understood, or the system fails to satisfy fundamental need, that intellect and rational thought give way to more primitive drivers directly motivating decision and action. Because of the role our societal systems play indirectly satisfying our fundamental needs they become an element of defining our identity. Our identities have historically been, in part, defined by the value driven path we chose to satisfy our fundamental needs. It is now our chosen role in supporting the systems that indirectly satisfy our needs, and by necessity, the needs of the community serviced by that system, that becomes a defining element of our identities. With our identities being necessarily defined more by our societal role and conduct than by our inherent animal and human natures our skill at managing, or even repressing these components of self has now also become a defining component of our identities. This is an aspect of self given rise uniquely in the human animal as a requirement of functioning within our complex societies born of our intellect equally unique to the human animal.

No wonder there is tension and confusion - we are all living in denial of fundamental truths. We are in denial of our own animal natures while at the same time being resentful of others for theirs. This - this is the boat we are all in together. We are all moving through our days dealing with the inner tensions and conflicts between our rigidly defined fundamental animal needs and the plastic rules of conduct existing only in our perceptions. Consider further that as our societal advancements consistently increase the complexity of our societal environment, often in the name of simplifying our lives, so also does it increase the breadth and frequency of our interactions. In so doing the number and diversity of value systems brought together, further creating opportunities for interaction of divergent value systems, increases exponentially.

Until we can come to understand with clarity that though one may defend their values with malice and deception, nobody's values are created that way; derision and consternation will remain an under current in our lives. Every person’s values are created to satisfy their fundamental natural needs based on all past experience and interaction of their lives and create inner tensions they strive to resolve as comfortably as possible. The perceptions, values and conflicts of every person out there are as real to them as our own are to each of us.

Until we come to understand that embracing diversity requires more than slapping a bumper sticker on our car, that embracing diversity is more about having patience with conflicting values than pretending to ignore flesh tone, our efforts to genuinely accept one another and function as a tolerant society shall forever remain skin deep. When we can learn to appreciate that each of us is in a struggle between our fundamental nature and our societal constraints, that we are all dealing with inner struggles between our perceptions of the outer world and our inner motivations; perhaps then we will be able to mend our divides as we learn true tolerance.

Journey on ...

Accept it. For your own sake and for the benefit of those around you, accept it. Life is messy. There is no denying it. Accepting life is messy opens a door to fully experiencing it. Move your refrigerator in your sparkling clean house. Lift out your couch cushions. Lift your regularly vacuumed, recently cleaned carpet. What will you find? Dirt. Have you ever noticed how much cleaning there is to do after you have moved out of a regularly cleaned house? I was married to a clean-aholic and every time we moved we still had to spend a day or three cleaning the place we were exiting once it was empty.

This is life. No matter how perfect, how clean we try to make our lives, there is always imperfection, the dirt which we must accept. There will always be someone with values in conflict with our own. There will always be greed, thieves, bullies, liars and the pursuit of control and power. We will even manifest those traits ourselves, especially in the eyes of others. All of this around us, and in us, is human nature. Embracing ideals and goals absent of consideration of this absolute is a recipe for failure.

Gunpowder is a substance that in an ideal world is a boon to mankind bringing to hand a panacea of raw resources. Gunpowder is also used as an instrument of maiming and death in frequency enough to bring fear and consternation, in some degree, to nearly every household on the planet. Atomic sciences carry the promise of unlimited energy to power the tools and toys of our lives. The very first practical application of this truly civilization-changing discipline was to vaporize two cities in two instants. A comparatively few years ago a man I have long respected for his high intellect and social prowess caught wind of the 3D printer having been invented. He was very excited and earnestly proclaimed that the world's problems were about to end because of this marvelous invention.


Our newfound ability to one day quickly bring into existence anything we could design would erase all of mankind's problems. I was saddened. This idealistic perspective embraced without consideration for its horrific potential to tools of destruction into the hands of anyone with such intentions was a blatant issue being completely overlooked. Thoughts of economic disruption, copyright infringement hazards and new forms of scam perpetuation were in no way a part of his utopic perspective. This is an example how even brilliant, responsible persons of constructive character can, and have perpetuated this miscalculation we have as a species so much trouble overcoming. It wasn’t but a few months later I read an article declaring a security emergency because untraceable single shot guns invisible to metal detectors had started showing up. We were again becoming victims of our technology maturing faster than we are as a people. Today the Internet, the greatest communication technology ever known to any civilization, practically psychic in it’s expediency and effectiveness, is being used to invade the deepest interactions and relationships of anyone who participates, and most who don’t.

None of this is meant to paint a doomsday picture. I am not saying we need to stop innovating. I am only pointing out the dirt beneath the metaphorical carpets, between the prophetic couch cushions and under the idealistic refrigerators of our lives. Perhaps it is by first acknowledging the inevitable character trait differences in each of us as a species, recognizing that the strength of a person in one scenario is a weakness, or even destructive, in another; we will begin to heal the chasms of dividing derisiveness that are emerging in our societies today. Perhaps accepting, rather than denying the normalcy of our differences will allow us to begin to evolve ourselves towards truly living in congruence and reverse this trend of divided discord. Perhaps we will start on the path toward realizing, and embracing the perspective that, despite the vastness of our technology it cannot in and of itself bring harmony to us as species or individual. Just maybe we will begin the path of collectively understanding that the products of our intellect are merely tools with potential to assist in realizing our potential as individuals - and then as a civilization. We cannot progress as a whole in community if we are ailing as individuals in spirit.

Our spirit and our character are not different from our muscles. They all grow stronger when exercised. We must protect ourselves, and especially our children from devastating danger. But, there is always risk of injury; seeking absolute safety is a guarantee for a sort of living death. To


not know risk is to not know growth or true accomplishment. Growth is, by definition, exploration into someplace new. Your body doesn't grow to a new height by stooping to a level you have already been. A person does not learn new skills without the risk of failure doing something never before experienced. This is also true of our emotions.


Unexposed, tightly protected emotions are like sheltered children not allowed to experience the world. Keeping a child hidden from the dangers of the world, protecting them from the consequences of their own actions may give them a "safe" 18 years, but it guarantees an agonizing 35-70 years to follow for not having learned to handle pain and difficulty along the way. Our emotions never actually leave us and so to keep them perpetually hidden away is to live in perpetual discord.

Our youth is the best time to learn where true, real world boundaries between safety and pain lay. This is the best time to learn to endure the pain of exceeding our limits for the same reason the best time to change construction plans is in the design phase. The effort to later rework what is already built is exponentially more difficult and costly than constructing to meet real requirements from the start. And the resources available at project start are not available later. We are born with 100 billion neurons supporting a 100 trillion connections; ready to create the circuitry necessary for prosperity in an evolving world. This happens by cause and effect. We have experiences and in response we make neural connections supporting successfully navigating those experiences again later. The more frequent, or intense the experience; the stronger the connections. This all primarily takes place in our youth. By the time we are age appropriate to leave home our "wiring" is complete. Neurogenesis, the growth of new neurons, and neuroplasticisticity, the reconfiguration of our neuron network; are both possible as adults, but happen only at levels of performance suitable to organic environment change adaptation. In other words our neural wiring comes together early, with the pliability to build whatever is necessary for survival in the environment we are raised. Once complete, sometime after puberty, we maintain the pliability enough only to adapt to the changes naturally occurring with the aging process and the dynamic environment of the natural world. That is what we are built for; the natural world.

Therein lay one of our great conundrums. We have created technology, and thereby societies, that evolve at a pace that exceeds our own ability to adapt. This combination creates more gyration and convolution than smooth evolution in the individuals trying to cope. The level of stimuli, the number of considerations, incongruent simply due to their sheer volume, inevitably overwhelm our ability to adapt leaving individuals ironically alone in a sea of stimulation; anxiously groping for familiarity and safety. We are creatures built to primarily experience only one living circumstance, with some provision for situational adaptation, living in a world of all possibility.

Real change. Big change, is possible. This type of change does however require a great deal of life force, whether that be as a shock to our system or as an intensely focused expending of our will over time. Sometimes we are lucky and can trigger one of those rapid shocks to our system of our own accord. These times are often referred to as "Aha! moments." The vast majority of real change in our lives however comes with time, introspection, honesty and action. One of the greatest skills for building a successful life, one in which we feel the joy of living with a purpose we are fulfilling, is being adaptable that we may accept the sometimes "dirty" truths of our life. Once the need to account for the dirt of our lives is accepted we have taken the first step to change; whether it be in our environment, or ourselves.

Strive not for an easy life but for the strength of character to overcome your difficulties. For an easy life can ultimately be the most difficult of all.

Journey on ...

 Neurons. They are at the center of you.

According to the University of Queensland Australia, "... their interactions define who we are as people."

I am not jumping in on the argument of whether or not we are just a bunch of living water balloons walking around driven solely by electrical impulses zipping along nerves and motivating sinew in response to environmental factors. No argument here about the essence of free will vs causal determinism. I guess you could think of this writing as sort of a Chilton or Haynes manual chapter for body owners.


I often think of myself a visitor to this place, our existence. Just as with anywhere else, one needs the right equipment to be able to function and understand the place they are. Anyone going into space could not function, or even survive without a suit designed to operate there. Anyone going to a movie isn't going to experience much without a projector running. That is my body here in this existence. I see my body as the mechanism that makes comprehending and functioning of my spirit here possible. The main jobs of our bodies are to facilitate experience and keep us alive. Who we are within that body is an entirely different, contextually overlapping and often contradicting matter I find fascinating in its infinite possibilities. Possibilities manifesting in journeys as unique as each individual.

Having been "brain function impaired" as the result of injury and sickness I can say from a first hand account that neuron connection organization plays a major function in how we perceive and feel about this existence around us. The evidence is everywhere. Color blind people, for example, have a different neuron configuration as those who see color. All our senses actually, are defined by neurons, 100 billion of them, with 100 trillion connections between them. Our ability to sense sound, touch, smell, taste and to see in general is all made possible by neurons. How we feel in response to these senses is also heavily influenced, if not entirely defined by neurons in our brains. Depressed people are often given drugs to affect neuron function so that they may experience the world differently. Companies have formed to help corporations effectively influence a targeted audience at the subconscious level using fMRI techniques to analyze advertising campaigns. The effectiveness of proposed strategies for influencing the decisions of customers is assessed by examining the neuron activity of a target demographic sampling. The resultant outcome is for targeted audiences as a whole to more likely make choices in favor of corporate desires. Desires influenced by approaches designed to stimulate agreeable responses at levels of awareness below waking consciousness.

What these influence strategy assessment companies are doing is an excellent lesson for us all. If these companies can effectively coerce segments of the population through peeks into our neuron driven psyche we then are supremely capable of managing our own life experiences. Those employing deep psyche coercion strategies are successfully doing so using a sliver of information about us in swathes of demographic groupings using big expensive equipment in periodic studies. We as individuals have access to everything that could be known about each of ourselves on an absolutely continuous basis. There is no reason any of us cannot do for ourselves what these researchers do to the masses, but only in our case it is not for superficial material gains as value defined by a society. Our work to understand ourselves and manage our decision making can be toward building a gratifying life built of goals defined from within each of us individually that match the character of who we are.

The researchers spend years learning skills that support assessing others that they may earn a share of the billions spent by companies to better influence their potential customer base of people that mean little, if anything more to them than numbers on paper. Does it not make sense that we as individuals would make whatever efforts necessary to understand aspects of ourselves that mean literally everything to us?

The good news is that once we commit to learning who we truly are as individuals and set goals meaningful to the persons we uncover, the tools and techniques of that quest can be effective instruments of change in our lives as well. No big expensive equipment necessary. We start life at birth with the fundamentals of an “anything is possible” collection of neurons. What we don’t need falls away like a sculptors rubble falls to the floor. It is in this way that children grow to be compatible to their environment. The environment in which they grow up and experience defines the neurons that last in resultant configurations. In extremely general terms, the neurons we are born with are "nature" and how they map together is "nurture" in the "nature vs nurture" argument of the psychological community.

Most all of this choosing of neurons and connecting them happens in our childhood. We do however; continue to grow new neurons through a process known as Neurogenesis and make knew connections through an umbrella process known as Neuroplasticity. What these two big words mean in plain language is that we can change. We can rewire our thinking, albeit at a pace slower than we initially develop. And in today's societies we must exercise that ability to change, or consciously structure our environment to minimize the need for change, if we are going to be happy in the current pace of humankind.

As some subtle personal neuro-change experience examples, I have evolved over my early years from a tomato-hating youth to a man that enjoys a tomato slice or two on a sandwich now and then. I also wouldn't even consider another sip of tea for decades after my first, initially finding it to be a horrible tasting beverage. Today I am an amateur tea aficionado that drinks several cups a day. Change adaptation can also be sudden. As I drove along a back road near my home years ago I was repulsed by the smell of nearby skunk-spray. Unlike other times I smelled skunk, this time I happened to recall a pleasant time in my youth. The two experiences became associated and I have actually enjoyed smelling skunk and feel fortunate to come upon the the animals aroma ever since.

This all comes down to one concept stated in passing at a workshop I attended. "Neurons that fire together wire together." At first I thought it was catchy phrase and not much more. Over time I have come to realize this simple statement is at the center of who we are and the quality of our lives. Our neurons are forever working to configure and function in a way that supports our experiences to keep us safe and alive. The way we live our lives, the stimuli to which we subject ourselves and the consistency of our experiences all come together to drive the formation of the neurons that define us.

If you want to change the way you feel, the way you think, the way you experience life; then you must change the inputs to your life, the events in your life, the stimuli of your life that drive the connections made in the biology of your brain.

Journey on ...

 

 There is an ancient debate. "We as humans are inherently good." "We are inherently evil." "We are inherently neither good nor evil." Any of these could actually be true depending on the context of the value system being applied at the time of consideration, but deciphering this eternal debate is not actually the point of this writing. We'll save that for another day. I bring this up though because whatever the great philosophers have to say about this topic, we do get to decide who we are in our own story.

"Our own story." What does that even mean?

Too often in our current age of technology that, while being outwardly coaxed to "be our own persons," "live more peaceful, spiritual lives" and "love one another;" the real life pressures around us dictate a very different path. "Easy" and "safe" are the watchwords of the day. We chase "likes" and comments online. We let often faceless and impersonal interactions made through the glowing screen of some form of computational device drive our self-esteem, emotions and motivations. We let workplace authority figures define our overall self worth rather than the small sliver of workplace suitability such interaction realistically has any value. We allow brands and media to determine our aspirations by assigning imagery of emotional states we all seek to their products striving to trigger a romantic response within us that imprints a desire of possessing the product, or perhaps even pursuing an entire lifestyle that we may have more of that briefly contrived emotion. All of this, and much more like these examples have us striving to be who we need to be to please an audience of ever increasing participants with windows into our lives. With all these windows is it any wonder so many feel like caged animals with nowhere to go in a zoo of anonymous spectators.


At the very least so many diverse interests of influence with a deep view into our lives creates a stressful superficiality as we compete for attention; like siblings in a dysfunctional family. In short, our lives are under continuous pressure to be defined by an increasingly accessible outside world by way of our intellect rather than by each of us individually by our own internal, uniquely present selves; often referred to as our spirit.

So then, "our own story" is defined as an evolving plot line with ourselves as the main character actively exploring internally derived, desire-fueled dreams until they become goals. Then subsequently pursuing those goals until they become accomplishments, or at least lessons learned.

Being the hero of your own story does not mean one must vanquish monsters, rescue damsels, seduce hunks, spit out clever phrases with perfect timing or anything else to win favor of anyone else. Being the hero of your own story means enjoying what you are doing rather than enjoying how other's are seeing you for having done it. Being the hero of your own story means enjoying the outcome of your actions on, or within yourself rather than your actions being driven by the intentions, or reactions of those around you. Being the hero of your own story does not preclude, but does take inherent priority over being the hero, or even a character of anyone else's stories. Being the hero of your own story means having the commitment to learn the truth of your own joys, goals and pleasures; the courage to create and follow your own plot line from these truths, and the confidence to fully bring the honest outcomes of your journey to others that their stories may be embellished by the full value of who you truly are.

Journey on ...