Musings Part 1

I once erroneously believed that two opposing forces could not exist within the same space.  I have since jettisoned that position.  Specifically, love and jealousy.  They can both exist within the same exact person.  The issue is measure.  We all have a measure, I think, of different things perhaps bestowed by “God.”  I, too, believe that that measure, regardless of where it derives, is affected by experience and learning.  The question is which measure is greater.  The answer to that question will determine what is operative within the individual mostly, or at any given time.  What will be demonstrated based upon circumstance?

When we encounter the company of other people, there is quite a bit of dialogue that is being exchanged, verbal and nonverbal.  We are not just conversing verbally but also nonverbally.  Our subconscious minds are even conversing.  We pick up on many things within our interactions.  The subconscious communicates often through feelings.  We often feel things within our encounters during and even after them, often through the remembrance of the encounters.  I have found that when the feelings fail to line up with the words expressed during the encounters, then something is perhaps off.  I then tend to pay close attention to the behaviors of the individuals.  This helps either confirm or deny what was said or picked up on during the encounter, whether past or present.  I, too, began to realize later that if you listen to someone long enough and over a prolonged period of time, the essentials of their stories never change despite some altering of details.  This implies that there is a way of determining honesty and dishonesty, at least to some degree.

I have concluded that we as people are complex, some more so than others.  We are more than one thing.  We are many things.  We can even have two or more opposing ideas in our minds and believe them all, whether partially or fully, at the same time.  This led me to stop focusing on right or wrong in delving into subject matters.  I decided to operate from a premise of understanding subject matters whether I agreed with them or not.  Without understanding for me, the subject matter is useless and I would be one that heard and repeated without approaching and demonstrating what I am repeating devoid of any depth.  Even some of the most accurate of writers and researchers are wrong, so to speak, on different aspects, understanding, and even explanations.  This should help us conclude that we are all limited, though still useful.  So, I focus on where others are useful and leave the not so useful work where it is.

We all have strengths and weaknesses. Some weaknesses we can do something about while others we are unable to do anything about.  So, focusing on the strengths I had come to understand to be most useful.  This will aid us in becoming our best selves.  In a world full of grey and where benefits and detriments both reside, balance seems key for seeking the optimum position in life.  That balance is different for different people.  We all have a measure of ability, so in this aspect the idea that we were created equal I think untenable.  Equality implies that we all have the same rights by law but genetically, equality is invalid.  Genetics seems as though a lottery where the choice of who gets what is determined by something that is far beyond us. We have what we have and should use what have got to the best of our ability.

In using what we have to the best of our ability, I have come to find that life is about exchange.  This implies give and take. You give something for something else.  This does not necessarily mean that you always get something from the recipient that you gave too.  But without something traveling through a pipe renders the pipe irrelevant except for maybe aesthetics.  This understanding led me to the concept of reciprocity.  I had come to not expect anything that I was not willing to give.  I began to no longer dish out what I could not accept in return.  This is philosophical to a degree, yes.  Perhaps this is for my own peace of mind as well.  But how could one point out the negative issues within others that bother them while still exemplifying the same behaviors themselves and expect to be taken seriously? The saying, “To whom much is given, much is required,”[1] began to ring true for me more than ever before.  So, the exercise of looking within the mirror and monitoring my own behavior in an effort to ensure that it matched up with what I was portraying became paramount.

With all of this said, people are not simple and aimless beings.  We do what we do for our own reasons at any given time.  We are all motivated by the same and different things at different times.  The more we understand ourselves tends to cause us to desire and even seek to understand others better.  Life is about experience and within this life experiences with other people are inevitable, positive or negative.  It is all to our benefit individually and collectively.

[1] Luke 12:48 KJV