Thanksgiving is a time for learning how to be happy…because we’re not going to get what we want. But when we learn to appreciate what we have, we can be happy.
Priests, privilege, and the patriarchy
Privileged positions of power don’t make you privileged to use that power over others.
With great power comes great responsibility.
How college failed me
Do our schools and colleges teach peace, or do they teach divisiveness?
Do they teach personal empowerment, or do they teach victimhood and giving your power away?
Do they teach strength, or do they teach using others for personal satisfaction?
Do they teach helping others, or do they teach cutting others down?
Do they teach discussion, or do they teach protest?
Do they teach peace?…
or do they teach discontent?
No means No
Don’t let anyone make you do what you don’t want to do.
In the end, whatever you’ve decided is YOUR choice.
No means No.
I’m special, just like everyone else
Our problems stem from a person wanting to be identified for being in a special group of existence…just like everyone else.
The irony is, if we treat each other equally, there’s no need for special treatment.
That’s like…your opinion, man
Feelings are influenced by reality
But they are not reality
Remember that next time facing someone’s disapproval or disagreement
You don’t care about me
NPR reported on The golden age of grievance. It’s never been a better time to complain about how bad things are for you.
Even Asian-Americans (61%) reported they had felt discriminated against, and yet they are the highest earning demographic in the US, ahead of even the whites.
We are truly a grieving nation…This may come from disconnection from our neighbors and a lack of community and empathy with our fellow human beings.
The internet is creating more communication between us, and yet our separation continues.
Take some time off from the matrix of the internet world today, and smile at someone and say Hi, instead of looking down at your phone. Maybe if each of us does this, there won’t be so many people feeling unappreciated?
She said, “Why don’t you have a house?”
There is no place that I have to reach.
There is no pinnacle of success. Because there will always be another peak, bigger and better, than the last.
There is no destination, besides death.
Until then, there are only transient states of learning a little more, and then a little more, and then a little more, each time becoming a little less ignorant.
There is no happy ending.
So it is important to be happy right now.
Because the journey is all that I’ve got.
The day I became a man I kept my pants on
In a culture with so much that’s given, it’s easy to see others with more than I and blame them for my shortcoming.
The day I became a man is when I stopped complaining so much and started acting to make myself better.
It hurt to accept my failings, but the power it gave me was well worth it.
Halloween death wishes, to each and everyone
Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have.
It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death…ought to decide, indeed, to earn one’s death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life.
One is responsible for life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.
Content: James Baldwin
arabedrossian.org 