HOW WE BECOME WHO WE BECOME: Part III

If you have missed previous parts, please drop down the page and click on the blog archives on the right…Thank You!

As we grow from infants to school age, the inputs into our minds continue, and they come from an increasing variety of sources.  We may have playmates, who have caretakers.  We may have relatives in our age group, and they too have caretakers.  We begin to be mesmerized by television, either broadcast or videos of our favorite characters.  We may even begin to enjoy music.  And all of this input streams into our minds outside of our control.

And then we go off to school (or day care, or preschool), and begin the years of spending a lot of time with people who we are not related to, and really know very little about.  We trust that our teachers have been schooled properly to hold a job with such great responsibility, but you never really know.  And all of their teachings continue to barrage our brains with information, building upon the layers that went before them, and constructing the framework by which future input will be processed and stored.

Some of the things that get stored into our minds at this stage are relatively unimportant.  The way we pronounce certain words, like “creek,” are defined by our families and the region of the country where we grow up.   Whether we call it “soda” or “pop” or “a Coke” again is dependent on factors that have little to do with us.  But there are many things that have been installed that will be important the rest of our lives.  We learn how to react when people threaten us or speak ill to us.  We learn about hugging and kissing.  We learn the value of birthdays and other celebrations.  We learn how to apologize.  We learn what it means to apologize.  We learn to forgive others who do wrong to us, or we learn to hold a grudge against them.  We learn how to worship our respective superior beings.  We basically learn how to treat other people.  And we learn how to treat ourselves.  We learn all of this by observing life around us, and we have no say in what we see and what we hear.  We do not know when to leave the room, or we cannot leave the room.  The building blocks to our comfort zone are laid by people other than us!  And as a child, we are given no choice but to be there, and we do not know what to accept as good and what to reject as not so good.  We are sponges!

And unfortunately for some of us, we learn some things that will not exactly help us as we grow older.  We learn that families argue and use bad words.  We learn that sometimes the arguments progress into people hitting loved ones.  We see that apologies are not always forthcoming from people who feel they are right in doing these things.  We see that celebrations are occasions to drink to excess, or the time to ingest recreational drugs.  And because we see the people who have helped to program our minds doing these things, they become OK for us, maybe not at that moment, but when we reach the right age.  And it all goes into our minds, building our comfort zone with no editing from us.

Fortunately for most of us, the good stuff that enters our minds far outnumbers the bad pieces of information our young brains process.  But as we will begin to see next time, it only takes a few bad bits to spoil the whole deal.

Until Next Time,

Julius

HOW WE BECOME WHO WE BECOME: Part II

If you have missed Part I, please drop down to the bottom of the page and click “older post”…Thank You!

Now that we are a real, living infant, our brains are being barraged with information every second of our lives, and from more sources than mom and dad.  And all of that information is being processed and stored for future use.  How we are responded to when we are crying, when we are wet, when we are hungry, when we are lonely, when we are cold, when we are warm, and so on.  And we have no idea how it will impact things in the future.

But it had to impact things in the future.  One thing that I came to realize was that each piece of information that our brain processes has an influence on how the next piece of information is processed.  Where did this idea come from?  Brain scientists are learning that our brains actually grow as we learn.  They believe that as we learn new things, the brain is making space in which to store those things.  Think of your brain growing as a vine grows.  Where the vine grows in the future is determined by where it has been in the past.  If it follows a crack, it will continue along that crack until it is forced to go elsewhere.  Science is telling us that it is much the same process in our minds.

They have also discovered that each brain stores things, like images, differently from how another brain stores the exact same image.  The texture goes in one location, the coloring in another, any shading, sound, etc. each going in its own location.  When we are asked to retrieve that image, our brains can pull all of the elements together and reproduce the original sight of the image.  No, our brain pulls the image together based on what it processed for us in the first place.  And that processing was based on all of the information it processed before you saw that image.  And since your experiences were different than mine, your brain processed it differently than did my brain.  Hence, your recall will not be exactly the same as mine, or exactly the same as anybody else’s mental reproduction of the same image.

Now, let’s go back to thinking about of an infant’s life.  The major parameters of importance would seem to be to stay happy and content, and to complain when not happy and content.  Pretty simple stuff.  So we can say that babies like to be in their comfort zone, and that comfort zone is defined by how people have taken care of them and how their brains have processed that caretaking.  I believe that this comfort zone is something we carry with us for most of our lives.  In the early days of my product development career I had occasion to be involved in discussions concerning the scents that should be used in air fresheners and cleaning products.  In those categories of products, floral scents are very popular.  I believe that one of the reasons why, particularly for those us who were babies before the mid-1980’s, is the use of Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder.  That gentle floral fragrance has a special place in our minds, a place where we were comfortable and pampered.  And even for those who prefer different fragrances, the light floral scent is not very offensive at all.

In Part III, the infant leaves the home from time to time, and the processing begins to get more interesting.

Until Next Time,

Julius

HOW WE BECOME WHO WE BECOME: Part I

Over the past two years, I have spent considerable time thinking how things in my life could have gone so wrong.  After all, I did all of the things that I was taught and told that I had to do to have a wonderful life: I did great in grade school, I got a scholarship to high school, I got grants to go to the college of my choice, and I went right to graduate school and got my doctorate.  So why did my family move away from me?  Why did my job go away, again?  Why am I sitting in a huge financial hole?  And I just might have figured it out!

I have spent a lot of time thinking this through, and I will be posting my thoughts in several posts.  So...

Let’s go all the way back to the microsecond that a sperm cell enters an egg and creates YOU.  We all were taught that this is the moment when YOU start to develop, in a flurry of cell division and cell organization into the different parts of the body.  Some of that cell activity results in a brain, and once that brain begins to function, the programming begins.  See, besides running your body, the brain processes all of the inputs that run through it.  Yes, ALL of the inputs that run through it!  And that includes while we are still inside our mother.

Studies show that what we hear and feel while in the uterus can have an impact on us after we are born.  Many parents play classical music for us in hopes that it will make us smarter or more creative.  The medical community also has proof that the things that mom ingests during our pregnancy can affect our bodies and our minds: alcohol and drugs having the most negative effect.  Everything that is happening to mom is happening to us: the joy of happy times, the sadness of rough times, the people who talk to her, etc.  All of this has some effect on the developing brain.  What effect?  We do not know, and we may never know, but those inputs ARE being processed.

It is also no small surprise that babies often bond strongly with their mothers in the first few days after they are born.  Why?  Besides the fact that they were sharing the same body for all of that time, mom’s voice was the sound that they heard most often and there has to be some comfort in hearing that voice as we are fed and changed and coddled and caressed in the “real” world.  In most cases, dad is the second person we bond to, and again, his is a familiar voice.  So if those voices were processed into our memory, we have to wonder what else of our pre-birth lives was wired into who we ultimately become, right?  And how much of this did we choose to accept into our brains?  Right, none of it.

And the lack of choice that we all have as to what goes into our brains when we are young will be a recurring theme when I pick this up in my next blog post…

Until Next Time,

Julius

My Christmas 2009 Reflections

Originally Posted: TUESDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2009

For the first time since I can remember, I am not surrounded by the trappings of Christmas: a beautifully decorated tree, cards from friends, crazy quantities of food to feed family and friends, and so on. You see, in late February my position was eliminated due to the economic downturn. Shortly thereafter my wife filed for divorce, as she wanted to ensure that our kids could get what they needed (from the state of Michigan) in case work was hard to find. We had been separated by 4 states for 8 months at that point, and we both knew that “we” were over and that it was the best thing to do for our kids. The divorce was final in mid-November, 4 days after I got evicted from our former family home due to foreclosure. I did not become the first in my family to graduate from college or go on to get a doctorate degree for all of these things to happen. But happen they did.

So, I could sit here, living with a friend, and be angry at the world and all of the people running the country and the banks and the companies that haven’t hired me, but I am not. I cannot sit here and be filled with anger. I have too much to be thankful for…

I have 5 children who understand enough of what is going on to know that I have not seen them since June because money is that tight. Their mom has kept some of the details from them, but they know that I am not staying away through my own choice. They know that I love them! And I am grateful for that…

I have had two sets of friends who have taken me in until my job hunt comes to resolution. I have not had to live in my car, or a tent, or a cardboard box. And I am grateful for that…

I have been able to send the majority of my unemployment funds to my family to keep a roof over their heads, food on the table and gas in the family car, and still keep enough for food and gas for my van. I do not eat like I used to, but that is a matter of choice. And I am grateful for that….

I have had the time to sort out my life as a spouse and father, and have come to understand my role in the train wreck that was my family life. I now know why I was myself at the office and turned into Mr. Hyde on the way home. I am not proud of what I have done. I should have known better. I now do. And I have forgiven myself. And I am grateful for that…

I have been blessed to find a website that has helped me to become more healthy physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, and it is www.transformation.com (screen name NCDrJCN). I feel like myself again, even in the midst of all of the chaos that has descended upon me. I am taking care of myself, eating sensibly, exercising regularly, thinking outside of the box, looking for new comfort zones, and am optimistic that I will find a way to make a contribution on our world. And I am grateful for that…

I have applied for countless jobs, and have had some interviews which have not led to jobs. I continue to look for opportunities to use my skills in a constructive manner. And I know the right opportunity is out there, because it has been out there before. And I currently have an opportunity that would move me about 100 miles from my kids. And I am grateful for that…

Finally, I live in a country where people continue to strive to pick themselves up out of the ashes and make a difference. Our country was built on hope: the hope that we could build a better life than we had in the past; the hope that our children, and their children, would have things easier than we did; the hope that we could find a way to bring peace and harmony to all of the world; the hope that each one of us can find a way to give a piece of ourselves to the common good. I continue to have hope, for my country, for my children, and for myself. And I am grateful for that…

As you go through the motions this holiday season, keep in mind that no matter how many gifts are under the tree this year and no matter how much traveling you are able to do, there are people who have fallen pretty far from where they used to be: people have lost jobs, and homes, and families, and loved ones. And even though they have lost all of that, they still have hope…they are clinging to the hope that they will have a meaningful life very soon…and that they can make a difference in the lives of those they love and those they care about. And I am grateful for that…

Happy Holidays to all!!!
Julius

Book Review, Part II: “ReBoot: My Five Life-Changing Mistakes…and How I Moved On”

Originally Posted: WEDNESDAY, JUNE 10, 2009

To properly set the stage for this post I suggest that you scroll down to the previous post and give it a read. Thanks, JCN

“I became suspended in a strange, numbing nothingness. I didn’t feel anything…I realized my numbness was masking anger. I could explode with little or no provocation…I was angry at everything I was and all that I would ever be…I saw myself as a different version of my mother…I was trapped.”

Many people believe that all anger is a response to a situation that is fermenting in our minds, lingering with no solution that we can implement. And many of us saw anger in our childhoods, not necessarily directed at us, but outwardly visible in some form. One of my most vivid childhood memories is my mother repeatedly smashing the phone receiver into the metal hook of our wall mounted phone because my father was still at a bar and not where he should have been. I remember walking up to the phone when she was done and seeing the metal bent so much that the phone could no longer hang on it.

All too often, when life deals us a bad hand, our subconscious mind takes over and pulls out the lessons of our childhood. Many of those lessons are the ones we are ashamed of, and desperately wish that we could erase from our memory. But selective brainwashing is not an option. The work of reprogramming our subconscious mind is difficult. It requires a lot of focus by the conscious mind, knowing that there is a better state for us to be in. For me the path away from anger involves mentally moving to a place where my mind is not stressed out and can operate out of love and not react out of that subconscious memory. Often easier said than done.

“So, I start writing about my real mistakes. Not my business mistakes, but my LIFE mistakes. I allowed others to define me. I built my image of myself on two main supporting pillars (smart and married). I stopped believing in myself. I stopped taking care of myself. Allowing my head to rule my heart.”

Selfish. An often misunderstood word. But I now understand it very well. Michael Losier teaches its meaning as “self care,” doing the things necessary for me so that I can do everything else I have committed to do. When I read the five mistakes Julie has outlined above, I hear someone who was trying to appease others, who held other people’s opinion of what she needed to do in higher regard than her own opinion, who in trying to be everything to everyone forgot to be who she really was. Unfortunately, Julie Wainwright is not the only person to fall into this trap.

We are hardly out of the womb when we begin to hear the opinions of those we encounter, some welcomed, some not. And as children the opinions of adults mean everything to us because we do not know any better. And many of us wind up with a pretty well installed version of “People Pleasing,” where we do things to make others happy, to make others proud, to make others give us nice presents, etc. We learn to please everyone we encounter. Except us. We never learn where to draw the line. We never learn how to recognize that we are giving up some of the precious stuff that makes us, well, us. We move so far in becoming one with our jobs or one with our significant other that we lose sight of who we are. And it often takes life changing events, like job loss, divorce, becoming widowed, etc. for us to learn the bitter truth: we MUST find ways to love ourselves more; to get in touch with our own hearts and minds and become whole. To be selfish.

“I had failures and successes in the past. If I really looked at things truthfully, I had more successes than failures. I had acted honorably toward the Pets.com employees and the shareholders, but I hadn’t treated myself with the same kindness.”

Julie realized that we need to be kind to ourselves, as well as those we serve. It isn’t simply a matter of doing the right thing. It is sort of like the old oil filter commercial: “You can pay me now or you can pay me later!” If we treat ourselves with proper kindness on a regular basis, then we can keep every ball in our court in play. If we allow no time for “selfishness” then we are listening to all those around us tell us which ball to play next. Chaos reigns, and the subconscious mind kicks in. And our old friend anger is right around the corner, frequently directed at those we love. Or inward…

“I had a choice: go along with someone else’s perception of the world or get on with creating my own world. I really wanted to heal my own wounds and start living again, so I made a conscious decision to separate my wounds from everyone else’s…when I started to pay close attention to that tenet and I did so from a place of love, not fear, all that negativity lost its power. As far as I can tell, negativity needs energy, a reaction, to feed it.”

This is such a powerful concept! “Negativity needs energy to feed it!” Julie eloquently relates fear to negativity, so we can say that fear also needs energy to feed it. And she teaches that love is the one thing that takes power away from both fear and negativity. This is so simple!!! But again, when we are focused outwardly, we never give our own hearts enough time with love’s healing energy.

“I held tightly onto those two adjectives, smart and married, as a measurement of personal worth that left no room for me to just be a person who accepted my own humanness. And when I couldn’t use those adjectives to describe myself I became, in my mind, worthless. I never held anyone else to these standards, since I knew they were external measurements, but I didn’t have the same compassion for myself.”

I cannot add anything more of substance to these statements. If you have read this far, you can either apply this to yourself or someone you hold very dear to your heart. Maybe when we begin to feel like we are letting ourselves down we need to examine our standards for ourselves and check them against our current reality. Most of us will see that we are doing just fine!!!

“I realized that all those who truly loved me didn’t care if I was uber successful, and they certainly did not want to see me in an unsatisfying marriage. Their love wasn’t conditional…I began to feel truly secure simply by being myself and really enjoying life.”

Again, there is so much power in these words! Unconditional love is powerful stuff! It can heal any wound. This is the reason that Marianne Williamson tours the world preaching love’s great benefit for the world! Remember to feel some love the next time you look into a mirror!!!

“The most prominent goals were focused on me being successful in every part of my life: physical, emotional and spiritual…I showed myself climbing the proverbial ladder and once again reaching for the stars.”

There is a very important concept here that many self-help programs do not pay respect to. Particularly as we approach middle age, personal fulfillment consists of finding ourselves physically, mentally and spiritually. Any one itself may be good, and any two may benefit the individual, but it is only when we work on all three aspects of life that we maximize our contribution to the world and to future generations. When we “find” ourselves physically, emotionally AND spiritually we set the stage of reaching for the stars and manifesting all of the goodness that God gives to each of us the day that we are born. As an example, Bill Phillips’ Transformation site (www.transformation.com) asks the individual to work all three areas of being so that they can “be the change!” Check it out! My screen name is NCDrJCN.

“Doing things that filled my heart with love and learning to trust myself enough to follow my heart…those were the key…I had to learn to let go of fear. It meant learning to trust myself, my spirit and something greater than me, which connects us all.”

I believe that it can be difficult to allow our hearts to guide us because few of us get that type of guidance as we grow up. We are taught that education and pure knowledge are the keys to success, and our fast paced, entertainment driven society certainly seems to reward knowledge. It is only when life slows down a little that we allow ourselves to listen to our gut, that “feeling” we have that one thing or the other is the right way to go. Previous generations had the benefit of fewer entertainment options and a slower pace to life. There was a lot of wisdom passed down on the front porch, watching people pass by as grandparents told the stories of their youth and discussed current events with their experienced opinions. How does that generational wisdom, or love, get passed down today? We are moving too fast to care!

“ ‘When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.’ “

If there is a single lesson in this book that should be passed on to future generations, it is the one above. Look with you in mind! Look for a way to share joy, and goodness, and love. You may find yourself looking in some new places, or just from a different point of view!

The next time you are faced with a critical decision, consider consulting your heart as well as your mind. It is the merger of the two where the better answer can be found. And usually one that allows you to consider yourself in the solution.

Until Next Time,
Julius

Book Review, Part I: “ReBoot: My Five Life-Changing Mistakes…and How I Moved On”

Originally Posted: SATURDAY, JUNE 6, 2009

AUTHORS of Book Reviewed: Julie Wainwright with Angela Mohan

Julie Wainwright had a spectacular public fall. She was the CEO of the Internet start up Pets.com. You may remember the sock puppet that they used in their advertising. Well, remembering the brand may be good, but Pets.com was in business for about a year, Julie was at the helm, and got publicly trashed for some of the moves she made. Mostly for closing down the company while they still had capital. Why would she do that? So she could live with herself! She knew that the business had NO chance to succeed because so many other internet pet companies went online in the same timeframe, and she saw that Pets.com was actually losing money on every transaction. My guess is that many of us would do the same thing and give our investors some of their investment back. But we all have recently seen the logic of Wall Street and the financial markets. Enough said!!!

At virtually the same time as the company was folding, her marriage ended when her husband not only announced that he wanted a divorce, but promptly left their home with all of his possessions. The double whammy was devastating to Julie, and she took some time to think about how her life had gotten to this point. Which gets us to the blog article that inspired this book.

As a part of the healing process, Julie wrote a blog post with the title of this book on her website . In less than a year’s time, nearly 100,000 people had read “The Five Mistakes” blog in over 156 different countries. Truly not what she expected. Many of the readers asked for the material in book form so that they could share it with friends and family. After seeing that the requests were never going to stop, Julie decided to write the book.

It is a revealing work, with Julie reliving much of what she went through and how she got to the places that allowed all of this to happen around her. The key to me is that she knew that she had to move on, pick up the pieces and reinvent herself in order to live with herself. She found that her priorities had been shaped by the needs of those around her, and that she allowed herself to lose touch with…Julie. Life events like the ones she experienced are often quite eye-opening, and having them occur in parallel caused Julie to open not only her eyes, but her brain and heart as well.

In the post to follow this one I will take quotes from Julie’s book and add my spin on her learning. I find that her experiences have great teaching value to me, and I suspect that many others can learn from her insights. I do this split because I know it would get quite long, and I do not want to post the “mother of all posts.” But as a teaser, here are the first couple:

“I had no idea, no real idea that is, that my marriage is over…Still, I don’t really believe it.”

I can relate, as I am currently living the last stages of my marriage being over, the stage involving court personnel. Somehow, you know its over but you just don’t understand its over. I never wanted it to be this way. I never wanted it to end this way. I want to start over. But none of that is going to happen, mostly because the other party has given the marriage many chances before they resort to this ending. We often get out of touch with the “us” because we are so busy doing other things: managing work projects with fierce internal intensity, dodging the bosses latest requests in our minds 24/7, worrying how we are going to have the funds to put the kids through college, worrying how we are going to have the funds to retire, etc. And all of these things can look like selfishness to our significant other, and maybe they are. But for me, they were the response to years of doing for others and going against the grain of what I thought were the right things to do in order to not rock the marital boat. I was cultivating a “joint” approach to problem solving. In my own mind. And it often ran 100% upstream from where my heart told me I should be going. If you EVER feel yourself going against the grain to the point of discomfort, I implore you to resolve the situation, either by sitting down with your significant other and hashing things out, or by getting out of the relationship. Like most other personal issues, letting it fester will only make things worse in the long run.

“I didn’t realize that when you’re older, life is different. You see the patterns in your past actions and they can actually trap you in the past because you assume that this is just how your life will always be. Sometimes, you create patterns when they aren’t there, because you’re miserable; you think you must have done something wrong, because you are in so much pain and time is running out and you can see very clearly that there won’t be that many more do-overs in your future. If any.”

Believe it! Life changes as the years pile up. How? As Julie states, the habits we pick up along the way corrupt our minds into thinking that things will ALWAYS be a certain way. You put your head into solitary confinement. You begin to imagine walls that don’t exist in the real world, but they may as well be three feet of concrete. There is no way out, and you see that you alone are responsible for this sentence. The pain in unbearable, but you are too old to get back to “GO” and get your playing piece and starting salary because that salary cannot support the life you have created and someone else has the sporty car or the guy on the horse.

The reality: the resources you need are out there. In fact, the resources you need are IN there, and have been all along! Your mind and heart are two of the most underutilized resources that many of us have. While we don’t consciously think that we have quit on ourselves, we subconsciously have given up. We resign ourselves to the little corner of the world that we currently reside in and the daily schedule that drives many of us insane. Who, exactly, imposed these limits on our lives? We did! We all have advanced degrees in wall building and confinement, of our hearts and minds. We either get comfortable with what we have or consumed by what we want, often because to aspire for more is “too hard” or because what we see our neighbors have or what is marketed on TV is way cooler than what we have. Or because the vacation we can’t afford is deserved. And so on.

Often changes like the ones that Julie went through act as a wake up call. We learn that we have infinite power to become a person other than the one we have been playing in the drama known as life. The car we have is fine. The TV we have is fine. Who are these people I share my life with? There are people who have it worse than I do? I can help them? And I really can have a different job, a different career?

Cars can be repaired. TV’s are used too often. The people you share your life with are your family and friends! They nourish you! You nourish them! You can help those who have less than you have!!! It’s called giving!! Or sharing the love!! Embrace it!! It will make you feel better!!! The knowledge to job change is out there on the Internet, and with personal coaches and with career consultants. In no way do you need to settle for what you have!

You can live a more fulfilling life!!! And it shouldn’t take your life falling completely apart for you to see that!!! You can learn from the experience of others!!!! We can take their wisdom and find a life that satisfies us to our core! It can be heartwarming to help others, and to really know our family members, and to have friends who really care about us!!!! All of these things exist when our hearts and minds are OPEN and ready to share in the abundance we all have inside of us!!!

Until Next Time and Part Two!
Julius

Love is All That Matters

Originally Posted: SUNDAY, MAY 24, 2009

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…And God created man in his own image…And God blessed them...And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.”
Genesis 1: 26-31; American Standard Version (http://www.biblegateway.com)
Shouldn’t that be enough for us to be satisfied? Isn’t that a high enough standard for all of us, that God created us, and that we are very good? Where do so many of us get the idea that we are less than very good? What is the motivation to be less than very good? Near as I can tell this notion that we are less than very good is more destructive than it is motivational.

Somewhere between our birth as totally innocent beings and the moment when we finally believe that we are “very good” we are taught the notion that we are more than some people and less than others. We are more or less intelligent. We are more or less financially secure. We are more or less able to accomplish athletic tasks. We are more or less worthy of the love and respect of others.

Perhaps it is a humanization of Mother Nature’s pecking order. It is well established that among many animal species that live as groups there are identifiable animals that are the leaders, or the “alphas,” and that there are sometimes battles to establish the alpha. Being as we are descendants of the animal kingdom this should not be too surprising. This stratification appears to begin when we are very young, where some children demonstrate abilities that are superior to those of others. Reading ability. Cognitive abilities. Athletic abilities. Leadership abilities. After all, we are each a combination of different slices of genetic code, and there are an infinite number of such combinations. That we all don’t do everything equally well is not surprising.

The striking thing is that beings that were created by a loving God use this natural separation of abilities as the basis for social differentiation. We learn as children to praise and belittle others based on these natural abilities. We are taught to look up to certain people as role models. We are taught to look down upon others as bad examples. We begin to call others names, and then the names get more awful as we hear what adults call each other. So we not only inherit our genetically-granted abilities from our families, but also their standards and biases and prejudices, and their labels. Fat. Stupid. Idiot. Democrat. Republican. And all of the others that my conscious does not allow me to type.

Where is the love? The love that is best taught by the Golden Rule, and other biblical variations upon it:

"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another."
John 13:34; American Standard Version (http://www.biblegateway.com)

"The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'…To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices."
Mark 12:31, 33; American Standard Version (http://www.biblegateway.com)
"No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us."
1 John 4:12; American Standard Version (http://www.biblegateway.com)
What do we say about ourselves when we categorize those around us, those we elect to lead us, those who live in foreign lands, those who truly do not know better, with the slurs we learn from adults and the others we hold as leaders? I believe that we are telling ourselves that we do not love ourselves very much; that there are fundamental parts of our being that have not been put into place. And there are plenty of clues that this is the case. Addictive and compulsive behaviors.

At 48 years of age I have finally read and learned enough to know that the compulsions that have manifested themselves inside of me have been driven by low self-esteem, a feeling that I am not good enough, that I need to be more. They are fueled by my inability to solve my need to please other people at my own expense, to compromise to the point of compromising my values and what I know to be right. I have this overwhelming urge to please others as a means to get them to accept me. To love me. Because somewhere along the way I never learned to love myself enough to say “no:” to food, to pleasure, to relaxation, to spending money I didn’t have, to skipping exercise. And based on the obesity epidemic and the scores of those who harbor addictions, I believe that I am not the only one who has been looking for love in all the wrong places.

And where are the right places? In the 21st Century, they are everywhere! There are Internet communities that provide the support needed to help us begin to see that we are not alone, that provide the information to help us make better choices, that provide the fuel to allow us to find the courage to keep seeking answers to our individual questions, and that encourage us to continue to ask ourselves the questions that will teach us what we need to know about ourselves.

And where do you go when you need something real, something not generated by electrons shooting at a computer screen? You go watch the sun rise on a Spring morning. You watch the rejuvenation provided by a Spring rain. You seek the laughter of a child as their parent pushes them on a swing. You seek the crack of a bat at a Little League game, or the celebration after someone scores the winning goal. And you keep seeking these things when you remember those who are less fortunate than us, because it is only us, by finding and sharing the love that God provided in such abundance who can raise them up and let them know that we remember that we are all children of the same world. And all deserving of love from all available sources.

Everything that God creates is very good. His standard is the most important one in our lives. If we can remember that we are very good, and to love ourselves as such, and to share that love as often as we can, then we will begin to right our individual ships, and someday all will be well in the world.

Until Next Time,
Julius