My Deepest Fear...

 I had a bad dream the other night, maybe it was a nightmare.

I died, and my wife did too as she was beside me, we were walking through what seemed like a forest path, we were walking to 'the light' I guess, but before we could go their, some hands came up from the ground along the bath and waved in that familiar 'ah ah ah' shape, telling us we had to go back.

So we turned around and started heading back, when another path occurred with more hands pointing us to the left.

As we walked left we suddenly found ourselves in some type of forest graveyard, full of tombstones, but not just any tombstones these had so many names of people we knew

And as you approached a tombstone of someone who knew you, their was a card lying their, and in the card was all the wonderful things that the person had to say about you, all the differences you made in their lives that they were grateful for.

Sounds pretty cool right? - but the only reason I knew this is what it was is because my wife had so many cards written about her, but try as I searched I could not find one card about me, not one card of anyone who I made any difference too, of any 'good' I did in the world while I was a alive!

As I was getting disappointed, suddenly another man or 'avatar' of sorts appeared to mock me. The form reminded me of Mike Tyson. He told me of course no one would have left me anything, as it can be plainly seen that in life, I was nothing but an asshole.

The thing  as I looked back, it did not seem like I was an asshole, I saw myself as a pretty good person, not perfect of course, but pretty decent. To which he laughed and said, that is because I was unable to see how truly horrible I really was, and this is not surprising since all assholes always think they are "good" people. No one really things they are 'bad' and they are often surprised at the end to find out who they really are!

I tried to deny it, but I could not, I remembered the times I  felt 'bad' but didn't know why the small 'glimpses' of being a jerk or an asshole that I had someone hidden in the back of my subconscious, I suddenly realized what a selfish, horrible life I had lead, and that is when I woke up.

So I realized - this is my worst fear - what if I am going through life, doing the motions, thinking I'm a "good" person, only to someday realize, that I have never once helped another person, never once did anything that made anyone feel loved or grateful to have me in their lives, what if I am deluding myself, thinking myself 'good' but I truly am not, and may never make any kind of difference in this world?

Highs and Lows

Original Post - Nov 7, 2019

I started off today full of anxiety. The anxiety started the day before, in my workplace we had lost our network connection. I was giving a document review meeting, and I made the judgement call to postpone the meeting until two days later. My supervisor was away on vacation, and the decision I made would move a deliverable out by a couple of days.

Shortly after making the decision I found myself racked with worry. Not so much guilt about the decision I made, but worry about he consequences of having to explain my choice to my boss who I felt confident would not agree with my decision, who would disagree with my choice, possibly even chastise me for not making the choice he/she thought was best at the time.

I spent a lot of mental energy trying to manage these anxious feelings, trying to give myself comforting words. I did extra meditations and positive thinking sessions. In the end, my boss never even said a thing about it. Listened to a log of Zig Ziglar today as well.

Halfway through the morning, I started feeling a 'high', recognizing that my worry had not come to pass, feeling a little safe and at the same time proud of myself for making it through my judgement call without any emotional scars. I went for a small walk around the building listening to some upbeat music and was dancing and prancing all the way around.

This high lasted me most of the day, it increased even more when I spoke to the gentleman on the street who always offers a poem or a joke for a 'penny'. I never carry change, but he told me a few as freebies anyway. Later that evening I worked on documenting the technique for a workshop called "Name That Capability", something a few members in a social media group heard about and asked to learn more. I also put together a little surprise from my younger sister (who turned 40 Nov 6) for her birthday.

Well it's now about 1:50 in the morning, and that high has seemed to have ended, leaving me reflecting on the day, not feeling horrible about myself but not particularly 'good' either.  Thinking about theses 'highs' and 'lows'. Wondering if it is possible to learn to appreciate and enjoy BOTH the highs and the lows. To recognize them both as part of the total human experience, to not run away from the anxiety, the worry, but to accept it and let go?

Still don't have the answers...still trying to grow!

The boss and the bully

People respond to trauma in different ways. In order to move on, move past a bad negative event in our lives we need to find a way to cope, a way to order the world around us, to make sense of what happened, why it happened to us, and it changes who we are fundamentally inside.

Though out my childhood, I have been regarded as a 'smart person', and I like it. I like doing things that impress others. You could call it 'showing off', and in a way it is, but fundamentally it is about being happy with who  I am as a person on the inside It is about using my skills and talents to try and help others.

Over the years, I suppose it has become my motto to help others, but that motto is not as altruistic as it might sound. I help others because it lets me feel good about myself.  There are so many negative thoughts inside me of 'not being a good enough person' and the joy of helping someone solve a problem masks the inner pain of the possibility that I am not "good enough". This same feeling pushes me with ambition to proove myself both to myself and to others.

When I was bullied as a child, I turned it inward on myself, I attacked myself for not being good enough,. I still do to this day, perhaps it's a bit more logical, perhaps a bit less emotional. When I feel attacked, I attack myself even harder on the inside, believing I must have done something wrong that I 'deserve' it, that I am being punished for  being too boastful, for feeling to 'full of myself'. It's like a barometer, trying to constantly navigate feeling good about myself, but not so good that no one wants to be my friend.

I have a problem with authority because the bullies of my past held a power over me, and it was unfair they held this power over me. To this day I don't want anyone holding over me the power to control what I am or who I am, or limit me in what I can become. I find certain authority figures in my life do ust that. My interaction triggers that 'bully' feeling from when I was young, and it scares me just like it scared me then. The difference now that I am older is that I have the confidence in myself to confront the "bully", something which I never had the courage to do as a child. My insecurity revolves around my fear these people holding power over me. My reaction is to 'fight back' in the hopes that the bully will back down. I even secretly wish for the satisification that he/she will fail at life, will be unhappy and miserable for the things they have done to me.

But as I said some people re-act to trauma differently.  Perhaps, others when bullied rather then attack themselves inwardly focus instead on the feelings of personal humiliation. I watched a movie the other night where the boy was being bullied in a locker room, kicked and punched, his underwear pulled up (atomic wedgie) until he pissed himself, leaving him feeling angry and humiliated.

Now if you were bullied in this way, how might it effect how you look at the world? I bet it would be a bit different for you than it was for me. You fight against personal humiliation. For you it might not be about a power struggle but instead a loss of dignity, and how dare anyone try to take that dignity away from you! You might later learn to use that growth experience to crawl and fight your way through life building a reputation that demands respect from those around you. This may result in a high work ethic, and strong authoritarian style may excel you upwards. But all along perhaps you secretly fear the humiliation of being 'found out'. What if "they" realize I am not the strong person they thing I am? What if they find out and I am humiliated.  Trusting others is difficult, sure some folks like good people, but how long will it be before he/she turns on me? Tries to make me feel humiliated? I can't let that happen! I won't let that happen. No one will EVER do that to me again!!

Like minds .. get along.  Those who would feel like me, who would tend to beat themselves up about the smallest of things understand one another, empathy and compassion flow easily among them. Those who understand the horrors of humiliation likewise learn to appreciate, understand and respect the necessity of behaviors that require authority.

So I ask you, what happens when these two personalities interact with one another?

The person who wants to feel good about himself, who knows he is 'smart', who wants to use his skills to help others, who wants to impress others to "show off", but is deeply afraid of people trying to hold power over him because of the trauma of bulling, and the person (probably in management or a position of authority) secretly afraid of being 'found out' or  humiliated?

Well for me it is a battle, because I see the authority figure as a potential bully trying to limit me prevent me from being my best version of myself.  I see them bullying others in the same way too trying to get what they want regardless of consequences. So I respond in 2 ways, a) one to work harder to try and improve myself (because I start beating myself up) and b) confront the 'bully' with what they are doing and tell them it is unacceptable

...and what does the 'bully' feel when confronted?  You guessed it humiliation!.  All of there flaws and mistakes out their for the world to see?  How dare you!

When the truth is neither myself nor the manager are "bad" people, but we easily push each others buttons. My desire to help and support others, and to point out what seems as bad behavior to me, causes feelings of humiliation which causes a re-action of anger towards me, which enforces my feelings of being bullied, and the cycle continues throughout adulthood. The bullying of our past never really leaves us, perhaps we try to manage it more professionally, but it always stays with us.

So where does that leave me? Well if I understand what is happening perhaps now I can find a way to feel more compassion towards the other person, to understand their reaction is about preventing feelings of humiliation, a concept that I admit is a bit hard for me to understand, but we both have an inner critic, a voice with the best of intentions to try and make us better people, but that does so by hurting us...

Think about what type of person you are. Perhaps you have not experienced the trauma but when  you see it in a movie or read it, or watch it happen on the street, what do you  tend to focus on? Do you feel angry at the bully for trying to exert power over the victim? Do you feel angry at the bully for the humiliation he/she has caused to the victim? Perhaps you can see both sides, perhaps you can empathize with both sides, but for me it's still a learning and growth experience.

Human Nature , and Logic

 The other morning while doing some 'deep thinking', I imagined someone asking me the question, "Why do some people just not 'get along' with you?

Perhaps -  my voice sounds condescending to others? I do not mean it to sound that way, and I do not feel it, but our voice never sounds the same to others as it does in our own head, so I thought maybe that is what is at the 'root' of the problem.

Upon deeper thinking however, I think fundamentally the problem lies in how we tend to jump on certain 'thought trains' and are not willing to jump off regardless of evidence to the contrary.

If I simply think that someone is being condescending to me then everything that he/she says will match that belief and validate my assumption.

Even more interesting that when multiple people get the same 'impression' from what another person 'says' or 'does' it seems to 'validate' the thinking. ie: if 4 people experienced me talking, and 3 of them found it condescending, then it MUST BE TRUE.

Looking back I think this is a problem that has plagued me my whole life.  I have a lot of thoughts and ideas that do not seem to match with 'mainstream' thinking. Things that when a lot of people hear me say they think I'm "weird". If 10 other people think I am an A**hole, this is not what makes it true. I believe it is my heart, my actions, and my choices, that determine who I am, not the collective opinions of others.

It has always been difficult for me to have more than one friend 'at a time'. I guess one person when talking to me can push aside / ignore my 'quirkiness', but in groups of 2 or more, where they can each share thoughts within one another on my quirks with others, this somehow 'validates' them and I become the 'odd one out'

But I don't try to change, I don't try to become different then who I am, who I feel inside, I don't see anything 'wrong' with me that needs changing. In fact, I think I stand out as a lesson to society. People talk about multi-cultism, about ending racism, and treating people fairly (if not equally), but in the end I am not sure such a world is even inherent in our nature.

We (humans) seem hell bent on focusing on what makes us different, using ridicule or social pressures to hide ourselves, to only interact and express commonality to those around us.

We buy on emotion, and later justify with 'reasoning', we 'like' posts not necessarily because they reflect our inner selves but because we say others like it too, we have an inner need to be accepted by the groups around us, to conform..and not all of us are 'good' at doing this, not everyone 'wants' to do this.. and these people who are 'different' are considered hard to 'get along with'. 

What do you think? - Please leave your ideas in the comments below. Thanks

Only Mechanics should drive cars?

From the novel to the mainstream...

 

 

 Do you have your license to drive ? - Do you drive on a regular basis?

If you answered yes...do you recall what motivated you to learn to drive?

I have a bit of a pet peeve..whenever, I hear someone use the excuse, "oh I don't know how to use "x" technology - I'm not a computer person / geek / tech nerd, etc.

I am a software developer/programmer, I write (and fix code)..somewhat like your mechanic fixes your car when it breaks down.

When the first cars came on the market (horseless carriages), I imagine there were some initial people who "wanted nothing to do with those strange contraptions" .. And the early adopters well they were just plain 'wierdos',

In fact, perhaps the first horseless carriages were driven by the creators of this new technology, and with a few simple instructions they taught others how to drive them.

Today, millions of people know how to drive cars, and very few of them can tell you the least about how an 'internal combustion engine works', and that's fine, because you do not need to understand how a car works in order to drive one.

Now-a-days. If you want to learn to drive a car, you can be taught by a friend, a relative, or even the education system "driving school". The people teaching you to drive, have no need to understand 'how the car works'

No one - goes around saying "I can't drive one of those - I'm not a mechanic".. it sounds ridiculous. 

You have the ability to learn anything you want to. The only limitation in inside you. You may not WANT to learn a specific computer skill, or how to dance, or even how to fix a car, and that is your choice. You may not be an early adopter either. You may choose to wait until 'technology x' is mainstream..but don't fool yourself or tell yourself excuses, be proud of who you are. It's okay to take things slow and easy, to learn at your own pace, it is not okay to blame others and suggest that only mechanics can drive cars !

Dreams - Lava Lamp and Sleep Walking

 

For my birthday this year, I received this cool blue lava lamp. The lamp is placed at the top of my bed, and during the night gives this almost 'pre-daylight glow'.

Ever since the lava lamp being placed there, I have been having the most vivid recall of my dreams.

Last night's dream in particular was an entire documentary on an invention made in the 1800's that allowed people to better associate areas of latitude and longitude on the earth surface as related in maps. The device that was invented was this sort of half round globe, that extended onto a table, you could overlay it on any map and then define where the areas of latitude and longitude should be drawn relative to the area you were trying to define.

At first I thought that perhaps the TV was on while I was sleeping, it is not uncommon for a real documentary to have bits and pieces intertwined in my sleep, however in this case, there was no TV on, and I have no idea how this dream came into being. So far as I know no such 'device' exists, but it seemed pretty real in the dream and looked something like this.

The closest I can figure, before going to bed I watched an episode of legends of tomorrow. In it John Constantine finds this odd alien map, which  he aligns to world map to determine a location. Perhaps this someone created the whole documentary in my dream - who knows?

A second dream I had that same night - I was 'sleep walking', now I wasn't actually sleep walking, I was having a dream that I was sleep walking. In the dream I walked into the bathroom and looked at my own reflection, and this is how I knew I was dreaming, because the creepy image that looked back at me did not have any eyes open and a weird empty black whole where my mouth should have been.

Seeing this reflection, I immediately realized that something was 'wrong' and that I must be asleep, possibly sleep walking.

Odd right?

Evolution - Nature - and Racism

 So I recently came across a Facebook post that linked to an interesting article. "Woooly mammoth cells brought back to life". The post was new though the article written in 2019. What surprised me was the number of comments that suggested people shouldn't be "messing with nature"

 

 I first heard about the woolly mammoth DNA recovery from an episode of Expedition Unknown  which aired in 2016 and postulated the idea of cloning the mammoth and bringing it back to life.

 

Which got me thinking, aren't humans part of nature? and if so, can we do something that is 'against nature'?

This becomes a very slippery slope line of thinking.

At what point did humans evolve 'beyond' nature? 

We think that because we can make decisions, that we can foresee the potential consequences of our actions that we are somehow 'better' then those lesser animals. They can be 'forgiven' for killing their own species or making an entire species extinct, because "they don't know better"

Nature is not some 'magical' thing that keeps the world in balance.  Take for example bunnies and foxes.  When the fox population increases, the bunny population decreases. Eventually the foxes eat too many bunnies, their food source is depleted and the foxes die of starvation. Without a lot of foxes the bunnies can thrive once again and grow in large numbers..and the cycle continues.

The human race is not much different. We continue to over consume the resources of the world, we foolishly  once believed that there was enough fish to sustain us until the end of time 

 At some point I suppose we 'evolved' to recognize the error of our ways? Throughout history we discriminated against those that were different, in gender, culture,religious beliefs, color of our skin. Human beings believed they were 'better' then other 'human beings'. We enslaved those that we we didn't believe were "as good" as us. Was that nature?

When you look into the past it is easy to condemn the actions of our ancestors. In their day the attitudes, sentiments and actions were considered "normal", except for a few that disagreed. Perhaps - the human race was less 'evolved'? Now we know better.

And this is the problem isn't it? - For if we were 'less evolved' - can our ancestors be blamed for our mistakes any more then the fox that kills the rabbit?. Sure today we can be blamed for the action, but what about our ancestors? It was those that fought against the racism and the prejudice that brought us (continues to bring us) into the light every day..and yet through all of this we still remain a part of nature.

We have not evolved past it, nature moves with us. We can no longer more ourselves 'better then nature' then we can consider ourselves 'better then another race or belief system'

Suppose the technology that brings back the Woolly mammoth  can solve problems of world hunger, can erase at least some of the mistakes of our ancestors - is it worth it? What will future generations think of us when they look back at our actions at our cloning? - Will those performing such research be looked at heroes or villains? - only time will tell

 

Related:

My campaign to bring Josh Gates to Oak Island