Waiting Room

I remember as a kid how excruciatingly painful it was to wait for something. Your parents tell you "It'll be just a minute" and what feels like hours later, they're finally done with whatever menial task they were working on. You would sit and wait, bored and grumpy as they went shopping, paid bills, talked with old people, and did anything else to make you furious for ever leaving the house with them. Perhaps as a child everything seems more exciting and there is so much to explore, so we become agitated and want to do all those things we need to do before the day is over, or maybe our "stuff we've done" to "time we've been alive" ratio is really screwed up. After all, one year to an eight year old is a huge chunk of their existence.
Now we're older, and some might say we have a firmer grasp on time. We comprehend how short a day really is, while at the same time understand that we have potential for many many days after.
I revere the sages of my childhood, those people that seemed to know everything, do everything, be everything, and live at peace with every moment that came to them. Things seem so hustle and bustled these days and there seems to be little time to listen. We finally get that opportunity to fill our days with what we want, and we seem to waste so much of that time.
I believe technology is the sharpest double edge sword. I know I've mentioned this before, but technology has been the cheap replacement for many invaluable things in our lives. I've lost so much due to technology, and despite the obvious pros it gives to us, I traded my wonderful talents for an immediate satisfaction. I can't talk anymore.
Look back at the last five years of your life and you will come to know what I'm talking about. Perhaps this wasn't everyone, but I remember spending hours on end talking with all my friends about everything and nothing. We confided, we schemed, we laughed, we contemplated, and we listened. Now I can barely get to an hour without finding myself uncomfortable, fidgety, and uninterested. I'm going to try really hard to get that back. I want to listen again; I want to be listened to again. It was such a simple emotion, but it was so fantastic looking back on it all. If I can just take a minute and analyze all the time I spend in a day and make room for that slowing down once more, maybe I can find the secret to getting back what I once had.
I don't mind waiting anymore. I used to mind, but now I've realized that waiting is just the world telling me I need to slow down. We have countless vents to our communication now, we don't need to actually sit with someone and talk. If we want our opinion heard, we go onto our numerous community networking sites and we blurt out the first thing on our mind. It's easy, it's quick, and it's a pretty good counterfeit, but it will never compensate for that one on one communication we can have with another person. I want to try an experiment. I want to try listening to what someone says without already having an answer in my head. I want to stop using my own experiences to compare. I want to stop saying "I understand." I want to stop only saying and start doing. If you're with me, do it today. Remember all those ambitions as a child and start making room for the things you want now. Make time to do nothing at all. In our day it is so easy to be doing something, but it is something completely different to do nothing.
This is not a catch all. I do not expect this to be your thought process every day, but once in a while, try something different. As Albert Einstein defined it, insanity is "...doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Please do something to make yourself happy. It's a choice we make, and it is the best of all choices. Take a number, sit down, and drink a philosophy in a tea cup.

Forgotten

It's been so long since I've done one of these, I wonder if I even remember how. I find myself awake, alert, and inspired at an early hour. I reflect on the word "ache." Have you ever felt something so powerful, so inexplicably consuming, that it makes you ache? You toss and turn knowing that without that something, everything else is only a second priority? Perhaps it's naive to believe that one thing can compensate for the lack of everything else, yet isn't that what we are waiting for? To be contented? So long we spend daydreaming about things that we want, yet we know that there are limits. Sometimes years of decay and erosion to the soul of our childhood give rise to doubt, fear, lethargic nature, and inhibition. We don't feel like we can ever stop that aching. A bandage here, a cover up there, but it festers into a malignant thought of "impossible." We want to believe, but everything in nature tells us that we will never get what we want. We then submit; leave behind those "childish" fantasies of how things should have been. As we do leave these ideas behind, our soul aches as we try to forget that wonderful dream. Yet is a dream always an illusion? Or perhaps a memory from our own ambitious happiness? Some drown out the murmur, making it void, a recall, defect in our plan to get over it. We toss and turn every night, reassuring ourselves that it can't be what we know it is. It must be stress, or perhaps just some bad leftovers, but in fact we refuse to dream. We no longer await the comatose and carousel, we want to get off, stay in reality, because we are safe there. No one can know, not even ourselves, what we hide in our dreams if we just put the idea out. Yet I ache. I encourage everyone to ache. Feel that sensation, that horrible pain that drives you to the near brink of insanity until you find that precious fragile dream. Feel something, give place to that hurt that seems so wrong, because it is the only home it has. Lost dreams are only thorns around a flower. Something so beautiful should not be discarded and refused, like garbage of the mental carapace. It is there to hurt, until we learn to deal with that hurt. Yes, dreams slip and fade through our fingers, but only to be planted into the ground where we stand. Perhaps we may never see full fruition, but dreams have a funny way of going from seed to tree. Though elusive at first,our dream will manifest into our true hope; our faith in the future. Letting go of that intrinsic idea, that elementary feeling of something just waiting for us, is only the limiting of our imagination to grant us a step into the room where peace itself lays rest. Don't push it away. Keep that delicate flower where it can bloom. Some dreams may seem destructive, but it is only due to negligence and impartiality. No one else can tend to that flower, and therefore it is all the more important to admire, and even dote on that small little thought. It's out there, it just hasn't found you yet, so keep looking. And that's a forgotten philosophy in a tea cup

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.

Positively Annoying

It certainly has been a while now hasn't it? I guess I should start with the basics. Sometimes life sucks. It's true. Think about all the times in your life that the smallest thing just wasn't right and it ruined everything you wanted, planned, or anticipated. Some days you just wear the wrong coat, other days you're riding a moped in a sleet storm, and sometimes the one person you think you might be happy with has decided that you should remain friends. It is a never ending pool of suck. I would like to address something called "The Secret." It's a book that emphasizes the use of positive thinking and putting energy out in the universe to get what you want. There are countless zealots that live with this mentality, believing that if they think hard enough about something, it will come true. Any mention of ruining their fantastic reality is like the greatest taboo ever to exist. Don't get me wrong, I think that everyone is entitled to their beliefs, and if they believe that leeches will cure their blood disease I say "Latch on my leeches!" but the irony is that these positive thinkers aren't okay with just thinking positive thoughts themselves, they have to drag others into their bizarre mentality, and that means no more free thought.
Positive thought isn't a bad thing. In fact, if we only reflect on all the negative things in our life with a cynical eye and a feeling of resentment from the rest of the world, we end up in a strange trance with an aura that makes others prefer being in a construction zone outhouse than staying within proximity of a negative thinker. So now you're probably asking yourself "But Awesome Blog Writer! What do you have against all these positive thinkers?" And the answer is nothing. What I do have a lot of flack for, however, are people that refuse to see the humor, the strength, the wisdom, the comfort, and the joy to be found in the suck. So often we want what we want, but how well do we really know what we need? We spend so much time pushing out negative forces not realizing that they are only for our benefit. Without these negative forces there is only our will, and when farmer are praying for rain and you're praying for nice weather, you might consider how selfish positive thinking can be.
Everyone has potential to be happy if they don't view things as negative, but potential. Someone stood you up? They're not reliable! Can't get your car to start? There's an accident on the highway! Feeling like it can't get worse? Remember that feeling because there will always be someone around you that needs that kind of reassurance that things always get better. There is no endless suck. Suck ends. If you can just learn to hang on for a few more moments, you'll see that it isn't your destiny to suffer forever. Sure, in those moments when everything is falling apart, you can't help but feel like there is no light at the end of the tunnel, but sometimes you sit in the dark and laugh until you cry. It's healthy...in a weird kind of not literally way. So don't ignore the moments that you don't want, figure out why it's important to you, and you'll find that life has the best education you can get. That's a stirred philosophy in a tea cup.

15 minutes

I've got fifteen minutes to kill while waiting for the teacher to show up, so I figured, why not add a post? When you've got a minute here and a minute there, you start to wonder what to do with all those minutes. Sometimes we sit down, sometimes we think, we might even call someone that we haven't talked to in a while just to let them know we're thinking about them. We devote a large portion of our time to countless tasks and activities. I've mentioned this before I'm sure, but if you think about the average American getting eight hours of sleep a night, that's one third of your day. (College students are exempt from this study.) That means that you spend one third of your life not awake. By the time you are sixty years old, you have spent, on average, twenty of those years not even able to enjoy it! I could argue; however, that some people would rather spend time asleep than awake. I proudly raise my hand in association with the fore mention! Now, with that said, I want you to think how much time you spend waiting. How much time do you spend waiting for a bus, waiting for a friend to call, waiting for a job interview, waiting for something good to come on T.V., and even just waiting for the rain to stop? I think we can assume that we spend a lot of time waiting, and truth be told, unlike sleeping, waiting isn't fun!! No one really enjoys waiting, and if you do, I pity you. Waiting puts so much stress, so much anxiety, and so much discomfort in our lives, so how do we stop waiting? That, my friends, is the million dollar question. So maybe we should analyze why we wait. We wait because not everything goes according to our time, because not everyone can be in one place at one time, because the stupid bus system is so screwed up that we are certain the government is out to get us and make us late for everything, and we wait because it's the polite thing to do. Amazing what we wait for, it's almost like we are in a constant waiting line. So now that we know all the things we wait for, we have to categorize all the things worth waiting for, because that's why we wait. We wait because it's worth the wait. I've never seen anyone wait in a line because they enjoy waiting. (Like I said before, if you do, plentiful pity I shower on you.) People wait because their hopes make them wait. The idea that what they are waiting for is going to make them happy! To support this, think about pizza, amusement parks, attractive dates, the newest James Bond flick, all these things are worth waiting for, and you usually do have to wait for them! (Unless you eat little caesar's, in which case, again, endless pity) Since we got that settled, I want you to think of all the people waiting on you. Kind of strange to think about huh? You're probably thinking "Wait, what?! I make people WAIT!?" Well of COURSE you do! We all have made people wait for us. Sometimes they wait for our attention, sometimes they wait for our approval, sometimes they wait for our reciprocation, and more often than not, they're just waiting for you to get in the car. So with this said, think about the people waiting on you, are you going to be worth the wait? Don't make people wait if they aren't going to be happy with what they are waiting for, it's just another way to crush someone's dreams. Waiting teaches us so many important things, but waiting for something that isn't going to come is just wasting time. Don't keep people waiting if you don't have to, life can be busy at times, but they are so less the busy when everyone is making time for someone else. You don't have to wait for everything, but when you do, make sure it's worth the wait. And now I'm just waiting for my philosophy in a tea cup to cool.

Simplicity

Simple; easy to understand, deal with, use, not elaborate or artificial. Deep inside everyone is a desire for something simple. We don't always crave the complicated and awe-inspiring moments that make stories interesting, lives exhilarating, and moments unforgettable, sometimes it's better to be simple. There are only seconds between the ideal and the necessary. Someone can spend years of their lives looking for that something spectacular, only to find themselves disappointed, yet by small and simple things do great things come to pass. We expect ourselves to be somewhere wrapped in the vast chasm of exciting and extraordinary, but there will come a day when you just want things to be simple. A simple kiss, a simple nap, a simple job, a simple house, a simple moment to yourself. A society can tell us so often what our life should consist of, and what is noteworthy, yet think about the idea of simply good, kind, sweet, loving, pretty. We leave these words in the dust because we don't find the meaning they bring. If only we could love the moments that face us as they are and embrace with a deep and reverent respect for all the simple things that there are. We watch our childhood slip away and sound those longing words because things when simple then. Time is forcing us into the extraordinary so quickly that we forget how important a good friend, a kind relative, a pretty lover, and a modest living can be. We lose sight of them and they disappear. Now we are left with these loud and consuming voices of what we need to need. It isn't enough anymore to be content. "Don't be content!" they shout "For only fifteen years of your life you can get 50% more!" I'm a long time advocate of the idea that one should never settle, but that doesn't mean that we all have the same concept of settle, after all, do we really want 50% more?. Settle can mean to be fixed in one position, to be satisfied, to come to an arrangement, and I don't believe that we should look at life as something that should stop moving, but if you see life as an adventure, and you want to grow with something simple, that is your right. It is in ourselves to decide what we want. Being okay with simple is not a way of losing yourself, it is finding the humility to realize that you are not someone else, that you don't need what others need, and you have a strong enough sense of self that you can find happiness without the streamers and bows. "I prefer..." should be our creed. In each of us is the inherent want to want something. Simple does not mean that it is boring, trite, routine, or normal, it only implies the lack of complication. Things don't need to be complicated. Something lovely can be so simple if only we give it a chance. When we are kids we want that castle in the clouds with that horse that can fly, and we believe that anything less is giving up on our dreams. You have to ask yourself the question, did I want that because I was told it is the best, or did I want it because I knew I couldn't be happy without it? If you can't be happy without it, then go, find that castle, get your horse, and marry into royalty, but I'm in love with simple. I love everything about simple. It's the simple things that make life amazing. I think of all the simple things, a touch, a taste, a talk, a tree, they get so overlooked, so underrated, and yet they are my treasures. I can't imagine life without the simple things. Keep your sparkles and your lights, I'll keep my blue skies and long nights. You can find simple, and sometimes simple can find you, but these ideas of spectacular, grand, exotic, they just keep growing like a wildfire, spreading with no sign of stopping, destroying anything simple or sacred in their path. It won't stop, because it is endless, the next best thing is always better than what you have. Leave us alone, I say. They have no right to keep me aiming for a moving target, I want something true, tangible, honest, and simple. It's out there, among the loud circus of more, and it waits for me, because I'm going to love it, and there is nothing more that simple loves than something that loves simple. It really is that simple. Look for what you really want, and be happy with it. Simple is waiting. That's my simple cup of philosophy.