Selfish Desires

Besides the obvious, why am I so selfish? Why do I covet and desire the nice, expensive things? Why do I want money and things?

Beside the obvious fact that they are nicer, and I want money so I do not have to worry about bills and having whatever whenever, there is something under the fact that I want. I want what I do not have. Is that the only reason? I don't think so. Is it to prove something? Then what am I proving, and to who am I proving it? It could be to prove success, I could agree with that, but that asks what is success? Or it could be to prove something to everybody. But why? Most people see rich people as selfish, stuck up jerks. Will it give me respect maybe? Or am I trying to prove something to myself? Once again, why? I am still trying to figure out who I am exactly, maybe this is part of who I am. I just do not see the purpose of proving something to myself. It is slightly ironic, or oximoronic.

I guess I just do not understand the purpose of the underlying sin and desire in my heart for things. There is so much that I want to have, I want to work for, and I'd be willing to spend my life acquiring. But what is the point? Why the desire?

Why are people so hard to get along with

Every single time. The exact same thing. Some people refuse to change, grow up, and compromise to try to make things better for everyone around them. It is as if they have something to prove to everybody and will not give up until everybody is pissed off. Are they blind? Are we all blind?

I just pray I can keep my composure in spite of the immaturity.

As We Walk by

After my last post, looking to talk to at least two new people each day, I actually accomplished the task before my first class. One person I knew from working at Starbucks, and another as I was waiting for my class to start. It honestly opened up my eyes to the sense that people are just as willing to talk if you talk to them and create something interesting to talk about. And you are much more friendly when you are looking for someone to talk to. It is cyclical.

But that got me to think about all the people here at Portland State, and the millions of people in Portland and the surrounding metro area that walk within inches of me everyday. The people that interact within feet of me and are around me the whole day. How many people are so different and have their own lives just as I do. How is it that I continue to walk on without a care in the world? Why is it so American for us to not care?

So as part of that, I want to encourage people to comment on these posts. I know people read them, and if you think, then you probably have an opinion. Therefore, let me know. Let us have a public discussion. I want to know. The reality is that life is not all about me. And it is not about you either, but that is the point. Live life for something more.

What about friendships

To be honest, I have given so much thought about love lately, and focused so much on that, that I wonder if I have tried to jump over friendships in general, or I have just taken them for granted.

Lately, there has been drama and stupid quarrels between friends that have given me a sour taste in my mouth in relation to relationships, especially with immature people around me. People are unwilling to realize that friends are not forever, but you also need to be an adult and deal with your problems in order to be around people you do not like.

I will try not to get into that too much right now, because it is not my topic. My topic has to do with people and loving your friends. To be honest, there are people that I love that I do not want to love. I cannot stand being around them. I want to be interested in uninteresting people. To be honest, I am bored with myself, I am not that great, and I want to meet and genuinely get to know other people and love them without spending weekends on camping trips. Do you get my struggle? I am not looking for a shortcut, I am looking for a change of heart. I would like to go on a camping trip, but maybe let us start with a conversation that does not revolve around myself. What does that look like? How can I create that?

So here is my experiment: I plan on meeting and chatting with two people each day I am at school. I hate talking to people at school. But here goes. Maybe this will help.

Do nothing

It seems if I want to feel like I am accomplishing anything, then I have to be doing something all the time. That is why I keep my phone and sometimes a book or something handy every moment. Even now, I e-mail on this phone because for the moment that I stopped I had an epiphany I had to share.

What is wrong? How is this picture and idea somehow strained us? Because I cannot sit down without feeling a sense of lost productivity. Because in this world of success, if you stop to take a rest, then the tortoise will beat you in the race. Because in the game of life, whoever has the most toys in the end, wins. Or maybe because we don't know how. We do not understand the idea of rest and truly being satisfied. We do not know what that looks like. Because we feel awkward when we do sit and do nothing. Those that are comfortable with of we as working class deem them lazy -- on one end --or born into wealth -- on the other end of the gammut. Either way, the competitive nature in us does not allow breaks. But honestly, I do not care. Life is a journey, not a race.

Another Restless Night

At first, I wonder how many grammatical and spelling mistakes I will make since this is another late-night awake and drowning in my thoughts like the one a few nights ago. But I can fix those tomorrow.

What is on my mind as I skip through my playlist looking for something to catch my attention and fall asleep to? I skip and and find nothing. But it relates well to the thoughts of people around me. I feel so alone right now, but continue on searching and skipping past hoping for something ahead. I try to relate the first impression to what catches my attention on my mp3 player. So many songs, so many artists and bands. The catchy intro's just don't keep my attention. What am I looking for exactly? I have no clue. I want something that fits exactly how I am feeling now. Do I want something new and beautiful? Do I want a regular that I have fell asleep to many times before? Or should I go back to that one classic that always seems satisfy this lonely feeling? Will there be an old one that fits well if I look at it differently? Or am I searching my music in vain, and the perfect song is not here yet? Maybe my song isn't in my playlist. Maybe it is still out there, being written.

Beauty in the Negative

As I drove around, I took the backroads to keep away from and couldn't not realize the beauty of the fall colors and the that had or had not fallen. As you know, I am not a fan of season. The cold, the gray, the rain just is not exactly uplifting. And the upcoming holidays aren't exactly a light at the end of tunnel, either. I like the warm sun and being able to be without needing to be bundled up in jackets so you don't freeze.

Back to my point, today was gorgeous. After my negative yesterday, I accomplished a bunch of things, got over the down I had been in and really looked up to the rest of the day. today has not disappointed either. The leaves are on the ground, color is all around, and it masks the gray sky above. The ground damp, but not slick. And although things are changing, it is a that can represent my own life and just growing up in general. I can finally look at the new season with a positive outlook.

It is nice to be able to see something old in a beautiful new way.

How do we control it? What would we do with it if we could control it?

I think of the monks in India or the Discovery channel or wherever they are from, who can control their body temperature and their heart rate. What if the normal person could do that -- or maybe the more important question should be why is the normal person not doing that? But I digress. What do they have control over? And does it mean that they just have better control over their entire body? Do they control their emotions, their moods and everything else? Can they? Do they hold off other bodily functions such as sleep, and defecating as well? Wow, I did digress.

Basically my question is how can we control more of ourselves than we do? What stops us, and how do we get past that. Because I am tired of the things stopping me in my tracks that keep me from being who I want to be. I want to be more than this, and the fears and other powers that keep me down continue to fight against me. And they definitely have the home advantage. There will be a change sometime, but I don't know when.

Restless Nights

Here I lay again. Tossing back and forth, looking for a position, looking for an empty mind. I cannot find either. My mind wanders everywhere from who I would like to be, business ideas, and course love. But I'll mostly leave that one alone since it is early the morning and I have already talked about that enough. So what will say about that is that late night thoughts rarely do as you intend, so my mind has seemed to go back on the past, it digs up feelings and tries to put them together in weird ways. To finish thought, I heard a quote that said something like if there were no women in this world, there would be no need for money. Interpret it as you wish, but I think I know what the speaker is hinting at.

And that gets me to my next thought running through my head. It goes
along with business ventures, but more importantly, who do I want become? Not in a philosophical ideological way of what should become, but more of a "who are my heroes?" And to be honest, I never had a hero. I only get one long enough to find their fault and burn their credibility in my mind. There are people I respect and listen to their advice, but not since I have had these ideas and dreams within reach of starting few businesses and actually becoming something, making a name for myself, my mind takes the liberty of taking those dreams to fullest, almost absurd stretch of the imagination, yet nothing I'd be opposed to right now. It is thinking of unimagineable wealth power and fame. My mind puts in ideas of flying around the globe for business and pleasure to meet celebrities and VIP's. I add my flair and fuel the fire created in my mind.

But back to my original question, who would I want to be like? What man would embody who I would like to become? I think of people who doers or stand-outs or pioneers. Just to lay it out and quit along, I would love the class of someone like John Legend or Clooney. But also the ingenuity and humility of Jeff Bezos or google guys. There's nothing like the power and influence of Trump, but I pray I'll chop my head off before I have hair like that. But I also want to be reserved and a bit of quietness like Matt Damon.

As soon as I sit down and think more deeply about it, my mind both running and blank at the same time. I wonder what these guys up late thinking about or who they want to become. I wonder if had restless nights becoming who they are today.

Sorry for all the love

I apologize for all these posts about emotions and love, but, to be honest, it has been on my mind a lot lately. I have been trying to decide something, figure out where my heart is and everything involved. But I have to admit, I am desperately negative about this whole thing. Maybe it is my parents sad marriage that turns me off. Maybe it is the statistics that back up my fear. Maybe it is all the past relationships that have failed miserably because -- what I want to blame as -- my shortcomings. Or maybe it is that when I felt closest to someone was after everything was falling apart. Or that the person that I feel has loved me the most, I don't really know how to handle.

The last few relationships that I have tried have (with mixed reviews) failed, in the sense that they basically will not come of anything. Not to discredit what was there or what was felt, but there was always something lacking. I wonder if there will always be something lacking. Is there someone that will completely fulfill the promise of love? Or is that just Hollywood BS? I try to say that I do not care, but I do. I try to say that I am going to be mature, and think like an adult, and I want to prove those statistics wrong. I want to live for something more, to give something more, without always holding out on a bet that could be the best payoff ever. But I am not betting on love, I am living life.

This is life.

Sweet Emotions

Nothing is as erradic and spontaneous as human emotion. It's as life would only be a machine or domino effect of natural until feelings and emotions have a say. The people around me, closest to me have a way of always surprising me and always acting a way that I always get caught off guard. I can barely control my emotions, but how am I to deal with everyone elses. And we'll get mine later. But here we are, in another predicament. Life has to another person and their feelings are getting in the way of what important. Why do we allow this? Why should we let them get away this?

I come back to this blog nearly a month later, but the truth remains: the lack of control over emotions is lethal. The communication, and desire for control (to use all c's) is as as we get in the process of our personal development. I think of the interaction just last night that I thankfully did not react to but I wanted to attack, but I see how much better if I could correct the other person and be open to correction myself.

Life is more than a game, but really it breaks down to really simple choices which are something like right and wrong, but past that it becomes mature and immature. Adult or childish. Responsible or irresponsible.

How do you want to live? How will you decide?

Seriously, what is love. what is it?

Here is the blog that has been marinating in my mind all week or more. It has been bouncing around my head, snowballing around in my head, trying to get out, trying to make sense of all the senselessness. And it is not so much a paragraph or essay as it is a feeling. It has somehow made up its own mind.

Well maybe it hasn't completely made up its mind. I will try another take at this paragraph, the last few didn't work so well.

The fact is that something within all of us searches all the time for something more meaningful than we are. More powerful and deep than what we have been living for so far, which is ourselves. The greed and selfishness within ourselves steps aside for only a few things, and love is one. It is the purpose that contains within us the ability to move on. But this must be done only after our selfishness can subside. I am only talking about true, real love, not the crap you see on tv. If tv was real, I would be an actor, because they are the only ones that are getting it, or rather the perfect rendition of what we all wish it were. If only we had a perfect script that enabled every one of us to be exactly what we wished and said what we wished and had what we wished. But this is not some romantic comedy with the perfect setup for a happy ending, this is the only shot we have at not screwing every last thing in the world up. This is our opportunity to pursue and fight for someone we care about. To push past our selfish desires to pridefully exclaim that we are better than we are and to imagine that there is possibly someone who is absolutely perfect as opposed to just better than I am. To some extent I have finally seen a glimpse of real love. I haven't felt or understood it before. I have tried to imagine, I have felt something like it--which is something like obsession or imagination--and I have finally understood what it is like to see clearly how much God has loved us so that we can have the ability to love.

I cannot remember ever typing that fast in order to get all my feelings out of my head. It is as if the feelings in my body could not wait to get freed. And here I sit, still musing about the thoughts I have put down. Somehow love is more than a song, more than a poem, more than a cute girl, but yet that is it entirely. The dichotomy of both simple and complex tend to confuse more than not, but somehow the ideas and feelings flow together when allowed to be. Allowed to breathe and live. My mind is still wrestling with all these ideas bouncing around, but something has broken out, something has understood life a little more. These little epiphanies make life much more exciting and real. Way better than tv.

Is Someday Today?

Usually it happens that what you meant by something trivial and/or self seeking turns around and actually answers a long-forgotten prayer that you had almost given up on. One problem with my own mind is that when I over-think everything, I try to figure all possible outcomes so that I might be prepared. Still I am amazed how often I am still wrong.

Usually it happens when you meet someone, you quickly size them up and define who they are and how they will affect you and your relationship with them. That was a complicated way of me saying you have a first impression. But once again, a few people decide to surprise you. I cannot lie, it is rare because of the amount of shallow people, and those who live on the surface. I also cannot judge because that is who they are, but some people shock you with their depth and their thoughtful mind. Even with others, I am surprised at the maturity in spite of the stupidity (but that is a side issue that I am figuring out). The fact that some people are willing to devote the time and effort to actually think through so much that most people would allow to float on and never allow personal growth. I cannot imagine that aim is desirable to just continue on, but that we should each day look for new ways to educate and elevate ourselves, and it is refreshing to see someone who does this and who gives themselves to people around them so that we all can learn from them.

Usually it happens that we are content to live in the same boring life without being willing to step out and become something more. The definition of insanity is doing the same action while expecting a different result. So true when you step back and see a ton of people continuing to bang their heads on the walls of life hoping for epiphany or opportunity. I think my opportunity is right here in my lap, and finally I have not only the desire and ability, but also the knowledge and the help to push forward and gain ground. This does not usually happen.

Where has my mind been?

Everywhere. My mind has gone from here to there. From one end of the spectrum to another. I have been blogging all day. Every thought this weekend could have created some type of written anecdote, yet my hands have refused to let out what is caught in my body. Even now, I am forcing a thought onto paper. Even now, I don't know what my mind has been doing.

Agreed, this weekend has been anything but normal, but now I am continuing that in my head. As Tuesday is the first day of school (probably strike one), now my mind runs with philosophy, business, excitement, pain, love, and marriage. I know. Marriage? With all these more important things, I have been honing in on love, what it truly is, and how it is used and manifested. I have not concluded anything regarding love, but I have had a few epiphanies, none of which are ready to come out in a meaningful, legible way. But I am looking at marriage in a way that I cannot explain, nor was at all mature enough to contemplate. It is slightly eye-opening, and definitely scary. Especially since I do not even have a girlfriend (a major necessity when thinking of marriage, so I have heard).

But the end thought is indisputable, first: if a word is not spelled correctly in a google search, you can still find useless and wrong information to make you think you are right, but a correct spelling will first bring Websters definition. Second: my mind is on its own track today. There is much to think about and I can only try to guide it around as it wanders mindlessly... that was a joke.

What a weekend completely opposite of what I imagined. My quickly turn around to something very different.

My plans were something like a Friday afternoon workout and work on my computer then go with my west side college group. Instead people change, people are immature; I should expect as much. Then I was prepared for a good bicycle ride with a leisurely Saturday morning spent at coffee and bookstores. Instead I am on my way back from Trout Washington. That is where my second cousins live, random. But also gave my time for some friend's family who needed fire wood cut and moved. That's not me. I hate giving up my time. And I am not a huge fan of working, in the dirt, or for free. So here I sit for 1.5 with slivers, scrapes, and dirt all over. I want a shower and a nap. Not food because I was well fed, which also contradicted my plan which involve a three course meal at my apartment. Yes, random as well. And last night turned into trying to plan, hoping for food, deciding to play some poker, eat some brownies. Drive to middle-nowhere, show up late to a Bible study, hang out with my best friends who are closer than family and now I feel sick off eating peanut brownies, something like pumpkin scones all while playing group games mixed with a serious talk and a bunch of joking around. Something says that all was supposed to happen, and I am sure that is true. And I enjoy surprises. To be honest, I feel like a better friend seeing all these people I've flaked on lately. And I feel like more of a man after getting dirty and moving between three and four cords of wood, drinking 7.5 servings of Gatorade, and eating more in a day than I usually do in a week (not completely a joke).

But I cannot wait for more food and wine and maybe a movie. The bike ride is rescheduled for tomorrow, but tomorrow could turn out like the rest of this weekend. We shall see.

Audience of none

What is he doing? What is he thinking? What is he saying?

I honestly cannot hear the guy. A large plate of glass and about a hundred feet separate me, inside doing homework, and this man, outside in the park blocks of PSU. He stands there 90 degrees opposite me, standing and singing. I assume he is singing because he has a guitar and it looks like he is singing. That is not what is abnormal. Those facts don't make me stop and think. I have seen people sing in a park before. The part that does is the fact that he stands there alone, for one, and also no one cares. At all. The people within ten feet of him seem completely unaffected. The people walking by don't seem to care or even acknowledge. Nobody looks up. Nobody looks away. Passerby's and pedestrians are absolutely indifferent to this guy. He just stands there, alone, singing.

But I continue to wonder, why is he there? Why does he continue? Could it be his courage that he stands in the open square unaffected by what people might think or do? Or could it be a total attitude or narcissism that propels him to self-promotion. I still cannot hear him, so I cannot form my opinion on how good or bad he is. He is just this guy, with a guitar, in the middle of a park.

only questions

where am I? what am I doing? what is my purpose? why am I thinking about them? why can't I get her off my mind? why can't I move on? why is life on pause? why are there never answers? when will I know what to do? when will I know where to go? when will I know who is right? when will I trust people? when will I see her? will I ever see her? will I ever...? what do I know? who do I trust? who can I trust? who trusts me? do I trust myself? will my questions be answered? am I just too fearful? will I conquer my fear and the other sin in my life? will I become a better person, or become a somebody? will I grow up or just get older? will my life matter? does life matter?

To Rethink my own Thinking

Can you fathom the unfathomable? Can you think outside the box when the box encapulates everything there is that can be understood? Can time and space be redefined? Or can we ever understand?

In no easy way, my mind was completely stretched beyond what I ever thought normal to an extent that I almost can't fathom. But the beauty is that I totally understand in a way that I don't understand. It is ironic and illogical, but the truth holds true and I know there is truth where I don't understand.

God cannot be put into a box because first of all, he created the box. But to my mind I understand my position in the box as well as his. And all positions keep me at a speechless awe of simplicity and complexity in the same place and time.

Where is the FAQ for life?

I am sure I am like most people, let me specify before that is taken to mean any number of things. But the fact remains that I can easily see myself as a rich, smart, young man on his way to the American dream. The only problem is the step from here to there. Duh, right, you say. And I don't disagree.

How many hollywood movies, how many books, stories, whatever, show you the great life, the desires and amenities given freely to the gifted or spoiled, and of course I could do a better job of it than most or all of them. The truth is that most of us could make a better hamburger than McDonalds, but none of us could build an empire that could compare.

So here we remain. Without the hamburger or the empire, to finish the analogy.

How can we get across this gulf? Where is the fast track across, because I don't want to stand in line for the small bridge. It will take too long, and I'll be too old by the time I get through the application process and everything in order to enjoy it. So where is the how-to? Where is the FAQ? Because, once again, I'm sure there are a lot of us who would want to know, and I'm sure that I could use and control it better. I promise I won't use it for promiscuity and drugs. I won't go crazy and shave my head, either. Well at least won't go crazy.

Well, the truth is, I can't promise anything for sure. But I can imagine it can't be that hard. And seriously, what do I really have to do, and is it worth it?

The Pursuit of Happiness

Isn't it true that we race to beat the person who is first? We want to be in the lead. We want to be chased by everyone else. We want to be someone that people will chase after or try to be like. Isn't it true that in love we want people to come to us, to find us and chase after us? We want friends to want to be with us and be in our group. People want friends to want to be friends. Relationships need to want each other. Without a desire there is no need, there is no love.

You must pursue. You must chase. You need to. The other person needs to be needed. Everybody needs to be needed. No one likes being alone.