Sadness

Where does this sadness come from? Of course in the lives of every adult there are some things to feel sad about, opportunities lost, love denied. But the sadness I feel is more powerful and more pervasive than these events alone would provoke. Even when other events in my life might be regarded as more than compensating for these disappointments and losses, the act of counting one's blessings does not dissipate the sadness. Nothing, it seems, can compensate for what might have been. What has been lost? I have pondered about finding this sadness in me when I reached a point in my life where all the disappointments and losses I had experienced had provoked in fact to be very beneficial. I was now leading the kind of life  I had dreamed of when  I was an adolescent, I write, I travel with family and friends, our own delightful home, a good  income, and healthier than i had ever been. As well, I had been successful in excluding from my life quite a number of things which I did not want to do and which I would, when I was younger, have felt obliged to do. I had also relieved myself of the burden of worrying about whether people approved of me. Most of the time I felt extremely happy, but every now and then I would find myself feeling sad. I thought about this and I thought about this daydreams, when I was young I imagined that as I get older
I daydream less and less. As adolescent I had dreamed of many things and fell in love with many different people, but with each passing year, I thought, the range of possibilities gets less and less, so that in older age there is nothing to dream about.
I know now that this is not the case. I go on telling myself stories to comfort myself and to view the future with hope. So I still daydream a lot, and these dreams, like the dreams of my youth, are about wanting everything and getting everything. I want to have it all. My sadness is because I do not have it all.

Proper Education

The world we live in is entirely different from the world we evolved to cope with,  with the result that our minds are out of whack with our world. This has given us major problems like pollution, overpopulation, the destruction of the atmosphere, the extinction of plant and animal species and the threat of nuclear annihilation. Our old minds are designed to look at things as they affect individuals and to respond to immediate dangers like a sudden changes in our climate or an earthquake. Large-scale, continuous threats are not instantaneously obvious to us, so they get ignored. For instance, one terrorist attack will cause thousands of people to change their travel plans, but all Filipino citizens ever killed by terrorist would not add up to the number who gets killed every day in this country by handguns or automobile accidents. Part of the problem is that our education is almost irrelevant to many of the changes that are taking place in the world. People are taught algebra with great precision in schools, but I've never met anyone who's ever used algebra after the age of 16. On the other hand, they're not taught probability, which is something they need every night when they watch the news. People need to understand the nature of the world they actually live in as opposed to the world we're taught to believe in. And we're changing the world so fast that we believe the curriculum needs to be changed every decade. Our past is no longer a good guide to our future, and understanding what could happen in our future is what education needs to be about.

My Thoughts

I don't actually look to see if someone is better off. What I'm concerned about is that I can look after myself, that I can take responsibility for myself. It is I believe the exact opposite of selfishness. It's taking responsibility for my action.

Tuna & Tomato w/ Mushroom

I cooked Tuna & Tomato with Mushroom for Dinner

Now Reading The Sacred Bones by Michael Byrnes

Being Responsible

If we accept responsibility for what we do, we can have something taken away from us. Politicians who admit their errors can lose their power and position. Men who see that the expression of their sexual desires injures others, and that this is wrong, have to deny themselves the expression of these desires if they are to be able to live with themselves. Admitting our errors, failures and inadequacies can take away from us the feeling that we deserve to have everything. Hence many people will go on denying responsibility so that they can think well of themselves. Some people can deny that they are responsible and not be called to account, and others are censured by society. But censured or not, those people who try to get everything by denying that they are responsible for what they do in the end fail to get everything, for other people turn against them and never trust them. Such selfishness provides short-term gains but long-term woe.

Racism

Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man's genetic lineage. The notion that a man's intellectual and characteristic traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own characters and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors. Racism claims that the content of a man's mind is inherited and that a man's convictions, values and character are determined before he is born, by physical factors beyond his control.

Being Christian

Each of us journeys in this life from birth to death. God has chosen a path for us and calls us to walk along it. But He also created us with free will and allows us to follow a route of our own choosing. There is nothing more important than choosing a path that leads to meaningful, fulfillment, compassion and joy. If we choose our own path, we risk the consequences of walking alone, with only our own meager resources. But if we choose to walk in God's ways, He will give us all we need for this journey. When there are forks in the road, obstacles to be overcome or alternate routes to take, God accompanies us and helps us discern His path from others. Wherever our journey of faith takes us, it inevitably encounters suffering. Our culture, to the contrary, tells us to avoid suffering at all cost. Advertisers tells us that if we buy the right products we can avoid not only suffering but also the smallest inconveniences. However God teach us that suffering is a natural part of human life.

Learn From Your Mistakes

In order to learn, you've got to be free. You've got to be free to experiment, to try, free to make mistakes. That's the way you learn. I can understand your mistakes and I profit greatly from mine. The secret is not to make the same one twice. But I need to be free to experiment and to try. Give me that chance. Allow me the freedom to be and to be myself and to find the joy in need. Don't give me your hangups! Let me find and overcome my own!

Now Reading Sidney Sheldon's AreYou Afraid Dark?

Risk

To hope is to risk despair, and to try is to risk failure. But risk must be taken, because the greatest risk in life is to risk nothing. The person who risk nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing, and becomes nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn and feel and change and grow and love and live. Chained by his certitudes, he's a slave. He forfeited his freedom. Only the person who risks is truly free.