Not what you make but what you leave

Take a minute and think about all the things that consume your thoughts right now. This is a fun experiment due to the fact that although many of you may be considering the same thing, there are different priorities, orders, and stresses on different subjects. Some of you may be thinking about what you want to eat, others about an upcoming assignment, some about their jobs, others about their lovers, and to those close death I'm sure there is an overwhelming could whether they want to think about it or not. Each of us will change our focus from day to day, we will find other things that take up our time, our thoughts, and our efforts. Some things will be trivial, others will be the most important moments of our lives. But when we are slaving away in this life, we need to take a second and consider where these decisions will leave us in a short time from now. Responsibility seems to be a word with a shift in meaning. Now we hold other people responsible without any responsibility for our own actions. I don't mean to overgeneralize because I do know that there are those that take pride in how independent and responsible they are, they do everything on their own and take responsibility for things that perhaps they didn't even do, but that's not everyone.
We would like to think that there is some wondrous solution to our guilt, our insecurities, and our failures. A need to blame someone else for all the problems that occur in our life. We fail to plan ahead, and therefore we convince ourselves that if we didn't plan the outcome, then it isn't our fault. I consider the possibility that because of our lack of legacy, we don't feel an obligation to others. There are words lost in this generation, several I have mentioned before, but the most prevalent to me right now would have to be legacy. Do we really think about all the things we will leave behind? At any second in any place can someone shake hands with fate as they leave mortality and enter the mysterious realms of after death? But so focused we are on the present that we want an instant satisfaction, a quick solution to all of our problems that we sell our souls to the devil inside us all and therefore we give up our virtue, our reputation, our reliability, and our dedication to others around us for a few short moments of rest. Life is a labor, we are meant to work for it, because it is a gift that shouldn't be take lightly. So think about all the moments you spent chasing after clouds and ignoring the importance of those around you. We become closer to something beyond humanity when we put others before ourselves. Although we can leave fortunes and toys to be spent, sold, and traded, our reputations and who we were will be the only things that will not fade away, perhaps to our pleasure, and more likely to our dismay. So what can we do now to change that?
We all have time. There is no moment in our life that we cannot overcome with a change of heart, a change of attitude, a change of conscience, and a change of character. Often times a momentous event that will overwhelm us will push us to change. The vice of this realization is the simple fact that good times as well as bad will always pass. We need to make the decision in ourselves to become the kind of people we want to become. Our legacy will be something so important to those around us, and our mistakes can become our teacher, not our jury. What we do with our time here on earth makes the image of who we are. If actions speak louder than words, then our lives will make up the echo into eternity of happiness, charity, kindness, and selflessness that this world needs. No one will remember every day it rained, but they will remember how much you loved dancing through it. Leave behind a sweet philosophy in a tea cup.

Almost perfect

In this world there are people. We talk, we laugh, we discuss, we debate, and we learn. Everyone has something they want, and everyone has a way of going about getting it. In the end we all just want to be understood, and more than that we want someone that understands and supports us. True, we don't want a lemming that agrees with us on everything, but we do want someone to be there to tell us they understand why we feel the way we do. You can spend years and years looking for that feeling, and sometimes it seems to be everywhere around you. It might be where you were born, where you make your friends, or maybe you're just the type that everyone loves and wants to be around. No matter where it might be, we all despise perfection. We can't handle perfection. We have so many insecurities that when love comes along and we fall madly in love with that person, we start looking for something wrong. "Why in the world would they want to be with me?" or "How am I supposed to compete with a Saint?" We live our whole lives trying to be better, more noticed, and more exciting than others that we start to compete with love. We get trapped in this "can I do better than this?" mentality and we stop letting our actual heartfelt feelings guide us and instead inject a lethal competitive poison into our blood stream, making us ignorant to the simple fact, we want to be loved.
I've advocated the viewpoint of "never settle" my entire life, it's been my guide, my inspiration, and my motivation for almost everything I do. I stand by that with a fervent resolve, but still we need to know when enough is enough and we should just be happy to be in love. It's an amazing feeling that shouldn't be short-changed, disregarded, or corrupted. Once we stop trying to outdo someone else, once we start to learn to love ourselves, and once we let others appreciate every little part of our personality, we begin to go back to basics. We get back to an era when playing house was fun, when you needed a dog, when kisses were cute, and when someone wasn't playing fair you let them know (even if it was in a whining sob.) When you grow up, you dedicate so much of your life trying to distinguish yourself, but truth be told you already are the most unique you can ever be. Reluctance in relationships will destroy any hopes of finding happiness with others. When we think long and hard enough about it, we don't want someone perfect because we know that we aren't perfect. We all have flaws and quirks that make us tarnished, maybe even broken, but when you see those marks as paint on a canvas instead of cracks in a vase, you realize that maybe you really are perfect. That's right, the one thing we run away from just might be the one thing we are.
Perfect doesn't have to mean without vice, in fact, some of our vices make the most brilliant colors on our personality canvas. There are strange people out there that love others that gets angry, that are too talkative, that argue too much, that don't have social skills, that are incomparably clumsy, and that say all the wrong things. But when we love these imperfections because it makes them endearing, and not because it makes us better, we find define perfect. In the search for or against perfect, we will always find it. There is someone out there, waiting for us all. They are a mess, they have flaws, they do dumb things, and if you looked long and hard enough so do you. That is perfection at its finest.
In the end, we are all the compliment of another. When we find that one person we love, they will have everything you don't, and you will be missing everything they have. They won't be perfect for everyone, but then again, would you call a puzzle piece imperfect? Let the pieces fall where they may, and maybe you'll find out that even though you're not perfect, you'll find you're so much more. You're vital to someone's happiness. So why not look for something perfect? And this is my favorite cup of philosophy tea.