Every Scar, A Story.

    There comes a point in life where you realize that while you are broken and damaged, you cannot imagine yourself any other way.  Yes, there are times where I still wonder how things would have been if circumstances were different, but then I realize that I would not have been the same person.  So many positive things in my life have come as a product of my pain and there are so many adventures that I would have never undertaken had I been in the warm embrace of contentment.

     Rather, it was my lack of contentment that spurred me forward to new horizons.  I would have never backpacked across Europe or stowed away on a train without a ticket. Maybe this is not the case for everyone, but too much contentment makes me lazy and much of the art that I have created was just part of a recovery process

     That makes me think though.  I wonder if I have subliminally sabotaged my contentment for the sake of my creativity, if somewhere in my brain I couldn't abide with the idea of my creativity drying up one day, even if I was happy.  I guess that is part of the problem with basing so much of my identity in what I create, but there were dark times in my past where that was the only thing that was keeping me going and I will never be able to abandon that.  You can take away everything else in my life as long as I am left with that and I will never truly be able to lose all hope.

Snap Back

     Finally falling into the familiar step of the single life, I shake the memories of the relationship like a bad dream.  For a minute there, I lost myself.  I had been so wrapped in the sensation and experience of finally being in a committed relationship after such a long time of stag life that I was compromising too much to keep it.  Don't get me wrong, I loved it for the most part.  I mean, I probably could have picked someone better, but you can never really control who stumbles into your life.

     I had known for sometime that it would end.  I had seen what I liked to call "the seeds of destruction" manifest themselves in her, aspects that I knew would later clash with my personality and pull us apart.  Yet, when I broke things off I still felt a loss.  There was a withdrawal from a certain kind of drug that I had become accustomed to.  I had traded in my sense of adventure and freedom for comfort and security and coming back to my state of being was like a rubber band snapping back to its original shape.

    Each day that passes with her gone, I think about her less and less, but she is still a shadow at the corner of my mind.  Despite my best efforts, I had emotionally invested myself into someone that I knew was not good for me, but I have to admit that it was nice to pretend for a while.  But now, I am starting to feel like myself again, my eyes open to all the possibilities that life has to offer with nothing holding me back anymore. I don't regret anything though.  It was something that I had to go through to understand what I really want out of life and my relationships and where I need to go from here.

Dogs and Bells

     One good thing about the internet is that everyone feels compelled to post whatever is rattling around in their brains, which makes social media people watching on an immense level.  It is nice to know that I am not the only person that has certain thoughts.

    One thing that been an irritant, is when one gender unloads a generalized barrage of insults pointed towards the opposite gender.  We are all guilty of this.  We use the other gender as a scapegoat to absolve us of the bad decisions that we make. If we are consistently running into the same type of  people that hurt us, maybe the problem does not lie with the gender but rather that characteristics that we are drawn to. 

     I am guilty of the same thing.  I could blame bad relationships on female psychology or I can acknowledge that when I was presented with a romantic opportunity with someone that would have been genuinely good for me, I immediately lost interest.  I have no one to blame but myself and what I am attracted to.

    But what I really wanted to talk about is conditioning.  Everyone knows about Ivan Pavlov and his dogs.  He was able to train them to expect a treat whenever he rang a bell.  After a time, the treat was not even necessarily to cause the dog to salivate, just the bell.   I find that the same is true with people.

     Before we start complaining the world is full of horrible people, we have to acknowledge that is due to being trained by society.  It all comes down to cause and effect.  If a nice guy/girl notices that their kindness is doing them more harm than good and they possess some intelligence, they will begin to seek out what will actually work to get them what they desire.  It is a harsh but real lesson that the world teaches us and it can be proven time and time again simply by watching how people interact with each other at a club.   Soon, even the nicest people are willing to make sacrifices after countless attempts at trial and error.  After all, only a fool tries the same thing over and over again while expecting different results.  

     And so, we can thank society for the state of modern culture.  Now, I am not someone that subscribes to fatalism.  If I don't like something, I understand that it fully within my power to change it.  As someone that is driven success, it is imperative to adapt, to learn what works and what doesn't. The hard choice is deciding how much to sacrifice to get what I want.  I could be unfaltering and self-righteous and condemn the world for wronging me while being miserable...or I can change and adapt and hope that I do not become the mask that I wear to be able to thrive in this world.