In this time of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder that many of us have been unaware of, how many take a moment to look at the moon and meditate on it? Enjoy a sunrise? Melt into a sunset? That’s just a few examples.
Always in a rush to get somewhere and get something done so we can waste our time looking at the magical gadget that has taken over our lives and minds.
The meditation of cooking a meal. The thoughts and memories it ignites. The desire of cutting and preparing food and the knowledge of the spices you embrace. Then eating, tasting and enjoying every bite.
That moment when all things unite to bring an elation. A breeze, a smell, a sound a feeling, a breath of serenity. Slow down and seize the moment by taking a moment and reap the benefits of it.
To bite into a piece of fruit and find it dried out, will shape your expectations of the fruit depending on your experience with the fruit.
However, if you have bitten into that piece of fruit before and it was juicy and delicious, you will have an openness to consuming it again.
But, if it’s the first time you experience this fruit and it was very bitter and dry, you might never want to eat it again and it could make one avoid the fruit altogether. But should it?
Would the willingness to try it again be based on one’s consciousness at the time of eating the fruit or one’s percipience of fruit.
A shade tree in the summer is great, when the sun is shining bright and the temperature is above eighty degrees. The shade alleviates one from the heat of the sun.
That same shade tree is avoided in the winter when the sun is shining just as bright and the temperature is below fifty degrees. The sun’s warmth is welcomed and needed.
It’s the same sun.
Who you are should never be taken lightly, by you. It takes decades of adulthood to become who you are, and even then you’re not done. Every day is a new opportunity to learn and experience life.
Right and wrong has never changed unless it’s being pushed through a lense of hypocrisy or a groupthink narrative. Then the line becomes blurred through propaganda. There is good and bad in every situation. You must be able to understand it as it all comes down to one’s perception and perspective.
Being open-minded and recognizing the influence of context can lead to a more nuanced understanding of the world. It’s optimal for personal growth and understanding.
However, one needs to strike a balance between striving for personal growth and putting oneself in personal peril. The answer is using common sense in your life’s journey.
Common sense allows for exploration and learning without compromising safety or well-being. Common sense acts as a practical guide, helping individuals navigate their life’s journey with a sensible and balanced approach away from harm’s way.
To open one’s mind means to be receptive to new ideas, perspectives, and experiences, allowing for a broader understanding of the world. It involves a willingness to consider alternative viewpoints, question assumptions, and embrace diversity in thought.
What it doesn’t mean is to accept what is popular just because it is the trendy narrative push of what the fashionable group collective holds to be true.
Truth doesn’t need to be popular. It’s independent. It represents an accurate and honest reflection of a situation. No emotional fantasies or chaotic illusions. To stray away from truth eventually leads to dismality.
Be wary of dubious claims from the Snake Oil Peddlers, that don’t make sense or seem too good to be true.
Trust your own intuition by following your common sense.
Genius a word thrown around like pollen in the wind. A word once uttered indiscriminately, occasionally, infrequently from time to time when it actually meant something, a creative mind and intelligence. One who spent a career accomplishing something profound and significant. The relativity of gravity, the creation of electricity, flight, transportation and on.
People just doing what was intrinsically inherently because of passion without context of praise and glory. Just the satisfaction derived from the activity itself.
Now it’s a word used in propaganda to push a political narrative. Marketing and promoting ignorance to the increasingly growing masses of unintelligent who eat it up like oxygen from a splintered wooden bucket.
A word that would take one years and decades to be considered after an incredible accomplishment is now designated to a composer of a pop song, an actor, or a social media influencer by the younger generation.
The concept of genius usually involves a broader and deeper impact across various aspects of knowledge, intellect and creativity. An accomplishment that has made the advancement of life better for the masses.
Some may say language evolves and shifts with societal norms and cultural changes. Grunting was once the norm thousands of years ago. However, we have evolved into linguistic richness, that’s being tossed asides for asinine objectives.
Babies speak gibberish to communicate and continue to advance and push themselves towards betterment in semantics. Over a short time they strive to refine their lexical skills innately. The synapses are firing. Learning and intelligence continues to improve when challenged.
Facing challenges often stimulates cognitive growth, problem-solving skills, and adaptability, contributing to ongoing improvement in one’s capacity to learn and display intelligence. The footing and foundation of creating genius.
I remember in acting class we were assigned a role to perform with two or more people. In the beginning, I noticed people highlighting only their parts with a highlighter. Just memorizing what they are going to say.
I worked with a director once who discouraged this process of memorization in a play and for good reason. When one memorizes only what they need to say, the other actors and audience members are being cheated.
When cueing up to the last couple of words of the other person dialogue, you truly are not responding by listening. The process becomes robotic. A sound bite to recite.
This has recently been going on in society also. People just don’t listen anymore. They are looking at you while preoccupied in an abyss of narcissistic chaos and drifting away mentally.
They just want to talk and then talk over you.
Once in a while during a conversation, throw in a made up word or phrase to see if the person you are speaking with stops you to explain that word or phrase.
Is it because the smart phones have been covertly rewiring our brains? The looking glass skewing our perspectives and perceptions. Destroying our patience and creating a turbulent impatience to our attention spans.
Digital devices have become digital babysitters for parents, offering entertainment and distraction for their children while they do the same. Communication as a family unit is diminishing since the inception of digital literacy. This is how the young are learning to communicate.
Human connections and experiences are being lost. Communication is slowly disintegrating as texting and messaging are taking over and semantics are suffering the repercussions. Acronyms and abbreviated words are become commonplace in language.
To focus and look into the eyes of the person you are speaking with is the key to communicating. Listening and recognizing the vocal patterns and reciprocating in kind.
Listen closely, learn, understand and focus on the what is being said. Write the whole word out in a text, it doesn’t take any longer.
Put down the gadgets and communicate in person. Look at the person your speaking with. It’s so much better for you to see laughter than a laughing emoji or lol.
Mother Nature you are indeed a remarkable force, what more can one ask of you?
You have created the trees and seas so that we could breathe fresh air while providing us pleasant water for nourishment.
You originated a climate we can live, move freely and prosper from.
You sprinkled assorted minerals into the dirt and atmosphere to fertilize so we can have substance and material to construct shelter from the vagaries of weather.
Everything essential for life and survival in our intricate balance of an ecosystem has generously been donated by you.
Proud is a word associated with ego and I try to use others in its place. Satisfaction comes to mind. I will rephrase the question.
What has brought you the most satisfaction in life?
My family. To be able to be part of the creation of a human being, listening to it heartbeat, feeling it kick while still inside the mother. The anticipation of the birth, then watching and hearing it’s first breath, first sound, smile, word, laughter, learning to roll over and crawl, walk, to form a sentence, the absence of fear in their curiosity and on and on. Everyday is a joy.
After a few years comes the first drop off day of pre-school, I dropped them off, waved to them, they wave back and I walked away and cried like a baby. I still tear up thinking about their introduction of independence without their parents being present.
Observing them growing into little people with all the zing of attitude, love, emotion and zaniness. To hear their laughter is a high like no other. When they’re sick, you wish you could take their place.
Listening to them speak about the social situations and issues at school and how they deal with it. How they bond with others their age. Hiding in plain sight, when they play with their toys and joke around with their siblings. It’s incredible.
The perception of them learning new things, playing sports, their communication of opinions, and the highs and lows they undergo.
The bliss of being able to be part of it and participate in it all. As a parent it’s a constant learning experience and helps make you a better all around person.
Letting them know, you will be their for them as long as you live a viable life.
I’ve accomplished many things in life, lived in different cities and states, received college degrees, performed on stage, on film, commercials, playing music live in front of an audience, becoming a Freemason and became the Worshipful Master of my lodge and being able to put my life back together when the floor from underneath me was pulled away, twice.
Everything, I have accomplished and didn’t has encompassed satisfaction. However, that being said, nothing has brought me my greatest satisfaction as my children have and continue to do so.
They’re all teenagers now and I still love to listen to them talk about life, friends, experiences while listening to their music playlist in the background. Driving with the windows down, blasting music and all of us singing along together while the wind flows in and out the windows.
I can look back on these times and cherish each and every one.
The seasons of the year haven’t changed for thousands of years. Like rocks. There are grains, pebbles, rocks and mountains.
The seasonal names, winter and summer have been around for more than one thousands years, however, the names of spring and fall/autumn are more recent, partly because these two seasons were viewed as secondary to summer and winter. Transitioning from one extreme to another.
Before there was autumn and fall, there was harvest. A time when farmers traditionally gather the fruits of their labor before the onset of winter and their agricultural activities decrease. It had a strong association with this important agricultural activity.
Spring was once called lent. When the snow melts, the days lengthen, the weather gets warmer and foliage begins to bloom.
When I was young the word lent for me was associated with Catholicism and Christianity. A calling for forty days of fasting, from Lent through to Easter and it happened during Springtime, I never knew the correlation of the two words other than one was a season and the others was a vocation.
The wording or labels don’t change what each season creates. Even if you lived in areas of extreme weather during a season. Winter in the south is never as extreme as winter in the north. If we were to change the name of winter to semyarnati, it wouldn’t change what it is. It would still be the same mildness of cold and extremes in the different regions.
Which brings me to the fact of words. Snow by any other names is still, frozen precipitation in the form of ice crystals that falls from the sky when the atmospheric conditions are cold enough.
Words don’t change that what they are. Bad was once a standard of poor quality and behaviors. In today’s world, it now can also mean exceptional.
Words are everywhere and ever changing.
Words cannot harm. Hate speech is just another’s inability to comprehend the wording without getting emotional. An emotional outburst is not about the words. It’s goes much deeper psychologically and has nothing to do with the words. It’s speech or talk or articulation, discourse, expression or just plain old communication. Take the emotion out and it’s only linguistics.
How one reacts is not the point of the statement but a fallout of an emotional reaction provoked by one’s inability to comprehend what was said without calmly acknowledging the semantics.
By putting that much emotional emphasis on a word or string of words, you are choosing to put yourself in a cage and losing the freedom to walk away unscathed.
You are in control so why let anyone inside your head to vandalize it?
My life has always felt like the area between the holes on a belt or watch band. Never really comfortable. it’s either too tight or too loose.
We are who we are and learn to deal with our situations in life through being omnipresent with our encounters. The way to happiness is how we engage or don’t engage with these encounters.
We engage with our bodies to make them stronger. We engage with our diet and health to make us stronger. But do we engage with our minds to make them stronger?
Social Media has the capability to make our minds stronger, but does it? Or does it make us lazier and dumber and leading to shorter attention spans with a preference for immediate gratification and avoiding critical analysis.
We have become algorithms to sell products,. Whether it be, charitable, political, racial, sexual or commercial. That is its focus.
Having the world at our fingertips should provide an abundance of opportunity to be better humans toward each other but it hasn’t. It has the opportunities of gaining wisdom and understanding. However, it’s made us more untrusting, incapable, unstable and unhappy.
This addiction has created a significant, divisive, division while we voluntarily pay a fee to be part of it all. We must rise above it.
Like it’s forefather television, social media was created to control our minds, behaviors, thoughts and wallets with a ding, clicks and likes. Taking our attention away from the truly important things.
Ultimately, we have the power to choose how we interact with this technology, whether it be positive or negative. Choose wisely.
Being free to make choices without pressure or anxiety. To express myself without prejudice of a judge or jury while pursuing my intent without undue restrictions.
I live with integrity to help promote my honesty, trustworthiness, and ethical standards that include taking responsibility for my actions and having empathy and caring for Mother Earth.
I have confidence in truth, being honest and transparent with oneself and others, and making morally sound decisions. No secondary purpose for reason.
Adhering to these principals, have contributed to my personal growth and mental well-being that invigorates positive and unequivocal relationships with others.
Living by these principles, I can live and promote a higher standard of life and happiness for myself and help inspire others to assist in implementing the world to become a healthier situation and space.
I was an extra on the film Amistad while they were filming in the New England. I think Connecticut. Now I understand why when I was younger, I couldn’t understand why older people sometimes can’t recollect some things.
During lunch time there was a big tent full of tables and chairs so we could sit and eat. There were hundreds of extra there. I noticed after a couple days on set that all the different ethnicities where all sitting together eating lunch. Sitting only the with the same race that they were.
I got thinking that most people would rather sit with people just like them. It must be a comfort and a small sampling of why many people never leave where they were born.
I was always interested in other cultures since I was very young.
I went to Community College in my mid twenties and felt more alive then I ever been. I would meet all types of people for all over my state. It was here that I encountered my first gay friend. Being a straight man from where I grew up, that was a milestone.
I transferred to Emerson College in Boston and rented an apartment near Fenway Park. The diversity of people from all over the world were in Boston. My aliveness moved up a couple more notches.
I worked full time, went to school full time and had to put time aside for scene study meetings and a musical rehearsals. I never felt freer.
I went back home after I got my degree and would find work in NYC or New England to continue to learn and gain knowledge.
I decided to move to Los Angeles and engulfed myself in the differences of people and the great stories they had about where they came from. Worked on film/tv/commercial sets, at all the big studios and on location.
If I saw a homeless person, I would start a conversation with them. My fiends would comment to each other, “he talks to everyone.”
Later I lived in an apartment in a building that housed scholars and intellectuals from all over the world. It was sponsored by the Getty Museum’s Research Institute.
I met some very interesting people. One scholar who got the, “artist in residence title” knocked on my door. Now my wife at the time was the housing coordinator of this building so if anyone needed anything or had a problem, they would contact my wife.
I didn’t meet this gentleman as of yet. He knocked at the door and I opened it. He asked for my wife. I said hold on and walked over to her. I said, “some homeless guy is at the door asking for you.” She looked at the guy and whispered to me, “That’s the artist in residence not a homeless guy.” I replied, “ he looks homeless to me.” I met so many cool people.
I became a Freemason at a lodge that’s membership was very diverse. A group of men from all over the world whom I might have never met and learned about if I never opened the door to the lodge.
I’m very satisfied living in a melting pot of diversity and enjoy it. That doesn’t mean that we all agree on everything but we can come to an understanding of differences. I raised my kids that way.
If you rather hang and live with your own kind and that’s where you find comfort and solitude, that’s cool. I understand the differences.
Chu The Cud 