Monday, July 28, 2014

Think for yourself, draw your own conclusions.
I've never been a good follower. It seems to me that one draw of gang mentality young people have is that there is seemingly stability and safety joining other lost angry souls banded together to claim spaces and properties. They use hand codes and colors to signal to the world this is who I am. I am gang member X. In theory, there is stability of sorts and safety when we join giant herds of folks. In reality they are telling us what to think and what to wear and who to love and which to vote for.
There are times I have so desperately wished that i could just "drink the Koolaide" and follow the cows in the mindless herd. I wished I WERE Democrat or Republican or a Rotarian or even a Shriner just to name a few ready-made herds to fall into. It is easier to follow than to think original thoughts. It's easy to go with what is popular and ignore all signs my spirit is hurling at me that this doesn't fit me, this isn't for me, this is someone else's idea of safety, someone else's idea of "right" , someone else's idea of what is right.
I wasn't raised to think independently. It's not something I learned how to do in the home or in the school. I sort of came to earth with an immunity to herd mentality. I never fell into a group that wanted to think for me that felt "right". Even in Narcotics Anonymous which I credit solely for making a human out of me, the main goal for members is to quit using and have our own unique, one of a kind experience as a sober human,so that we can share our EXPERIENCE with others.
It suffocates me when I see smart, thoughtful people manipulated by news channels, talking heads, media outlets ran people people who need them to be so frightened and concerned about losing what is already theirs, or not getting what they someday want, they happilly turn over pocket books and votes to the man with the loudest microphone. Fearful people, panicked people can be taught to dance like puppets because they no longer listen to their own production of thoughts and feelings about what is right or wrong.
I don't see how that could be a very spiritually or emotionally fulfilling way to live.Giant religious organizations depend on people not asking questions, our government would rather us not delve into all of the comings and going and financials of them. People have to be held accountable in some form or another and that requires someone to question things.
At the birth of our Nation, someone started the thought process that England taxing the crap out of the Settlers was intolerable. Average people started the underground railroad to get slaves out of hell in the south. My head and spirit cannot wrap themselves around the idea that no one close to Hitler didn't object to his crazy plan and his murderous. heinous acts and kill him when his back was turned.
Edmond Burke wrote "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing".
That happens when no one is thinking original thoughts, no one is coming up with their own ideas about what is right or wrong in their own eyes. I have no desire , to live disconnected from my own experience. If I dress like you, wear my hair like you, talk like you, or vote like you, I would be having YOUR experience and not my own. I am clear about many things, one central one is I am a spirit having a human experience. That experience needs to be my own. No, it has to be. I need medication when I'm not living my own truth. I need medication in order to try and kill off the part of me that says "This isn't right", the part of me that knows the good part of me is comatosed.
The very human side of me knows it would be easier to fall into a ready made identity as a human. It would be too easy for my human part to embrace the identity of being an Aggie or a Longhorn, a Tea Partier, a Christian, a Buddhist and stop there. Like manufactured homes that come with furniture, homes that all you have to do is hang your clothes in the closet and BAM! You are done. Do we Embrace any of the prefab identities and just be done with the hard questions of "Who the hell am i" and "What do I believe"?
If it weren't for the part of me connected to something BIGGER than me, it would be easy to submit to a ready made me. The truth for me is, it isn't fulfilling to be a Lemming. I was born rejecting the categories that humans are suppose to fall into. My instinct wants to say I tried very hard to fit in the shadow boxes that the world created that let others know who we are and what we are about, but I think maybe I never really did try that hard. I understood from the get-go on some level beneath my thought that "this cutout" wasn't me. The real pain came for shoving my big foot into someone else's tiny shoe.
I've learned to love the fact that I have my own perspective. I see things differently that anyone I know. It's great to bump into someone that shares some common views with me but, it isn't my end game strategy. I'm here for MY own strange, trippy, trip. This is my spiritual journey in human form and it would be the biggest waste in the history of man for me to let someone else be in charge of my journey. I'm responsible. I'm responsible for what I know, and one thing I know is no one can think for me, love for me, live for me or learn for me. I am responsible for my journey, I am responsible for myself. Today, just for today, I am responsible.

Thursday, July 10, 2014



In the end, and I do mean the very end, it will not matter what title is in front of my name or the letters and designations that do/do not follow it. It will not matter what a big fine house I lived in or it will not matter what a big fine car I drove. At that end, what I did strictly for me , dies with me.  All that will remain is the ripple effect of the things I  touched with kindness, love and forgiveness.. I hope my ripple effect reflects the touch of peace. the touch of creativity. the touch of compassion, the touch of grace and the joy of laughter. When I lay down in that fateful field of strangers or my ashes take flight into the four winds, I hope I’ve left a ripple, that then became a wave.

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

In 5th grade i had a teacher named Mrs. Killion. She was a large chested round southern black woman who had a penchant of saying "I'm from Missouri, You have to SHOW ME" For those of you like myself, who never heard this old saying, it is one of the unofficial state mottoes. It meant nothing to me at the time but I woke up this morning thinking about some of the young boys at the place where I work, specifically when they are hit with a big feeling and they don't know what to do with it. Most of the time whatever the feeling is consumes them like a dry tree in a forest fire. No one has ever shown them what to do with a big feeling.

I've shared bits and pieces of this concept before but I personally keep revisiting it because I'm just not through with it yet. We are born human but people have to show us, model for us what humanity looks and feels like.

Case in point, my dad used to raise exotic birds like Parrots and Macaws. Some pairs would lay eggs and daddy would have to take the eggs immediately out of the nest box, because the birds did not know how to sit on the eggs and keep them warm. Other birds new how to sit on the eggs but the moment the baby birds hatched, the parents abandoned them and they would starve to death because the birds just didn't know how to raise their babies. Those babies were pulled the moment they hatched and fed by my stepmother with a tiny eyedropper every 2 hours for weeks.

The birds had been bred in captivity so long that the parenting/ reproduction skill sets were completely lost. None of them could parent because they never saw it done and the instinct literally left them.

It's a big ass deep thought for me when I see boys of 14 consumed by anger or fear. No one ever taught them healthy ways of dealing with big feelings. No one taught me either and I mistakenly assumed that I was suppose to magically no how to do it. I felt ashamed at my lack ability to function through big emotion, I thought it was a defect of personality on my part. I didn't know that I was supposed to have been shown what do.

I get it now. Kids need to be shown what love looks like. They need to see how you treat the people you love and what your words sound like when you deal with your loved ones. Kid's need to see what forgiveness looks like . They need ringside seats to when compassion is shown to those who can do nothing for you. They need to see perseverance when a dream is collapsing down on someones head and they need to see that feelings aren't fatal. Neither is "failure".

We cannot rise above our level of programming. If we failed to get any quality programming or modeling as a child and lessons in humanity, we aren't magically going to wake up with them as adults. I'm reprogramming myself on a daily basis with a multitude of sources of new ideas, I'm gathering things I either missed as a child or wasn't exposed to. One big ass ugly feeling isn't enough today to shut me down completely and declare Marshall Law. It is only because I have witness friends and associates face the impossible and get through it that I am able to tell myself "My story doesn't end here". My peers and friends "model" those things that make me a good, capable, functioning human today and I learn from everyone I come in contact with.

I may have those moments when I get so mad it feels like i have been doused and soaked in gasoline and lit on fire, but I don't go into "ULTIMATE SELF DESTRUCT" mode when it happens.

How do we teach children that we are not slaves to our emotions, that one bad feeling isn't enough to implode upon ourselves. How do we let kids know, that what your having is a feeling and it will most certainly pass. Just don't take an action where you harm yourself or others and don't let the bad feeling have so much power you give away your future because of the pain of the present.

We all have to be shown. We joke about life not coming with a manual, it's because actions speak louder than words. I guess I'm am from Missouri, "You got to show me" too Mrs. Killion.