Discretion is Advised

There is so much going on in this world today. So many wonders, so many tears, and so many mysteries. We now do something with every minute we have, even if that something is nothing. But as each day passes, we see our past get further and further from us. I see a recurring pattern as people look at the choices they've made a slam their head against the wall wondering how they were so "stupid" or "misled." Every guy thinks back to that one girl he said all the wrong things to, hoping that secretly she is thinking about him for some unexplained cosmic coincidental reason. She thinks he's an idiot, and he thinks she's amazing, she wants him to comfort her, he thinks she needs space. And we stare at the window to our past, endlessly wondering "how?"
Honestly? I don't know how. I've been in this predicament myself on far too many occasions, and I can say that I have no answer as to how to remedy the disease of stupid decisions and misplaced words known as "the human condition." We may be able to trace back our steps, but we never find that "AHA!" moment when all things started spiraling downhill. Perhaps it was us, perhaps it was the person before us, perhaps it was them, but some infusion of a catalyst and your want to be there at that time came together to make your decision suck.
What do I do about it? I write blogs in hopes that someone will catch on and realize that we are all imperfect, and maybe they will want this imperfection for their own. In the mean time I'm on a quest to stop world suffering. Tall order, I know, but I'm actually doing pretty well. Every day we can help those that are drowning in this world of chaos and indelible decisions by offering unconditional love. Many people will not accept this love, and we have to learn not to let our pride get hurt, but to know that we did our best to help those in need, because there are so many in need.
As a species, we've almost entirely lost our pack mentality. We live like alligators, scrounging for social scraps on the table of community as we claim a friend as a prize or crown ourselves champion when we find someone to love and others don't. There is always enough. No one has to lose! If only we would start watching out for others, using our social media tools for selflessness instead of narcissism, and spending our free time looking for another good deed to do to our fellow man, the ONLY problems we would have would be those outside of our immediate control.
Life can be scary. It can be uncertain, it can be unforgiving, and it can be intolerable, but it doesn't have to be. There are forces greater than cruel despotism and social masochism as we hurt others to gratify our own solicitations. We are not weak, we are not downtrodden, and we are not controlled. But there is something inside us that prevents a true leak of aspiration, of ambition, of adventure. We will continue to discredit every encounter if we do not see potential for what it really is. It is impossibly true that if you are looking for something in someone, you will always find it.
There comes a time in our lives where we want something to be true, and therefore it is true. We want someone to be nasty, and therefore they are. We want someone to be perfect, and that is how they appear to be. But only after true examination of both self and subject can we create an outline of the man (or woman if you're insecure due to sexism.) There is no quick fix for life. Everything takes time, and it is therefore up to you to determine what is worth your time, and what isn't. But always consider and reconsider. I do not encourage hesitation, and gut reactions are usually correct, but a lifetime wondering "what if" is no replacement for seconds of your time. Do not be short tempered. Do not be resentful. Do not compromise your standards. Life is a journey and it will take time, but if you plan out that time before hand, you may find at the end of the day you've got time for a mistake or two. Live happy, make change where change is due, and don't forget those that are easily forgotten. I've given this philosophy in a tea cup time to cool.

Safe and Sound

I've been thinking a lot about girls recently. Not the "ERMERGERD! I think about girls all the time 'cause I love their hair, and their pretty ribbons, and their dresses, and their smiles, and their obsessions with puppy dogs!!" kind of way, but the "wow, that sucks being a girl" kind of way. I'm not going to show a bias, because frankly, it sucks to be a guy too, but what I'm trying to hint at is that life can be unnecessarily complicated for a girl. The main complication, that just doesn't leave my mind, is the want they have to feel safe. Girls, if you're reading this and I'm just dead wrong, please let me know, but I feel like it's increasingly harder for the female gender to feel safe in this world.
I remember all those times I've talked with girls and the advice I gave, and in the end, it was pretty much the same problem. She doesn't feel safe talking to him about her feelings, she doesn't feel safe in him respecting her privacy, she doesn't feel safe when they're intimate, she doesn't feel safe with the way he drives, she doesn't feel safe with the way he talks about her, and the list goes on and on and on. I realize right now that by posting things like this to the general public it is near self deprecation because every girl is going to look at this and think "Awww! He's so sweet!" and then I'm permanently in the friend zone, but hey, frankly I just don't care, this needs to be said.
Girls spend every day from birth to death being graded on their beauty, their intellect, their poise, and their success. "She's such a pretty baby" and "She's the smartest girl in her class" ring through the ears of all those girls growing up, whether it's directed at them, or at the girl next door. They get it from parents, from teachers, from peers, but most of all from other girls. Then they grow up with this innate insecurity, wanting so bad to hear those words either over again, or once in their lifetime. Later on they get addicted, they need that confirmation, perhaps not from everyone, but from those important to them. Do you understand what I'm saying boys? You need to express how much you love the girls in your life frequently, it should never be used as a vehicle to get what you want, and you should never under any circumstances take advantage of a woman's vulnerability. They are young, they are strong, they are beautiful, but they can at times have the most fragile of feelings; a trait that nowadays is considered a vice instead of a virtue.
In addition, girls want to know they're being heard. Don't ignore them. Listen to what they have to say and try your best to understand. There is a definitive difference in wiring between men and women, and finding that difference, to respect it, is key in living a long healthy life with someone you love. Do NOT discredit what a girl says as "her emotions acting up" even if it is the truth.
 There are two things I believe every girl wants, and that is to be understood and surprised. Unfortunately, many of the basic of basics are being ignored by our modern generation of men, and therefore, surprising women can be as simple as acting polite or civil, but to understand them takes patience, confidence, love, and an open ear. Without these things you will become a disservice to the women we love and care for so much. There is an ample love and an intricate personality under the makeup and extravagant clothes that women wear, and until you are able to see beneath this facade, you will never give them the love, respect, and devotion they deserve. All they need is a place to feel safe, and an ear to hear sound. Can we in fact be so much more than a man, and be a guardian instead? Women, I now address you as I let you in on a little secret.
Every day a man battles with himself. He also can have fears, doubts, and inadequacies. The only way that he is going to win that battle is if he has a good woman fighting it with him. Do not let him slouch, do not make excuses for him, for if you do, he will surely lose over and over again.
It kills me to consistently see the problems of the world stemming from that misunderstanding between women and men, and their refusal to be patient with one another through all things. I only want all those wonderful people I know to stop feeling lonely, stop slumping into depression, and stop feeling like they don't measure up. Some of you out there may wonder what I'm talking about. Your lives are probably very blessed. I'm sure you understood these principles since you were a child, you found the one you want to spend every waking moment with, and you live a life free from these concerns. But you are few, and a rare breed.
People, be honest, find what you're really after, take a risk, let someone know that you like or even love them. Stop hiding behind fears of rejection and hesitance, and just start talking with someone. If they are of good heart, they will always listen. And there's a philosophy in a tea cup, safe and sound.

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.