Questioning Personal Preconceptions
As a new holiday season turns the corner and new challenges arise, having an easy job seems like something NOT to boast about. While my ambitions have yet to recess altogether, I recently visited the Original Immersive Van Gogh Exhibit of Houston and I will say I’m shaken as to what is any-longer important.
A quick Google search will show that the book entitled A Purpose Driven Life is missing it’s sequel: An Income Driven Life. With food & shelter basically in surplus around the US, the excess of support appears to have peculiarly brought some obstacles along with it.
For example, in my personal life, an abundance of groceries has in fact preceded some poor dieting habits. Thermostats and warm clothing very-well could’ve lowered my ability to ‘brave the cold’. What about the general public? Has a profusion of medications led to weaker immune systems overall? All I know is that the love and support I feel from friends and family keeps me sensitive to similar issues… opportunistically.
Recently, I’ve turned 30… and I’ve noticed some unexpected feelings of urgency, obligation and frustration. I feel urgency to have children before my senior-citizen parents pass way, obligation to have a more reputable or higher-paying job, and frustration with not being able to let myself off the hook. I’m convinced almost everyone encounters these feelings at some point in life. So, why not peel these open and cultivate my honest thoughts about them to help humankind?
Why am I not drawn to move up in the company or pursue my degree field? How can I explain it to friends and family without taking on judgment or accidentally causing someone else uneasiness? There seems to be an undiscovered way where I can retain self-assurance while also being sensitive to others self-confidence. Like mad, I’ve been trying to avoid “salivating to the wrong stimulus” as found in Pavlov's experiments. Better yet, I’m on a quest to determine an appropriately worthy stimulus.
What good can be said about lounging in back yard and combing through the grass for bugs? Are there any merits to be given for playing hide and seek with the birds? Funny enough, an older brother of mine once suggested I go out into the wooded area behind our house and talk with the owls. “You don't need to bring anything” he said “no food or water and ANYTHING. Just sit and listen for a few hours… and they will come to you”.
What kind of experience could be noble, admirable or sensible to share in a world liberally connected by the web?
Here is an uncommon and nearly esoteric quote that has stuck with me.
…but the trouble is that the schools got the wrong idea. They gave people honors for learning. The reward for studying French should be the ability to speak French and enjoy reading French and having fun with French people. But when you get a degree for it then the degree becomes the point in a game of one-upmanship and of course one-upmanship is the main business of the educational community today. …and then of course there’s a whole world of one-upmanship in research and publication of learning papers…What’s the relative quantity of footnotes, the basic text footnotes, on footnotes? And the various ways of making bibliography painfully accurate!? …And its endless, but you see what it is? It’s ‘scholarship about scholarship’. Just as learning because “learning is good for you”. It’s irrelevant to learning. -Alan Watts
In a recent discussion about personal health, my partner pointed out that sizeable portions of companies like Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson were owned by politicians. Corporate lobbying, along with 15 cases where the US government publicly confessed to lying, has led me to be firmly skeptical. Does admitting to a lie build credibility or weaken it? After all, deception is as perfectly natural to this world as the bioluminescence of an anglerfish or the eyespots of a butterfly. I’m compelled, at the very least, to tread lightly when anyone asks for my thoughts about the COVID vaccines. In short, where there is risk (of vaccine injury) I believe there ought to be choice.
More profoundly, I recently discovered Earthing and the impact of grounding this electrical mechanism that we call our body. Here’s the link. Wow… How disconnected (literally) have things wound up? It seems nearly all preconceptions are fair game to question now. No problem for me; I’ve grown used to being inquisitive.
In my recent trip to Houston to visit my girlfriends family, some rather puzzling ideas came to light. I met a tall gentleman from the Louisiana countryside who laughed unabashedly. Burly and kind-hearted, his passions soon became clear; guns, the great outdoors and Cajun cooking. After four of us went shooting at the gun range we spent the rest of the evening having a few drinks in the back yard. By the fire and under the Texas stars, we got to talking.
When I showed this man my medical cannabis card from Oklahoma, he sincerely informed me that my girlfriend might have to own the guns for us because of the restrictions associated it. Fully aware of this restriction, I said that I was aware and that I just about agreed with it myself. Off-the-cuff utterances like these usually edge me to self-reflection and often keep me quiet on the drive home.
I heard once that, after adolescence, people tend to realize their limited time on this earth and look to narrow down aspirations (getting to work on their bucket lists). Frankly, I’ve been working on mine since the mid 2000’s and I’ve nearly completed it. Feeling older than my birth certificate reads, I’ve been thoroughly exploring my true interests and emotional well-being.
There’s little need to mention my family history of clinically diagnosed depression, but arguably, Cannabis has helped me laugh, act silly and feel childlike again. I say “arguably” sheerly because of how powerful the placebo effect is (I’m no exception). One lesson I’ve learned is to not mislead yourself, and in my pursuit of self-development, I’ve come across this question posed by Mr. Watts: “Why do you want to be better?”. To avoid spoiling any goodies found in Eastern thought, I’ll leave this topic up to you the reader to investigate.
My heart tells me that the underlying purpose of this article is to holistically share my account of some recently illuminated deceptions, specifically in regards to personal preconceptions. If I soon find myself rightfully corrected in some ways then so be it. Tomorrow isn’t promised and the tools for transformation are here waiting.
From the looks of things, inflammation seems to be close to the root cause of most health issues. I could list a variety of healing practices like cold-exposure, diaphragmatic breathing or intermittent fasting but maybe influencing people isn’t what I what to do anyway. For years, I longed to become financially rich and now I’m not so sure that’s really what I want either.
Nowadays, the fact that children are more likely to eat a chicken (“pink slime”) nugget than a wild dandelion is astounding. How do I approach this dilemma (and others like it) as an aspiring humanitarian? My own attempts to avoid sugary, oily, deep-fried & otherwise ultra-processed foods have been only moderately successful. Should I lead by example or just eat the dang ice cream and keep my mouth shut? Truthfully, I find myself somewhere in the middle… with vegan ice cream.
Wherever you are and whatever you’re getting into, I wish you health and a happy holiday season.
