A Poem

Bah bah black sheep, have you any wool?
Of course I do stupid, I'm a freaking sheep.
Hey what's that you're hiding? Are those shears?
Ouch. That hurts when you... Whoa! Careful there... Aaugh! You snagged me boys.


Tis my Christmas gift to you.

Christmas Music

It's my theory that it takes about eleven months for people to forget how much they hate something. Case in point, Christmas music. By December 24th everyone is ready to pull out their hair, but come next Thanksgiving, it's great to hear everything again. The only exception to this is relatives, you never forget how much you hate them. There's also about an eight month time frame for people to forget how to do something, like drive in the snow.

Hope

Last month I wrote about fear. Over the last couple of days, the opposite side of that coin, hope, has been much more on my mind. We can see the results of losing hope very easily, and it is truly an unhealthy person who has lost all hope, but that's not what I've been focusing on.

Hope hides in plain sight around us every day, and I don't want to miss it. It is possibly THE fundamental building block in mental wellness, and it transcends our physical existence. It allows us to be more than we are. You can tell the people who have hope apart from the people who don't, although many might think I'm being a little subjective. There's much more to this subject, but I will come back to it later.

Writing

Been writing a bit more. I think that I'm finding I prefer science fiction over fantasy fiction, at least from a writing standpoint. I wrote about 1500 words of a short story that I think is going to end up probably about 10000 words long. It's work that I really like doing, and who knows, I might actually make some money off it one day.

I've actually been thinking about generating a website that has a portion of my writing on it. If enough people read it, and if I put some ads on it, I might actually make something. I'll have to make lots of very short chapters so there will be a lot of page views.

Wisdom

I've been considering wisdom, actually the pursuit of wisdom. I've looked for an underlying theme to the pursuit of wisdom, and I think it can be summed up thusly: The pursuit of answers.

In the book "The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy", Adams addresses a point that I really agree with. One main theme is the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything. The answer ends up being a monumentally disappointing 42. The computer that figured out that answer then explained how hard it is to understand the answer if you don't really know what the question is. The question had been so undefined that the answer was completely useless.

Yogi Berra once said "If you don't know your destination, any road will do". If we extend that logic to this situation, we might say that if you don't know your question, any answer will do. We know that that is not true though, as there is an idea of a correct answer. This being true we can say that if you don't know your question, there is no right answer.

So I think the beginning of wisdom or enlightenment is a search for good questions. Define the question that you want to ask with expectation that any answer that you do finally come to will be useful to you. I think that you will also find that if your question is really well created, it will lead to a good answer, and thusly a better understanding.

Caring

Today I've been contemplating the true meaning of caring. It came to me that caring really isn't about a feeling. Anyone can say that they care about someone but that doesn't make it true. Instead caring is really about doing, not about feeling. I think the word caregiver gives us a good understanding of what caring is all about.

I decided to experiment on this, and did something for some people not looking for anything back from them. I was taking care of them. I was amazed at the response that I got from the people I performed a kindness for. For the most part, they went out of their way to say thanks, and in one case returned the kindness to me. This rate was actually much higher that I expected.

Fear

I've been considering fear today. I think that most people would say that they were most afraid of death. While I believe that this is a great fear, I don't believe that it is the most universal fear that we as people face. I think that the fear of loss drives us on a more day to day basis, and is actually the more fundamental fear. Fear of death is at its base nothing more than the fear of the loss of life and those things that make life important. Incidentally, this is why some people choose to commit suicide, as they don't see any value in life, and any feeling of loss is outweighed by their distorted sense of gain.

When we are losing a loved one in a long drawn-out ordeal, we are much more likely to fear their loss and it is likely to be very potent, much more than if we were to lose someone dear to us suddenly. When we have lost, there are coping mechanisms built into the human psyche that come into play, but while we are in a state of limbo, we know we are going to lose but haven't lost yet, those coping mechanisms can't begin to operate, and the fear of loss festers and can grow into depression.

We can fear the loss of a loved one, a job and thus a lifestyle, the loss of a pet, a valuable, time, really anything, and it is all the same fear. The fear of being diminished.