"Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking." That's a quote from Marcus Aurelius. Best known as a stoic philosopher, he was also a Roman Emperor! Out of the two, I'd rather be known as a stoic philosopher. Still, if he wasn't Emperor, I doubt we would know him as a philosopher at all. Why is it we remember the names of generals and politicians that led to the death and suffering of thousands of people, yet never know the names of common people who did incredible things?
The answer to that last question is likely the quote! Think about it, billions of people have lived since the beginning of time. I am certain that many of them lived overly happy lives. Some of them may have been brutally short, but happy nonetheless. What makes for happiness? Do you need to be a stoic philosopher or a Roman Emperor? I think not. And what about Marcus Aurelius himself? He seems to have lived half his life as emperor on campaign, killing people. Does THAT make for a happy man? For a man who espoused a philosophy of service and duty, probably. Think about that. Service and duty. Does a man owe service to anyone but himself or his family? What is a person's true duty? And who decides that? Do we owe service to the state? Why? Most large "states" have become corrupted over time. Should we serve corruption? I believe the best service we can do for someone is to teach them how to think. Not what to think, mind you, but HOW to think. Too many people seem to go through life without taking their individual actions to their logical conclusions. I will smoke a cigarette now, because I like the feeling that the nicotine gives me. Multiply this actions by the thousands of times that may happen over a lifetime and you have a good chance of getting lung cancer. I am not just getting down on smokers here folks. What about the person who relaxes with a beer? Or the person who calms their fears with a doughnut? My wife drank herself to death. Esophageal varacies to be exact. She had first gotten esophageal varacies and was told she needed to stop drinking or she was going to die. She stopped for a while, but her addiction got the best of her, and she eventually went back to drinking and died from it. She isn't the only one. Others have been diagnosed with diabetes and kept eating sugary snacks. They figure, this one doughnut won't kill me...never thinking that it isn't the one, but the compilation of the many. That last example was my Dad. My Dad taught me many things, but the one lesson that had a huge impact on me is a lesson he never knew he taught me. Watching him die from the complications from his diabetes taught me that that is not how I want to go out of this world. By the time he passed, my Dad was taking about seventeen pills a day, He had numerous heart operations, he had had toes amputated and he was on dialysis. His last couple of years were very tough on him. I sometimes wonder if he had ever thought past the pleasure of that doughnut, or that full sugar soda, to what they may cause later. When I was younger, I never thought past the immediate pleasure. I started to look past it, originally when I was in college and I saw how my grades were suffering from a lack of study and too much drinking. I put myself in AA then, to help get past my problem and get my grades back. I did it, eventually. I graduated in five years, but sadly went back to "casually" drinking. Essentially, I was a functional alcoholic. I finally stopped once my wife (then my girlfriend) confessed that she was an alcoholic and asked me to help her stop. I quit right then and tried to help her to do the same. Unfortunately, she was never able to stop and fourteen years later she was dead. Seeing what was happening to my Dad started me on a road to eating healthier. I read up on diabetes and sent him articles trying to educate him on the disease and help him to make changes to his lifestyle that would help him. I don't think he read any of them. I did read, them, though, and made changes to my own lifestyle to help me not to follow in his footsteps. At one time, my blood tests showed that I was just a tad below being considered pre-diabetic. That scared me. I went on a diet and lost weight. I cut out bread and pasta and most sugary snacks and treats. (I occasionally eat a coffee roll or pretzels...hey I am not perfect!). The end result is that I have lost sixty-five pounds and my blood tests have improved to where my levels are at dead center for healthy blood sugar levels. It is a struggle to stay on a low-card diet, particularly when the cook at my house thinks that it is all bullshit. I have tried to give her the literature, but she says she is too old and busy to read it. Thinking past the comfortable is one of the signposts on the way to happiness. The more areas in your life where you can force yourself to think past the comfortable, the happier you will be. Poison with a lump of sugar in it is still poison. There are better ways to relieve stress than to eat or drink yourself to death. We all have our weaknesses. Better to recognize them for what they are and then find ways to combat them. This post has drifted away from where I originally intended for it to go. I think this message is important, though, so I hope you can read between the lines. Life is what you make it. You will make it more by thinking. I usually write these blogs for my daughters, Today, I have written it for them, but also for three other people. Two likely won't read it unless I ask them to. Even then, I am not certain they will read it...or if they do, they won't see the message as pertaining to them. The third person likely will read it. I hope she can think through it and see the deeper message.
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"When we talk to God, we are praying. When God talks to us, we're schizophrenic." Don't worry this won't be an overly religious post. That quote, by Jane Wagner, was said tongue in cheek to get a laugh. But of course, I am going to ask my usual question: But is it true? My answer to that is that it could be true. It might be true for some people...or it might be false. And nowadays, with the government, or anyone else with access to microwave technology able to beam voices into your head, we will never actually know now will we?
Allan Frey was the first to publish a paper about the microwave auditory effect, and that's why it is also known as the Frey effect. I touched briefly about this in a blog post a couple of weeks ago. Frey wrote about the effect in 1961. By the early 1970's, the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research was already beaming voices into people's heads at a distance of 100 meters. In 2003, Waveband Corp. had a contract with the U.S. Navy for a system called MEDUSA (Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio) intended to remotely, temporarily incapacitate personnel. The project was supposedly cancelled in 2005. Now let me ask you a question. If the U.S. government has been experimenting with this stuff since the early 1960's, do you really think they cancelled it in 2005? More likely, the program was changed to a different name and is being studied more discreetly. Believe me, if something has the potential to be weaponized, our government wants it! Not just to use it versus their perceived enemies... which may include you, but also so that they are up to date with all of the research so that they can block the technology from being used against them. With that said, think of the havoc that would ensue if large numbers of people believed that they were having conversations with their God. Many, not knowing of the Frey effect, would listen to the voices without question. If enough people fell for it, All of the people of the world could become slaves to the perpetrators of the hoax. Think about it, who wouldn't do what their God told them to do...particularly if most of the people around them also heard the voice in their head too! Thankfully, the amount of energy necessary to reach hundreds of people at once would be too high, and many of the people would be in danger. If it wasn't for that, though, I honestly believe someone would have tried this scheme already. Still, the potential for damage could be staggering. Think about it, Some people would likely very willingly become God's assassin. And not just Muslims either! Voices in your head would likely go a long way towards convincing a person to do heinous crimes...particularly if they thought it was their God speaking to them. As for me, knowing about the Frey effect, I would never listen to a voice in my head that told me to do something violent to another. Any voices in my head will be blatantly ignored (to the best of my ability anyway). It is a sad world we live in when you can't trust your government, many of the people around you, the media or even the voices in your head! All said, don't just follow the crowd blindly. A lot of what they are told to do doesn't makes sense. Don't listen to voices in your head...particularly if it is telling you to do something self destructive or violent. And finally, take everything that the big media companies or the government tells you to do with a grain of salt. "Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth." That's a quote by Ludwig Borne, a German satirist who wrote in the early 1800's. I like this quote because I believe there are many illusions, yet only one truth on nearly any subject. Take love, for instance. Our divorce rates show that many people really don't know love, even though we are all searching for it. What is love? Can any one definition truly work for all people? To rip off another quote from Ludwig: "Nothing is permanent but change, nothing constant but death." If this is true, can there be a constant definition for love? A definition that remains constant across the centuries, and across all cultures?
The dictionary has seven definitions for "love" as a noun alone. It has seven more definitions for using the word as a verb. With that many definitions floating about, it's no wonder the divorce rate is so high! No one knows what the fuck someone else is talking about when they talk about being in love! We are all looking for love? Love is likely the greatest illusion of all. When some say love, they may mean sex. When others say it, they might mean commitment. Still another might mean great affection for. With all honesty I have said "I love pizza." And I do! I love to eat pizza is what I mean... or in other words, I have great affection for eating pizza. The love I have for pizza, is still different than the love I felt for my wife. The love I felt for my wife fits five of the seven definitions of love in the dictionary. Meanwhile, the love I feel for my daughters fit only one definition. Does this mean my love for my daughters is any less than the love for my wife? Absolutely not! It just means that there are more than one type of love, and that one is more appropriate for a wife and another is more appropriate for a daughter, or well, even pizza! Too many people talk lightly about love and cannot define it for themselves. They live a life of illusion. Before marrying someone, you need to break through these layers of illusion and find out what your own definition of love is ... And whether or not it matches that of your potential spouse. I believe many people do not know what they are talking about when they say love. Oftentimes, they will just repeat the words that the other is telling them. The best way to see if your definition of love matches up with the definition held by the one you love is to have both of you write down your definitions. At the same time, write down your expectations for what would make a happy marriage. Do the definitions match up? Do the expectations? Congratulations! You have just broken through a layer of illusion that many people never even recognize exists. So does losing an illusion make you wiser than finding a truth? I think so. In the movies, you always hear characters saying "No illusions! Tell me the truth!" In one movie, Jack Nicholson yells "You can't handle the truth!" And you know what, while he was incorrect about what he was screaming about, he is absolutely correct about nearly everything else in life. We all live lives of illusion. And it only takes a slight breeze to gently move the curtain and show you the reality. Reality often bites! When we get a glimpse of reality... a form of truth, we are wiser for it, but not always happier. Some illusions are good. They are there to protect us. Whether we know it or not. Sweeping them away, one by one, will make us wiser...just not necessarily happier. Be careful what you wish for. You just might find it. Truth can be a harsh lover. "Most people don't care if you're telling them the truth or if you're telling them a lie, as long as they're entertained by it." That is a quote by Tom Waits, and I think it is one of the most shallow things I have ever heard.Under most circumstances, I believe that most people really do care if you are telling them the truth or not. Lies are a waste of everybody's time, and I believe no one likes to have their time wasted by someone else. So much of what we hear nowadays are lies. Lies or misinformation. Some people will tell you something believing it is the truth, and yet it was someone else's lie that they are just repeating. Lenin and Hitler both believed that "a lie told often enough becomes the truth. Well, Lenin said that actually. Hitler's version was a little more varied. His said "If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed." He also said: "Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it." Sadly, it seems that everyone now believes these mantras. We are lied to by our politicians, we are lied to through advertising, we are lied to through phony studies, and we are lied to through our history books. In fact, it's almost to the point that if you didn't witness an event in person, then you really don't know what happened. The pictures we see, the news casts we watch, all are manipulated to make us believe a story. The stories themselves are often told from one point of view. It's rare that enough information is given to allow us to make up our own minds about an issue. Altering news or pictures isn't new either. It has been going on for decades. There are pictures from the civil war that have been altered to show scenes that never happened and there are pictures from recent political campaigns that have been altered to tell a story. Here is a recent example. This October 2012 National Review magazine cover was altered. "This cover features Barack Obama delivering a speech at the DNC. The cheering crowd waves blue signs saying “ABORTION” when in the original photo the signs read “FORWARD.” BRONX DOCUMENTARY CENTER" That quote is from a Wired magazine article from July 2015. Would the cover have been as powerful a tool for Obama if the signs were left saying Forward. I think you know the answer to that. Abortion is a controversial issue and many democrats support it. So what is wrong with all this lying? Well, the way our memories work, we will remember these images and recall them later and believe them as truth. It must be true, I saw it on the cover of the national review! How many lies have we all seen and did not recognize as being untrue? How many things have we read, that we now believe are true, that are not true? It's bad enough when it is the media doing this to us, but how about when we do it to each other? How many times have one of your friends or loved ones lied to you and you were unaware. Lying seems to be part of the culture now. I have had people look me straight in the eye and lie to me, not knowing that I had observed what had happened. It is sickening, Can we no longer trust our friends and families? I guess it all comes down to who can you trust? I'd like to think that I can trust my family. How about you? There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting. That is a quote by Buddha. I struggle with this quote, In a sense, he is right, If you are searching for truth on a particular subject, then those would be the two deadly sins. Where I struggle is that sometimes there are truths that are just too horrific to know. And once you realize that this might be the case, you may just be better off not knowing. I think its a decision we all need to make on our own.
What is the truth worth? In some instances, the truth may be worth your life. Oftentimes it's not though. The wisdom is in being able to tell the difference. At this point in my life, I like to look for the truth in many things, but in some things I just don't care anymore. What most people think about my personal decisions, I really don't care about. If I want someone's opinion about one of my decisions, I will ask them pointedly about it in private. Otherwise, I could care less what most people think about most subjects. My life has gotten simpler after taking this attitude. No more worrying about what other people think. So what are my truths? After 49 years my main truths are: 1. Treat others as you yourself want to be treated. 2. Look for peace, but be prepared to defend yourself. 3. Some people are worth dying for. Some aren't. 4. Not all laws are just. 5. Follow #1 and you will likely not break any laws! 6. Everything on TV is either a lie or an opinion. 7. Many people have an agenda...watch out for them! A lot of them won't be in your best interest. 8. To get closer to the truth, find out who benefits and how. 9. Think before making a decision. Logic trumps emotion. 10. Not everything you like is good for you...and you won't like somethings that are good for you! 11. A car is a tool. Don't make more out of it than it really is. 12. Don't judge a book by its cover..or people by their looks. 13. Listen more than you talk. 14. Only give advice when it is asked for...accept with your own children! 15. If you love someone, be there for them. There are probably more truths than that. Those are just the ones that came to mind. In fact, here's another: If you love someone, tell them every day...for one day, you won't have the chance to tell them. And you never know when that day will be. And if it happens to you, you will remember that for the rest of your life. That last one is one truth I wish I never had to learn personally. |
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