Too often we don’t appreciate what we didn’t work for or had to sacrifice for in one way or another.  Hand something to us with no effort exerted on our part to acquire it, and we’ll probably exhibit some scantily shallow and rather quickly fleeting degree of appreciation for it.  But make us work for something and expend actual energy in order to … [Read more...]

We all have our monsters, whatever they may be.  For some, it’s fear of failure.  For others it’s lack of self-confidence.  And then there are other monsters like fear of relationships, or fear of risk, or fear of being vulnerable, or fear of rejection.  Then there’s the more obvious one’s like fear of heights or confined spaces or crowds.  The … [Read more...]

I am quite good at replication.  Indeed, I am very adept of taking that which is, whatever that is, and repeating it over and over.  In fact, I can repeat any number of things to repetitive perfection which sometimes turns into repetitive redundancy.  I can do that quite well because I’m quite familiar with that which I am repeating.  Whatever it … [Read more...]

We find ourselves captivated by a whole lot of things.  There’s a whole bunch of stuff that we become absolutely fascinated with, sometimes to the point that we’re held in some sort of riveted hypnotic trance.   A lot of times we’re kind of like mesmerized moths who find ourselves irresistibly drawn to some sort of light, erratically fluttering … [Read more...]

There appears to be this morbid and seemingly trance-like focus on all that’s wrong in our world. This negative focus generates a debilitating sense of hopelessness that seems to exponentially grow to catastrophic proportions and beyond. We need to be painfully honest about the difficulties in our world, for to state that they are anything less … [Read more...]

I want to be happy, but I don’t think I want to be satisfied.  I want to experience a resilient and wonderfully endearing sense of contentment that neatly threads itself through every part of my soul, but I don’t want that contentment to morph into the baser mentality of complacency.  I want to keep a weathered eye on every horizon, but I want to … [Read more...]

You ever notice that we seem to be on this relentless quest where we’re scrutinizing ourselves raw in order to ascertain what we think our flaws, our foibles, our weaknesses and our warts are?  We put ourselves under some sort of minutely dissecting microscope with skewed lenses in order to ferret out all of our little imperfections.  We … [Read more...]

What lies ahead of us is shrouded in the milky fog of mystery and the confounding muse of speculation that such mystery provokes.  What lies behind us might tempt us to mystery and speculation, but it will only do so in regard to making sense of what lies behind us.  And in this thing called ‘time’ and in this journey that we call ‘life,’ we are … [Read more...]

No one likes pain.  We don’t go shopping for it and we don’t clip coupons trying to get it at some discount.  I don’t think most of us expend our lives in the pursuit of it, nor are we on some sort of safari with the intent of bagging it as a trophy.  In reality, when we see it coming, we typically run as fast and as far as possible in whatever … [Read more...]

Mankind’s history is strewn with sordid stories of horrific evil.  The yellowed pages of history as well as the fresh pages of the daily paper are littered thick and knee deep with accounts of ruthless destruction, mindless devastation, heartless obliteration and acts so viciously awful that they are at times entirely incomprehensible.  We can cull … [Read more...]