HOME | DD
inspiredcreativity — How I Live My Life
Published: 2009-03-06 11:11:56 +0000 UTC; Views: 4075; Favourites: 14; Downloads: 14
Redirect to original
Description
Happiness & Sadness, Love & Hate, Good & Bad, Beauty & Ugliness, Intimacy & Loneliness—ALL Of These Things Are Relative To Each Other.How can you know happiness without knowing sadness? If you live your life on top of a large plateau, you will never know you are living high-up, until you have found the edge and look down? How do you know you are warm, if you have never experienced being hotter and colder? They are all relative to each other, as are love and hate, good and bad, beauty and ugliness.
How can we appreciate one unless we have experienced the other? The greater our experience of sadness, the more we will appreciate our happiness.
Love lost, heart torn asunder, the emptiness, grief, and loneliness felt, ALL of these will make us appreciate new found love, even more.
When feeling despair try as hard as you can to realize that this will pass and that this will later be a benefit to you. After feeling despair, do not try to forget it. Instead, let it remind you to better appreciate what you have now.
I live in constant, unremitting pain, with the knowledge that not only will it never get better, it will get worse and worse until I die. However, no matter how bad it gets, there are bits and moments of happiness and beauty, but one has to CHOOSE TO LOOK FOR THE GLEAM OF DIAMONDS IN THE MUCK, THEN CELEBRATE THEM WHEN YOU FIND THEM. When you choose to see, it is amazing what treasures you can find in the most bleak of circumstances.
MY GOVERNING PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE
My philosophy for living starts with Understanding. Through Understanding people and their condition or malady, you can find Compassion for them; and through your Compassion, you can find Forgiveness; and through your Forgiveness, you will find FREEDOM; and freedom leads to Tolerance; and Tolerance leads to Acceptance; and this great circle leads to the Ending of Hate, the bane of humanity, with LOVE being the natural result.
Understanding > Compassion > Forgiveness > Freedom > Tolerance > Acceptance > Ending Hate > LOVE String The Ends Together In A Great Circle.
I try to treat others with COMPASSION, DIGNITY, RESPECT, HONESTY, FAIRNESS, TOLERANCE, and TRUSTWORTHINESS.
COMPASSION
Compassion is a profound human emotion prompted by the pain of others. More vigorous than empathy, the feeling gives rise to an active desire to alleviate another's suffering.
UNDERSTANDING
Sounds easy, but it's not. How can you possibly stand in the shoes of another person and understand him or her? You would need to have the same cultural background, the same environmental influence through childhood, the same life experience, the same value system, and the same belief system—all of these things color how we SEE the world we live in.
I went on a journey of understanding of my parents, who I needed to find forgiveness for. It took a few years, and a lot of questions and research. I needed to understand how they grew up, what life was like back in the early 1900's, what their relationship was like, what WWII had done to them, what having a bunch of children did to them. I needed to understand why they became the people they were today. I needed to understand why they treated me the way they had.
At the end of that journey, I was able to find compassion for them, for what their choices and what life had made them. Then the forgiveness part was relatively easy.
We cannot be expected to do heavy research all the time, but there are times when it becomes important. For example, it might be important to deeply research the Arab and Jewish Palestinian people, as well as the European Jews who emigrated to Israel, and to research the conflict in as unbiased a way possible, before demonizing a people.
I have researched Islam and various Muslim cultures around the world, to help me understand them. I could never demonize or hate them after that. I can hate their treatment of women and gays, etc.
All over this world gays are hated without thought. Priests and ministers say terrible things, but they are NOT theologically true. People keep saying the Bible condemns gays, but actually it does not, and I could take you through every appropriate passage in both the new and old testaments.
The point is about understanding things before condemning others.
FORGIVENESS
One of the things to work on is FORGIVENESS of yourself and others.
Forgiveness is NEVER about CONDONING wrong doing. Forgiveness IS about letting go of anger, retribution, revenge, and hate. Forgiveness is about not continuing to be a victim. Forgiveness is about not letting the perpetrators continue to control your emotions and ruining your life.
A person who has lost a loved one to murder can loose the rest of their lives in bitter anger and hate for the perpetrators. Every time they think about the person who killed their loved one, it drives their negative emotions. It affects every aspect of their life, like a dark cloud hanging over their lives. Guess what, the perpetrator succeeded in ruining two lives, not just one.
Emotions like anger and hate ROT your soul (self) from the inside out, and can destroy you. Why not set yourself free instead? Hate and Anger limit our capacity to Love fully, and limits our ability to find Happiness, fulfillment, and contentment.
I TRY TO LIVE BY THIS ( My version of the Serenity Prayer ):
THE PATH TO SERENITY
Learn to accept the things that you cannot change,
have the courage to change the things you can change,
and seek the wisdom to know the difference.
Living ONE DAY AT A TIME, enjoy every moment at a time.
YOUR PATH THROUGH LIFE
Imagine your life's path is like seeing a pathway stretching through rolling hills and mountains, with forests, deserts, marshes, grasslands… It is misty in the distance, and the path disappears around a hill. You cannot see for very far. Most of the future path is unknown, it cannot be seen, but you know there will be many forks in the road, possibly bandits, rivers to cross, hills and mountains to get over, bad weather, but also meeting good people, sharing adventures, beautiful sights, sunny days and having fun. You can try to plan for emergencies and contingencies, but you can only carry a certain amount with you. Maybe you take things like a rope, a knife…
We have NO control over Life itself. Life gives you one simple rule for how you can move along your life’s path: you cannot go backwards. When the path splits into different directions, you can choose to walk down any of the branches in the path. But once you start walking down any one of the paths, you cannot go back to try the other branch. You can only move forward, or stop and wither and die.
You start walking along your chosen life's path until you come to another fork in the road. You must now choose one of the forks in the road that you will continue to travel, right, center or left. You choose a path and continue walking along the path. Suddenly, a tree falls across your path, blocking your way. You had no choice or control over the tree falling across your path. Life throws things at us, things we have no control over. BUT, once life has done its thing, THEN we have CHOICE again. You can climb over, climb through, go around left, go around right, and any of these may be fraught with its own dangers. So choose.
RESET 1: Back to our walk along the path, when suddenly there is a rock slide and three fingers are crushed between two huge granite boulders. You have a knife, but trying to chip-away the rock will destroy the use of the knife for cutting. Do you take a chance that you can get your fingers loose by chipping away at the stone with the knife, or do you use the still sharp knife to cut off the fingers? So choose.
RESET 2: Back to our walk along the path, when suddenly a tree fall across your path and you are pinned under the fallen tree, and you try and try, but there is no way loose. You have a knife. So now choose how to die, or how to live the rest of your short life under the tree. It is all about choice, even if all available choices are horrible.
CONCLUSION: There is little control over what I can do with how life has crippled my body, but I still have choices over how I will live, to make the most of my remaining painful life, or to just wither away. When untreatable pain goes beyond the bearable, then I may be able to choose when and how I die.
Always stay conscious and aware of your POWER OF CHOICE, and if you ever cannot see enough possible choices, seek the input and aid of others your trust.
CHOICE—WHO YOU ARE
Who are you? You are the sum of all of your choices in life. It is a choice how we see the world. It is a choice how we interpret things. My brothers are Identical twins, but very different people. Maybe one looks at the sky and sees blue sky with clouds, and maybe the other one sees clouds with blue. Each has his own unique vision of the world and choices that will give him his individuality.
Most people sleepwalk through life, letting others and life make all of their choices. Yet that is a choice too. We actually have far more control and Choice than most people come even close to realizing. Often we feel like we don’t have any choice. That does not mean it's not there. You have to be willing to open your mind to the ‘World of All Possibilities’ and seek Choices.
My Chronic Pain cannot be cured and the physical pain of the firing nerves cannot be decreased any more. My physical pain consumed my life. If I have no more choices to decrease the pain signals to my brain, and pain is consuming my entire life, perhaps I can expand my life, so that the pain no longer consumes it. Then my Quality of life will have improved. I had no more choices to affect my pain directly, but if I expand my view of possible choices, I can change my Perception of the Pain. How do I expand my life? I again seek choices. I can force myself to become more social. I can distract myself from pain with a hobby, by help others, with reading books, making new freinds… When I am involved more in life, my perception of pain decreases. It is still there, but I am less aware of it.
Your choices determine your path through life, which is what defines who you are. You are your JOURNEY. Your choices determine how you see and interpret the world you live in. Sometimes life throws things at you that you had no choice in or control over at all, like having a car go out of control and hit your car, making you lose a leg. But now you have choices again, in how you will move-on or stay stuck… I cannot stop my pain, but I can make the most out of each and every day, I can look for the small bright spots in my day and focus on them.
In conclusion, your life is all about your choices and life's influences. Most people delegate their choices, and thus their lives to other people and institutions, while others go through life on cruise control.
The question is, how active will you be in choosing you own destiny. But PLEASE remember that when you blaze new trails, the way may be smooth at times and very difficult at times. There may be danger at times, many mistakes made, and much learned.
Most people, including me at one time, live their lives waiting for the end of a journey. Waiting until exams are over, waiting until you have your degree, waiting until you get a promotion, waiting for retirement, waiting for vacation, waiting for the weekend. The next thing they know, their lives are over. They put their lives on hold for a better day.
I worked like a maniac, in a very unhappy life, pushing myself HARD to be the best, learn more, and save enough to retire early. I did achieve my gaol and retired at age 34, but I was burned-out, I had no idea how to enjoy life and was a human mess. Then my partner left me and I tried to kill myself.
The ideal is for you to get the most out of your life, AS YOU ARE LIVING IT. Find a way to enjoy studying, being in school, meeting people and making friends, and do this all your life. I am the definition of human misery, but I work at finding the little bright spots that I do have.
*** Don't spend your days beating yourself up, wringing your hands, worrying, second-guessing yourself, being afraid of failure, being unhappy with your progress. Try instead to do the opposite and take daily inventory on the good stuff happening in your daily life, and think about what you learned from your mistakes, think ahead with hope.
If you do this stuff enough, it will become a habit of life and you will be happier for it. Greet people with a smile, stand tall, shoulders back.
Buddha said that if you have no expectations you will have no disappointments.
THE PRISON WITHIN
Child too old, why do we build the prisons within.
Pain and fear, alone we are cast, sanctuary we seek, a prison we find.
A freedom most difficult to find.
Better safe in our prison, than lost outside?
Some prisons seem nice and cozy, while others are filled with horrors.
Chains bind tight, it is impossible to grow, is this what life is all about?
Know your prison first, seek the cracks of light, a glimpse of what freedom could be.
Courage is what you need, change is your key.
What is inside, behind the door
that is not outside, on the other side of the door?
We are choice, so choose, unlock the door?
Imagination, beauty and love, all contained behind tall walls.
Outside these things know no bounds.
Imagination's only limit is within yourself.
Freedom once found, how sweet it is...
Matthew
When I write, my aim is not to convince people, or sway them to my position. There is too much of that in the world, causing too much strife. Many people believe their view is the only correct view, and go on a mission to convince others, and too often we see that escalate into strife, violence, even war. Religion is a good example.
My philosophy is to put-out my views and beliefs for others to see, consider, reject, incorporate, blend, or accept into their own views and beliefs. If it generates other input and discussion, better yet, as it gives me the opportunity to do the same thing, and perhaps gain more insight, or even replace or adjust my own views or beliefs.
I see things in grayscale, rather than Black or White. It is the path of personal growth.
©Matthew Barry 1985, 2003, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2014
Related content
Comments: 33
The last few hours I tried researching about how life was for my parents and it'll take a while until I can understand and forgive them properly but only after a few hours of research I already feel worse for them than for me
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
It is a good journey to go on, to try to understand other people and eventually find forgiveness for them, and erasing hate and anger from your own heart. Remember that forgiveness does mean you are exonerating or condoning what they both did and did not do to you and for you. Forgiveness is about 'you' LETTING GO of any negative feeling you have for them. It is like saying, "Ok, they did bad stuff to me and were not good parents to me, but it is tome for me to move forward with my life, and let go of my negative feelings." These negative feeling can follow you all through life. I was about 35 before I let go of my negative feeling about my parents and other family members. This meant I carried that darkness in me for a very long time. I felt a lot better once i reached forgiveness.
Now it is easier for you to feel sad for your parents, not only for what they went through in life, but also for how limited their lives have been, as a result. Understanding your parents and why they are the way they are, can help you feel compassion for them as human beings. I feel lucky that my mother finally came to understand me and accept me. It ended up opening another word for her. For example, she become an advocate for Gay rights and spoke against those in her community who would talk ill about us. This could not have happened if I had never forgiven her, then put myself back in her life. Change was slow at first, but it did happen. I was able to confide in her about anything, even my sex life (which was a huge change for someone born in the 1920s).
I guess I am saying that the world is full of possibilities. But it becomes up to us to seek those possibilities.
Being free of negative feeling for others is an amazing feeling, and very freeing.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
This is the life , it's just a life
With all of kind of feelings , the end go to another life may be good may be bad.
You can know, where are you going to ?
Just we can say ( Good Luck ) for a good life
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Thanks for writing. I do not personally think there is another life beyond this one, but I keep an open-mind to the possibility.
Luck is nice to have, but working hard, overcoming fear and helping others is also important.
There is no such thing as Destiny or Fate, just Life and the Universe moving, but we still have the power to make many Choices.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Thank you for reply me ...
That's right , all what you said the words of a logical and beautiful, and I love talking sense.
But this does not mean that there is some cases or the strange things that we can not explain it.
As for how to live all of that is made by the same person through his mind can live a beautiful and happy life or a difficult life, whatever it is to think.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I agree that there are mysteries in life and much that is unexplained. I try to live in a ‘World Of All Possibilities.’ I seem to have some ESP ability, as most people have. A house I lived in seemed haunted by a malevolent spirit. We discover both new wonders and new mysteries everyday.
I was born in 1955. The world is a far different place now. I was diagnosed as being Mentally Retarded, when I was really Autistic. They thought they were smart and understood the human brain. The science seemed true to them in 1959, but it was false. Today we know more about humanity, the body, and the laws of the Universe, yet the more we learn, the more we realize we do not know.
As a boy in isolation, I came to learn to fear each approaching moment in life. I gained freedom when I was excited about what the next moment might bring. I am actually dying a rather slow and very painful death now, with a degenerative disease of the nerves and joints. I was very afraid at first, then angry, and then content. I do not dwell of what lays ahead. Instead I seek a measure of happiness and contentment from each day, and sometimes from each hour.
Suffering is a gift in a way, although it would be nice if it was not so generous a gift, lol. Suffering gives you a sharper vision to see what is important in your life, and it gives you appreciation for things that few others even notice, like the sun falling across my face.
I do not feel like I need to know the answers to all of the big mysteries. Mystery makes life more interesting and keeps us asking questions and exploring.
You are correct about living life, but it is not easy for people to discover that beauty and ugliness, and happiness and sadness are constructs of our own mind. Heaven and Hell are what we make them. I see beauty where so few see it. It is humans who create ugliness.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
The illumination of knowledge and the price paid to the ignorant of the dark is an ageless question as "the cave" illustrates. Ignorance and fear of the unknown are always easier than education and understanding. The reward of knowledge and understanding is seldom appreciated by public acclaim.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
The allegory of the Cave - in modern language. I think your words are so important that I am transferring them to my Kindle with your permission of course. You are saying what we both have lived and you do it very well.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Certainly, be my guest to use it. I am fine with sharing as long as others do not commercially benefit form my work.
What allegory to the cave do you speak of?
👍: 0 ⏩: 2
I had to study the Allegory of the cave in school this past year, apparently it's usually taught in colleges, but i'm in an advanced class. We all caught onto the meaning quickly, it was very cool to read, I recommend it.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I have had a chance to read Plato's Cave Allegory and see the parallels to my philosophy of how I should live my life.
But I would like to take it a step further:
I wrote a Poem once:Ode to Babs
I am not Babs, I just am.
Part of me wishes I had the Babs, back when I was young and could fully enjoy its splendors.
Death it may have brought, but what a splendid way to go.
Without Babs, I see with a clarity, which pierces the soul of man.
Should I wish I had Babs, and was blind to it all?
What good the sight, when trampled by the hordes of the blind.This poem allows you the reader to define Babs. I explain what it means to me here [link] .
The part I wish to bring to your attention, which has to do with the allegory, is this: Without Babs, I see with a clarity, which pierces the soul of man.
Should I wish I had Babs, and was blind to it all?
What good the sight, when trampled by the hordes of the blind.What torture to SEE, and be utterly helpless and impotent to even influence, let alone change the course of mankind, unable to make a significant contribution to easing the suffering of so many people, knowing that evil will always prevail, knowing the the vast majority of mankind can and do justify their evil, and how they are all quite willing to trample over anyone or anything, which gets in their way.
When you become more and more enlightened in life, especially to goodness and compassion, it can be tortuous to you, surrounded by hoards of selfish, mean-spirited, greedy people, who choose to remain ignorant, who torture others, murder, commit genocide, resulting in overwhelming inhumanity in the world...
Would it be better to have never been enlightened and be blind to your understandings, your compassion and goodness?
What good is it having the sight, when you are trampled by the hoards of the blind?
What I have said to you is that I cannot do anything about the hoards of those who purposely pluck out their eyes and plug up their ears so that they cannot see hear truth or enlightenment. I cannot do anything about those who wallow in greed and self-interest. I cannot do anything about those who choose a path of darkness and travel away from the light.I can do NOTHING about the vast scale of Social Injustice and Inhumanity in the world, in my country or even in my town. But what I can do is to continue working to be a better Human Being and do my very best to help others. I can do that much. I can and do stop myself from Hating others, I can and do Forgive others and myself, I can and do give Love, I can and do give of myself for the benefit of others, and I can encourage others to do so.
Socrates remarks: "... in the region of the knowable the last thing to be seen, and that with considerable effort, is the idea of GOOD; but once seen, it must be concluded that this is indeed the cause for all things of all that is right and beautiful—in the visible realm it gives birth to light and its sovereign; in the intelligible realm, itself sovereign, it provided truth and intelligence—and that the man who is going to act prudently in private or in public must see it."
After "returning from divine contemplations to human evils", a man "is graceless and looks quite ridiculous when—with his sight still dim and before he has gotten sufficiently accustomed to the surrounding darkness—he is compelled in courtrooms or elsewhere to contend about the shadows of justice or the representations of which they are the shadows, and to dispute about the way these things are understood by men who have never seen justice itself?"
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
plato's allegory of the cave - been around for awhile - check it on internet. It's quite short.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I have had a chance to read Plato's Cave Allegory and see the parallels to my philosophy of how I should live my life.
But I would like to take it a step further:
I wrote a Poem once:Ode to Babs
I am not Babs, I just am.
Part of me wishes I had the Babs, back when I was young and could fully enjoy its splendors.
Death it may have brought, but what a splendid way to go.
Without Babs, I see with a clarity, which pierces the soul of man.
Should I wish I had Babs, and was blind to it all?
What good the sight, when trampled by the hordes of the blind.This poem allows you the reader to define Babs. I explain what it means to me here [link] .
The part I wish to bring to your attention, which has to do with the allegory, is this: Without Babs, I see with a clarity, which pierces the soul of man.
Should I wish I had Babs, and was blind to it all?
What good the sight, when trampled by the hordes of the blind.What torture to SEE, and be utterly helpless and impotent to even influence, let alone change the course of mankind, unable to make a significant contribution to easing the suffering of so many people, knowing that evil will always prevail, knowing the the vast majority of mankind can and do justify their evil, and how they are all quite willing to trample over anyone or anything, which gets in their way.
When you become more and more enlightened in life, especially to goodness and compassion, it can be tortuous to you, surrounded by hoards of selfish, mean-spirited, greedy people, who choose to remain ignorant, who torture others, murder, commit genocide, resulting in overwhelming inhumanity in the world...
Would it be better to have never been enlightened and be blind to your understandings, your compassion and goodness?
What good is it having the sight, when you are trampled by the hoards of the blind?
What I have said to you is that I cannot do anything about the hoards of those who purposely pluck out their eyes and plug up their ears so that they cannot see hear truth or enlightenment. I cannot do anything about those who wallow in greed and self-interest. I cannot do anything about those who choose a path of darkness and travel away from the light.I can do NOTHING about the vast scale of Social Injustice and Inhumanity in the world, in my country or even in my town. But what I can do is to continue working to be a better Human Being and do my very best to help others. I can do that much. I can and do stop myself from Hating others, I can and do Forgive others and myself, I can and do give Love, I can and do give of myself for the benefit of others, and I can encourage others to do so.
Socrates remarks: "... in the region of the knowable the last thing to be seen, and that with considerable effort, is the idea of GOOD; but once seen, it must be concluded that this is indeed the cause for all things of all that is right and beautiful—in the visible realm it gives birth to light and its sovereign; in the intelligible realm, itself sovereign, it provided truth and intelligence—and that the man who is going to act prudently in private or in public must see it."
After "returning from divine contemplations to human evils", a man "is graceless and looks quite ridiculous when—with his sight still dim and before he has gotten sufficiently accustomed to the surrounding darkness—he is compelled in courtrooms or elsewhere to contend about the shadows of justice or the representations of which they are the shadows, and to dispute about the way these things are understood by men who have never seen justice itself?"
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
This made me simultaneously smile and tear up. It's just so... sad, you know? how no one is ever just WILLING to work for happiness. I haven't believed in happiness in years, and it's been longer since I've seen proof of love.
Thank you, this is really opening mental doors for me.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
The evidence of happiness is all around us, but in depression, it is like wearing very dark sunglasses so you cannot see that which is already all around you. The dark glasses also do not let you see the light of hope at the end of the tunnel. Depression is on auto-pilot, but your conscious mind can work to take off the glasses, at least for periods of time. You start small, taking off the glasses for very short periods. The more you take them off, the easier it gets and the longer they can stay off.
In the mean time, if you trust someone, like me, you can take it on my word, with trust, that the light really is there, at the end of the tunnel, even if you cannot see it.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I DO trust you, and I have very intention of taking those nasty sunglasses off! I can do it! (I'm cheer-leading! 
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Now that really makes me feel good.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
This is very well-written! And well-organized, too. 
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I am happy it was of some help.
I also have a deviation called [link] [link] Although it is obviously very simple, it can be helpful for those for whom pain causes isolation.
As you may have seen on my page, I have been in Chronic Pain for close to 22 years, escalating every year. I have 12 years on continuous morphine and now 4 years on continuous Fentanyl, which is the end of the line. Once I am tolerant to it at the highest dose possible, it will be time to die.
I see you wrote about Polyamorous relationships. I would be very open to a gay Polyfidelity relationship. This is a Polyamorous relationship where everyone agrees to be sexually exclusive within the group (no sex with outsiders). More than three guys would be extremely challenging.
I will send you a note about pain management.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Replied to. Thank you for spending time to advise me!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
You are most welcome.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
"Understanding > Compassion > Forgiveness > Freedom > Tolerance > Acceptance > Ending Hate > LOVE"
What a perfect goal. Thank you again, Matthew.
Jan
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
It sounds so easy and simple. The thing is it takes extra time, and most people do not want to put time into it. The secret to success is that if you put the time into it diligently and extensively early on, it can become a habit that you do automatically much of the time.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I love how straight forward you explain everything, but it really doesn't sound so easy. It's a beautiful and worthy way of living, and I used to think I was a relatively "wise" and open-minded person; but I'm a bit older, my life has changed, and to be consistently understanding and tolerant almost gets more and more difficult. I'm not really trying to whine. I just want you to know that while times are a little tough right now, this writing stirs up the proper fires and helps motivate me to keep practicing. If it's not too sappy -- Love prevails!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
The most challenging time of my life in battling hate, was Bush/Cheney, the anti-christs. Even now it is hard to do. Sometimes every night I had to do a cognitive dance in my head about not hating and not wanting to be like them. The horrors of what they did kept coming back again and again, while so many people seemed to practically worship them.
It was the hate of my parents that started my journey. I had almost succeeded in killing myself at age 34. I had taken too many pills, causing vomiting, which got me out of the gassed car. But after cleaning up, I can back in the car, ready to go again. But the interruption had gotten me to thinking about if it possible for me to survive. I could not get through he night. What about tomorrow night? NO, I can't live like this anymore. Is it possible to change completely, in such a fundamental way to be past my Autism, my grief, my desperate need for someone to fill up my empty life? This is where the courage came in, and where I broke down sobbing. There was doubt. It is not easy killing yourself with doubt.
I knew that if I was to survive, I had to change SO many things. I had to get out, I had to somehow make eye contact and make friends, I had to somehow leave the horrors of my past behind me. I had to think and live differently. It was a long journey. The journey to forgive my parents and brothers took a year. How do you forgive what was done to a child, something that would haunt you for the rest of your life. Yes, it is still there always. But now I try hard to not let it control my life.
I started going to gay bars, clubs, pot-lucks, and I just did not fit in, like always. If you got to this poem of my, I have just added a picture that describes much of my life [link]
Somebody took me to a big dance hall, a gay country and wester place. Never did like much of the music, but thankfully there was a lot of crossover music. Going dancing was impossible, for my Autism anyway. But all you had to do was look around and see how happy people looked. So i started going there and asking people to tell me the beat in the music. I started taking lessons that went on for years, until I started giving lessons. I learned to both follow, then lead. I did it so much that new tracks were laid in my brain. When i started, if I told my right foot to go back, it went forward, lol.
But asking a stranger to dance was like, "No way." I finally got the courage to ask one person. I set myself a quota of 1 a night, then two, then three, and by the time I got to seven, people were waiting to dance with me, even though I was terrible. I learned to introduce myself and to get involved in activities. One night, on the way home, I had an epiphany, I realized that I had just felt great joy for the first time, on my own, as an adult. Sounds pathetic, I know.
I met Greg there and many good friends. The confidence I gained there made me branch out and bloom in other ways. I had had a dream to give my life to help others. So I had started volunteer work soon after the suicide thing.
To cut it short, the idea is that in the darkest times, this is the time to fundamentally change how you are thinking. This is the time to challenge yourself to find joy in the midst of difficulty and challenge. As I have gotten sicker and sicker, I have had to reinvent myself again and again.
Light the fire when it is darkest outside.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Reading of your thoughts gave me much. Thank you, Matthew!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
You are most welcome. Sometimes I do not actually live my life as well as I have described, but it is my goal.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Well I live my life primarily as an outsider I can't imagine the courage it took to come out to your parents, family, relatives, co-workers and friends.
And of course you might find this inane and ridiculous but I often wonder what it might be like to have a clearly defined community to go to for support, ideological and moral. But then again I do not no the wrath of bile and hatred that many in the gay community know so well.
There is a great deal of wisdom in this that might bridge a sea of divides. What is it that lies at core of this lack the humility and compassion? What brings us past the hate or disgust or whatever it is that drives the stake through our humanity and chills us to the core whenever our fierce differences are exposed?
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
When I came out, it was so unacceptable that it pretty much would guarantee your loss of career, a good chance of loosing your family, and you feared for your life. Even right now, HALF OF ALL BOYS WHO COMMIT SUICIDE OR ATTEMPT SUICED IN THE USA, ARE GAY OR BISEXUAL—50%.
Up to 520,000 Gay kids, as young as 12 years old, go onto the street every year, most tossed out by Christian parents when they find out their child is gay. It was even worse when I was growing up. It was even worse for my father's generation. We are faced with living a lie. Lying to everyone you love, about the most fundamental part of who you are. The implication to yourself is that if you are having to hide this horrible secret, that you should be ashamed and guilty of who you are and that you are a perversion of nation, and an abomination in Gods eyes. It was destroying me.
It came to the point when I prepared what I would need to kill myself. I then wrote to my youngest sister and confessed to her about being gay. I had decided that if she rejected me, I would die, if she accepted me, I would try to live some more. Each person I told had new challenges. MY mother called me a pervert and I had to move out. People I worked with for years, who called me friend said things to me I cannot repeat here. It was such a mass rejection, coupled with my partner leaving in such a cruel way, my codependency and it all came together, like a perfect storm.
But enough of me, although you live as an outsider, do you have family and friends around? I pictured you living out and alone in the Canadian wilds. I have met men who do not feel any real need of company, but i am just the opposite. I just hope you have not been lonely.
As for finding what you say insane or ridiculous, I assure I do not. You might be surprised how little support one can find in the gay community at large. When I tried to kill myself (age 34) there was only one service geared specifically to help sexual minorities in the State of Washington, which was since closed down under Bush, who pulled all funding across the nation for such projects. If you have AIDS, there are a lot of resources, but if you have other problems, there is nothing special out therefor you.
Members of the gay community might help you, or seek to exploit you. We have the same ratio of evil that you do. If you move into the gay ghetto, which is very expensive for rent and horribly expensive to buy houses or condos, you can live, eat, work, drink, and recreate all at gay establishments. There are guys who do this for security and comfort, for that ideological and moral support.
It is true that most sexual minorities have a common bond against common enemies. But basically we are a cross section of society. The stereotypical gays you see in movies and TV are actually not typical of the greater majority of gay people. For guys who have grown up in hiding and in fear, going to a big city and immersing themselves in the gay sub-culture can be a tremendously freeing experience, like getting out of a life-time prison sentence.
I had to work. When I was not at sea, I was in business with my father, then later my own business. I have almost always been in a long-term relationship, three of them, spanning some 36 years. So I was never really into the gay lifestyle, until that is, husband #2 turned into a drag queen—a story for another time.
————————————
To answer your question:
Human nature is based foremost in:
- Greed
- Sexual drive
- A desire for power (domination of others, subjugation of others, imposing your will over others, and control over others)
- Cruelty
- FEAR
- To believe that you are fundamentally better than others.
The last two are the roots of bigotry.
This is the default value.
Goodness requires active choice, which is driven by compassion. Parents can start instilling the will to choose a path of goodness, imparting a value system largely based in Guilt and Shame, the offer of a heaven and the threat of a hell. But other forms of value systems have worked too.
I do not believe in a God, heaven or hell. Yet I have always chosen to work for the benefit of others. But I have also done my share of wrong. Hopefully I learned from those mistakes. The question of why I chose this path more than let us say my brothers, I do not know. History has shown that people raised with the best of moral examples have turned evil, and people raised in a vat of evil, choose a good path. So there is still some mystery here. But is still comes down to individual choice, no matter what your upbringing.
Society creates a legal structure to control man's base instincts, for the greater good. But of course some still covet the power, obtain it, and consolidate it.
In democracy, we fight for the right to keep our human nature a free choice, while the other part of human nature, FEAR, drives the majority to control and constrain human nature, for the safety of the majority. The struggle between the two sides defines what government is all about. Governments are the mechanism of the process. Democracy and Totalitarianism are just a matter of who is control of the process.
Whenever civilization's legal structure collapses, the result is absolutely predictable. Entropy will have its way and chaos will reign. But there will always be some people who choose to devote themselves to helping others, and they become small islands in a vast ocean, trying to stay above the waves. These are the kernels from which civilization can grow. But they will face empires built of blood, of consolidated power and greed.
Even in what we see as our civilized world, this same struggle continues. Who shall win in the end, or will no one win?
The foundation of Human Dignity is CHOICE.
The key to goodness is COMPASSION.
The salvation of humanity is LOVE.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Very well agreed uppon. Sorry for not having a well written response, I've been finding myself at a loss of words lately.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1