Guiding Principles?

Have you some general rules that you tend to fall back on when you feel uncertain how to proceed?
Here is one of mine that has survived all my life long.

Sometimes living can be habit, can't it?

It would be interesting to know if others have something similar. :-)

You should do it, whatever 'it' is if:

           1. The pay is good, or survival depends on it

           2. You are learning something

                      or

           3. You are having fun.

Everything happens...

How could some silly saying send me into a tailspin?

We were invited out with a large group for a birthday dinner. I was feeling very sorry for myself. It seemed like a good diversion from the downward spiral.

The woman who sat beside me at dinner is a friend, an interesting person, a bit older than I, who stays very active and is very well spoken. Perfect to bring me out of myself. She is fun to be with, one of those people who has the ability to move a conversation along in a light way, usually.

As often happens in a gathering of sixty plus folk, the discussion turned to difficulties associated with aging. After one contributor described an incident that had led to a major turn in an acquaintance's life, my dinner partner turned to me and with a very sincere look that held my eyes a bit too long said, just to me,

      "Everything happens for a reason"

and turned back to the conversation.

Wow...

         and I think,

If things happen for a reason,
                                 ...what sort of cosmic joke does that make me?

And I realize  ~ I have never stopped thinking of myself as some sort of freak.

~       ~       ~        ~

Almost a week later, I remembered something Beth and I talked about, that a lot of the sayings and memorable rules we know don't mean what they seem to. One that comes to mind immediately is the commandment:

        "Thou Shalt Not Kill"

If we think of this statement as a fact instead of an instruction, it is saying

         "You will not be able to kill, 

because nobody really ever dies.

 They move on to a different reality beyond our experience."

I realized that in a similar way, 'Everything happens for a reason' can turn into    

          "Everything Happens"

An affirmation of a reality we are rarely aware of unless we are physicists, or spiritual seekers. 

It is a statement of the reality of an infinity of possible futures and pasts, all coexisting in space-time

Aadi's tree of life.

All things do happen, even if we are not aware of any but our own set of 'things'. 

Knowing that at some level I have chosen to be who I am, living these challenges, not just some random victim makes a difference.

It is not the world you see that matters, but how you see the world.

Blue food, dangers and delights

A barefoot beach walk took us to beauty 

 and bear food by the shore.

Just trying to get some sleep here...

Nature's candy...  there were lots of bushes ~ no bears were deprived.

Another hard day at the campground 

(S)he said, (S)he said...

My friend Sarah from Britain and I write back and forth keeping each other up to date on family and how we are doing. Sarah is the author of the only guest post on this blog and a very popular one it is too. Her poem there, My Imaginary Friend is a beautiful autobiographical piece, written in the first person.

Sarah and I have often said we will write an instruction manual someday on living male in spite of our handicap. We may be getting closer. In a recent letter she commented that she felt certain my tone in our letters had become more masculine in recent weeks. She even demonstrated it using one of those gender genie programs that analyze writing style.

Yesterday you met the crusader in me. Today we have a gentler, more homogenized personality at the steering wheel, with righteous anger somewhat but not totally abated.

History is a hobby and passion for me. Anger made me think about how in our enlightened age there are still barbarians at the gate, and that thought made me .... well, you can read for yourself where all that anger and worry took me.

I've been anxious for a very long time about a number of indicators of the economic health of the world. These are very difficult times for so many, and especially but not just our young. These times remind me of times in the past that were breeding ground for ... let's just say, I see parallels and that makes me fearful.

I felt fearful, and powerless too. My only weapon at hand was this blog. I am very sorry to have used this mostly peaceful place as a hammer.

Yet, for me it is good news that I didn't filter. If felt right at the time, even if today it does seem over the top.

I resisted an impulse I felt last night to delete the post.

This is me, today. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?
Complex.
Two spirits getting closer to being able to speak as one it seems.

Sarah, I will save you time. Gender guesser says this post was written by a male.

First they came for the ...

There are sad, angry, bitter people in the world. And why not? If you live in extreme poverty, or a war zone, have lost loved ones because of that, it seems natural to hate those you see as responsible. Look around the world and see the terrible circumstances of lives and try to tell me you don't understand sadness, anger and bitterness.

Now, try to explain to me why it is that people who have all the advantages of peace sometimes turn out to be just as sad, angry and bitter in spite of it all.

This morning I was reminded of this over at Kay and Sarah's blog in a post called "Can you explain what you said?". One of those people needing more empathy, love and joy in their life decided to spew hatred upon that lovely place, in response it would seem to a photograph of a beautiful woman on her wedding day.
As our beloved Aunties so correctly point out, the comment shows a lack of life experience,

"I can think of other 'pictures' that should haunt his dreams more vividly than someone in a dress. Say pictures of children murdered and defiled; of towns that are torn from the map by disasters, pictures of war and killing of the innocence mothers and fathers by crazed men"

yet in my mind, that damaging comment means so much more about our society than it does this one sad, bitter, damaged person.

Joseph Goebbels would recognize the symptoms and the opportunities for manipulation that exist when a society is weakened by a lack of moral centre, compounded by financial difficulties.

There are religions and creeds of all sorts that take advantage of those opportunities. They pitch the "big lie" just like Minister Goebbels once did, and manage to seem to fill a longing in the disenfranchised of our seemingly rich and peaceful part of the world. Part of that big lie always revolves around circling the wagons against the "others".

In Joseph's Nazi Germany the groups included in the "others" widened yearly. If 1945 had not seen the end to them, by now it is hard to say how many hundreds of millions would have been eliminated by their hatred as unfit. No question at all that the transexuals would have been early on their list of 'unsuitable to be considered human'.

Now, you are going to suggest that one nasty comment by a person who needs a mommy doesn't warrant such a response. Let me remind you that in 1923 Adolf Hitler and his gang were a small determined group of outsiders when they were arrested after the "Beer Hall Putsch". By January 1933, Hitler was Chancellor of Germany, and only two months later the hatred and mind control began in earnest with the burning of the books.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"
George Santayana, 1905