Tagged: philosophy

May 14, 2012

Living in the present

Life asks us to focus on the present, but yet so many seem determined to do anything but that.

I often hear from others or culture that what happened before has ruined their lives. Or that the future is going to be terrible, and so we should prepare for an uncertain future. It seems to me that the future is pretty much going to be the same as the past. People will do what they believe is in their best interests, and mistakes as always will be made.

For example, in a past post I shared about a woman who felt she was ruined by a past relationship. I think she called herself spoiled goods. I wonder why we have this attitude? If you really are worthless, then why meet people and date? I think that it is difficult for people to accept the positive things in their life unless they have someone who isn’t living their life share it with them.

We accept our reality as the baseline for everything else. So we don’t realize the benefits and limitations of our beliefs. What I have learned in my life, is that what I used to believe that seemed so unassailable by logic, was really just what I had absorbed from culture. You don’t really get outside your culture unless you travel, meditate, or really are wise intrapersonally. You know whats going on inside of you, and you focus on that and start to discover the inconsistencies.

One of the first inconsistencies I discovered in my life was the difference between what I wanted to do, and what I did. It mystified me why I knew what I should do, yet I was unable to do it. I was taught that with your willpower you could do anything, and indeed you can do a great many things, but other forces play a part as well. I have since learned that many things influenced my behavior without realizing it consciously, and that in making peace with those things, I don’t have the brake and gas applied metaphorically in my life.

This is not to excuse or justify myself for my actions. I have no problem being responsible for what I have done. However, it does seem prudent that if we are kind with others, we should also be kind to ourselves. Perhaps we didn’t do what we could have done, but we also haven’t done what we could do and that is just as important. We may have forgotten a friend’s birthday, but we also didn’t get mad at a friend for forgetting our birthday. Things have a way of coming around.

The point of this is to show and share that we all sometimes feel tempted to live in the past or the future, but happiness is in focusing on the moment.

May 10, 2012

Wanting what you can’t have

It is common for people to want what they don’t have. I think part of this is striving for something more than what you have, and being bored with what you now have.

In the past I wanted the best luxury goods that I could afford. I mistakenly thought that those things would show my worth to others. I thought that having nice things meant that I was a better person, and that my life meant something. I see now how misguided that thinking was. It is not that having things are bad, it is just that things can never give you what you are seeking for.

I wonder sometimes why half of people get divorced these days. I wonder why someone can go from wanting someone so bad that they can’t imagine living without them, to not wanting to be their friend anymore. I am not judging those who divorce. I am just curious what happens along the path of life that causes our feelings to change. People often say “irreconcilable differences”. Yes, people do change, but then why did you want that person in the first place?

I think looking back at my own relationships that what I wanted from them, was something that I wanted in myself. I wanted something that they could not give, and when they saw that I could not give them what they wanted, they said goodbye. I said goodbye a few times as well so I am not a victim here. I think that many times people enter into relationships hoping and with fantasies that the other person has something that they may not have. Then when reality sets in, they “fall out of love” with someone they technically never “fell into love” in the first place with.

It is human nature to think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. I think that is part of the hope of wanting what you can’t have is that what may be forbidden or against your beliefs, is possible with the other person. For example, I had girlfriends in the past that took me to meet their parents and I clearly was not the kind of man they wanted their daughter to date. I wasn’t the religion that the family was, and that meant that I was a bad, evil man. Sometimes I love being used.

I have learned that the things that have made me the most happy in life are these: a sense of calm centeredness, kindness with myself and others, admitting mistakes quickly (boy I sure have practice with this one), forgiving others of their mistakes quickly. You may not have control over what happens to you in your life, but you certainly have control over your attitude to it.

May 9, 2012

You can’t hide what’s inside

You can’t hide what is inside. Of course, not everyone is mature and curious enough to see who you are so that is part of the problem in life.

It never fails to surprise me when I do nothing, and it seems to be the most effective thing I can do. For example, some of my highest rated views were days in which I didn’t post anything. In the same idea, I am trying an idea I read on a marketing blog where it said that one “solid” and long post beats any number of shorter ones. So we will see what the people want.

Going back to the idea of doing nothing, I think it has to do with balance. I tend to do things and expect results. Makes sense right? Well it also seems to be that silence and non-action used at key times is more effective than action. For example, interviewers are trained to ask questions and then wait for the answer. In some cases silence speaks volumes.

Many times I have been in the public and haven’t said a word and people start talking to me. I don’t remember smiling or giving them acknowledgement before they speak, but people seem to want to interact with me. I’m not complaining, it just is surprising the forms it takes. If I am inside a store and people will assume I work there and ask me where the shorts are. Or one time I was standing on the street corner, and one person after the other asked me where something was. Another time I was on the train and I was information central for people who wanted to sit by me and share things about their life.

I am sharing this to show that I didn’t do anything to start or open the door consciously. Yet there was something about me that made people feel comfortable approaching me. This happens the more that I find joy and happiness in my daily life. I can’t say what people find attractive about me, but I do know that as you grow people notice without words.

Maybe this is just a byproduct of culture. Culture often uses words to communicate but the most important ways to communicate don’t use words. It has been my experience when I had dogs that if I pictured in my mind what I wanted them to do, they seemed to understand. I would think about taking them for a walk, and I wouldn’t have moved from the couch and they started to get excited. How could they tell from the gleam in my eye? Why are beings able to do this? Rupert Sheldrake explained in a book called Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home: And Other Unexplained Powers of Animals [Paperback] I read and liked that book.

Part of writing these posts is to further consider what life is teaching me. I often think of the saying “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” I have noticed in my life that I am given the lesson until I learn it. It is not a hard lesson, but it is often easier in the short-term ignoring the message. I think what this lesson is saying to me is that being balanced should be my first priority. Not overdoing or under-doing things. That everything has a rhythm in life and to follow and flow is always better than to fight against the current.

May 8, 2012

Relax – Take it easy

One of the most challenging things in my life has been to develop a sense of balance. I often would do things to an extreme, and that never ended well.

As I have gotten more mature hopefully, I have learned that being relaxed is just as important as being tense and ready to respond. I can’t say that being tense has made me a better person.

It has made me more responsive and quickly able to leap into fixing a problem, but it is also true that a little more thought first would have worked better. So why do we do this?

I help people with computers and technology in general and people often say that they want to do things as efficiently as possible. I help them do that in small ways, but often they are not open to hear the larger ways to be efficient. I always ask if they are open to hearing another way of accomplishing the task that might be easier for them, but most people say “I’m comfortable with how I’m doing it now.” Ok. I respect that. You can’t force people to not waste time.

I think that part of the reason it is so hard to relax is the feeling that there is too much of life that we don’t want to pass us by. So we try to cram in as much as possible, and feel anxious when we realize all the things that we are missing. I know that in trying to just keep up with my small niche in technology is a challenging thing.

I think that to be successful in any field like medicine, technology or law you really have to dedicate your life to study. That is rewarding in its own way, but it leads to an imbalance of living.

For example, I spend a ton of time learning stuff about technology. That is fun, but it doesn’t give my other aspects of being a chance to grow. So I am just evaluating the amount of time I spend sharpening my technological skills. I think to be healthy and happy you have to be aware of what is happening inside of you, and not just let yourself get caught up in habits and your comfort zone.

I love playing video games and that is my major way to relax. Isn’t it strange that as beings who spend so much of our time sleeping we find it so hard to value being relaxed? We really are complex animals aren’t we?

May 7, 2012

The illusion of seperateness

As I have matured in life, I have learned that what I used to think of the world was not true. The older I get the more in doubt I have of my thoughts and beliefs. It seems clear to me that one of the biggest ones that I had was the illusion of separateness.

I grew up like many people thinking of things in black and white terms. Things are wrong or right, you are a good person or an evil person. That is very easy and comforting to people. However it is also unhelpful and untrue. The fact is that everything and everyone is a mixture of helpful and unhelpful things. We all have things that are socially useful and things that are not socially or otherwise useful. No one is an angel, and no one is a devil.

As people it is easy to quickly judge others or things and assign them a value based on the emotions or thoughts we are thinking. However in my experience 99% of them have been proven false in time. We see things as discrete. A car is separate from the road right? Yet what is the value of the car without the road? What is the meaning of the road without the motion? We see things in the most shallow sense of knowing and understanding.

Lets take something simple for an example. We might feel that someone is mad at us based on our observation of them. Yet if we ask them, we find out that their anger is about someone or something else. We think or feel we know something because of our limited experience. Yet, the more experience we have the less sure I am of anything.

What has been helpful to me is to be open to what life provides and as much as possible not judge things. When you don’t seek to force things into your opinions of how things should work, you become a much happier person. At least this has been my experience. When you don’t expect things because its “fair/right/expected”, you are more gracious and gratitude towards those you do get. When winning at something is the same as losing at something, you are gaining wisdom and insight.

For example, I used to be very competitive in games. I would play Monopoly like it was a life or death situation. The last time I played, I played to the best of my ability but I didn’t care if I won or not. Winning isn’t the point of life. What is the point? I would offer that anything that you want won’t make you happy, but only the things that you need.

I read a scientific survey that said that almost 75% of the US population was mentally unhealthy. I think this is because in our culture we mistake what we want that will make us happy with what makes us happy. But this isn’t about happiness per se. It is about the idea that we are lacking something, and that we are separate from everything that makes us happy.

I have learned that being balanced in my thoughts, feelings and activities have led to the greatest amount of life. What makes us feel separate and small is also an illusion. People have more in common than they what divides us. It is only our ego and arrogance that make us think that we are better or worse than each other. As I have grown I have seen that the more in touch with myself and my feelings and beliefs I become, the more I can relate to others in a compassionate and kind way.

The point and theme of sharing this with you is just to plant a seed that perhaps instead of looking for differences we should focus on interests and strengths. That instead of being intellectually cute, we be spiritually wise and open ourselves to the possibility that things are not what they seem.