We are instinct-driven animals with greed, lust, love, and hate.

But we are clever, to our credit.   And to our demise.

The awareness of these impulses determines how much control we have over this turmoil which rages within. And it will determine what kind of person manifests in reality.

And the kind of society we become.

Today, I will do everything that I want to.

If I have the time.

Of course, I do have the time.

I am inexorably linked to it.  There is no other that I am connected to more than time.

I am married to time.

It drags me along.  I am its ball and chain. Or else I fly along with it carelessly, like a feather, as it counts down to our unavoidable separation.

Either way, we are linked.

Literally.  Our marriage is the strongest of any marriage.

Respect your partner in the most intimate relationship of your life.

Until death do us part.

Dare to welcome a stranger

Dare to help someone

Dare to do more than the minimum

Dare to do a better job

Dare to be honest

Dare to be vulnerable

…Dare to be yourself.

I’d forgotten a name of her friend, again.

And she was reminding me about it, again.

Why didn’t I remember their names? I remembered her name. Isn’t that enough?

Education is happening all around me, if I’m paying attention.

If I’m not paying attention- to names, other people’s ideas, whatever- does that mean I don’t care?

Yes. Yes, it does.

Sometimes it’s a name I don’t care about. Other times it’s an opinion that I judge as wrong.

More curiosity. Less judgment. Leads to more learning.

Check your ignorance…check your expert opinion.

Grow your curiosity.

And after the conversation, you may learn something.

Selfishness is shunned and selflessness is seen as virtue.

But virtue is being high value in order to contribute high value.

Because without building yourself, how do you produce anything valuable?

There are two types of people: Authoritarians,
And happy people.

Those who seek satisfaction from others,
And those who find happiness in their own lives and what they create and contribute.

Fortunately, this country was founded to value what you create as an individual and contribute to others.

Happy Birthday, America. With all your corruption, you still provide us a society that immigrants from all over the world flock to join.

Just because I don’t put as high a priority on an issue as you do doesn’t mean I’m stupid or that I don’t care.

And it doesn’t mean that I’m immoral.  This judgment on morality usually came from  religious ideologues… Christian priests or Muslim clerics. But today, religious-level conviction has seeped into non-religious political issues.  Best leave that righteous indignation in the church and mosques.  After all, they have an all-powerful God backing them up.

So no, I’m not immoral. You’re not moral. Or vice versa. We simply don’t agree.

And that’s ok. Because that’s were a discussion starts. One that must be had. It leads to an even better perspective, broadening each of our beliefs, where we start seeing context and a fine tuning of beliefs before they are applied to complicated realities.

A better perspective that indicates that, really, we’re all the same.

Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly.
Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.

Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. So throw away your baggage and go forward.

There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet,
trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair.

That’s why you must walk so lightly.

Credit: Aldous Huxley