Being Reasonable

I was reading on social media this morning that 5 planets are in retrograde, and it occurred to me that my new way of thinking and planning by reason has influenced areas such as this, as well.  The post was saying that if you were feeling a little heavier than normal and more drawn to emotions, the retrograde was the cause.

I don't need planets moving to feel emotions, but I began removing control over my plans by my emotions a while ago.  I think it started when I was processing and realizing that allowing my emotions to take the wheel had led me to many difficulties and had cost me many things that were valuable to me.. again.. not just feelings of positive but negative reactions, as well.  So, I determined that the best thing I could do would be to use my very smart brain to plan my path and then stick to it, REGARDLESS of my feelings on any particular day.

It's not always an easy path.  I still feel the full range of emotions at different times.  I feel love and longing and fear and pain and more at different times, but as you make it a habit to feel the feelings, let them pass through you without a hand on your life wheel, and stay fixed on plans, it gets easier to do so as you go forward.  

So... emotional retrograde?  I didn't even notice.  I have enough things changing in my life, right now, to justify any emotional unsteadiness, but my path and plans are fixed and progressing; and knowing that gives me the peace of stability in the now and the future.

Act Don't React

There has been a lot of lessons that I have had as a focus over the last year, but one of them that has been important and different than much of my past is realizing that as you plan and guide your life, it should be chosen by logic and reason and not as much by emotion.  Also, it should be led by intention and action, rather than emotional reactions.

Indeed, I have had a lot of experience, as I am sure that many others can also testify in their lives, of making decisions based on emotional responses to things.  By that, I don't just mean angry reactions.  There has been times that I felt low and depressed or scared or more and withdrew into more safe environments.  It became a common defense mechanism to do so, and both after my first divorce and my eye surgeries I would choose to abandon my job and environment to seek family foundations.  I do not mean to say that seeking family is a bad thing.  However, let me more fully go through my examples.

In those examples, I upended my life and put myself in economically more difficult situations, and the result was having to work really hard and having less actual time to interact with family.  Further, the world is much smaller in our day than we think.  Driving hours away to visit family is just as difficult, oftentimes, as flying out to see them, and there are other ways to connect without having to be in person. 

But, to pause to note one additional point, I often found that the times AFTER difficult periods were filled with things that were just as or more difficult and the ultimate lesson was not finding a secure and safe alternative but he life lesson that I was always able to stand and thrive IN those other difficult situations, just fine.  The correct response was not to react with emotion but to get up, get dressed, keep working hard, and plan wisely.

This goes both ways, though.  And, you should not stay somewhere out of emotion or fear, either.  The difficulty of a path should not dictate your choice but what is most important for you to do for your heart and life.  So, as I prepare to move with the difficulties of my goals, ahead, I know that the things I have been doing and the direction I go is choices made in wisdom and conviction.  It is done with intention and well thought out steps, and it is ALREADY a much steadier and more prosperous change than those of the past.

So, this blog post would be to simply say that if you are feeling stresed and fearful and emotional, don't make decisions.  Take a breath.  Go for a walk.  Let the emotions drop, and then choose what path leads to outcomes most in line with your desired lifeline.

Flying Blind

A quick lunch break blog post.

There was a flight school that I considered decades ago that had a black cat and number 13 on their planes.  Their point was to say that it's not about luck but training, instruments and reason.  

In movies, you'll see astronauts that fly by paying attention to their instruments and trusting their course.  It's like pilots of planes that fly at night.  Neither are flying by sight outside their craft.  They don't need to do so.  They trust what they know and what they know has nothing to do with sight or feelings.  Recently, I've come to appreciate the need to do that more in life.  

It is easy to be led to make rash decisions under the influence of emotions.  While there is a place for adrenaline at times, I have learned that a lot of times we need to just step away for a moment, take a deep breath, and repeat what you know and make decisions on that.  That's not just true to avoid decisions based on fear but on false hope.  Hope is good, but it has to be based on real potential or is just delusional.

So, whatever you are doing or however you are guiding your life, don't do so flying by sight or emotions.  You know what you need to do to get to where you want, given the information given to you.  If that information changes, you can change your plans.  But, absent that, continue forward, trusting your will and your skill to get you where you want to go.

Challenging My Emotional Foundations

I noted this on my social media a few days ago and said I would be blogging about it when I had a little more time and mental capacity to do it right.  However, recently, I have been taking aim at my own perceptions from the past in regards to the role of emotions and seeing things differently than I used to see them.

First of all, I want to lead off by saying that I am not saying there is not a place for emotions and romantic gestures and actions by all involved.  I don't believe that a connection without those things is a romantic relationship and could just be friendship.  I am a roommate with someone and am not in a relationship with her.  We handle day to day things by agreement, have conversations, and help each other out from time to time.  None of that makes it a relationship.  And, in a few months I will be moving out, and it will not be taking an emotional tole.  Romantic relationships must have romance in it by both sides.

HOWEVER, to counter the importance of that and my own prior perceptions regarding the role of feelings, I have been asking some hard questions.  Some people will probably agree with my challenge, while others may agree with my old view that I am challenging.  Nevertheless, here we go.

Is it possible that what I felt was true love was actually signs of psychological needs, instead?  And, the feeling of completeness was simply feeling those needs satisfied and not necessarily something mutual?  When I was feeling the need for closeness, was that a sign of not feeling balanced in myself.  When I was wanting support and comlements, was that the need for validation?  When I was changing to please them, was that my fearing loss?

I can go on, and I don't have any answers to this.  But, I am feeling more and more balanced on my own as a single person, lately, and more able to have a happy life on my own.  As I am doing so, I find I have less of those old needs and that makes me wonder if they were actually healthy in a relationship.  I do know that if I get into one in the future, it will look differently.  I will want time on my own to do things on my own without my partner.  I will not be bending my preference all the time but stating it and doing it if I feel the need.  That would be a true partnership, and I feel that is one I am not sure I have ever had.

So, anyways, I wanted to put this out there for others to consider, as well.

Different, Not Less

I've noted this at times, over the years.  When you are an introvert, you constantly get people that give you advice on how you can be more social and speak up, more.  I'm always over here wondering.. why isn't the discussion about how someone else can maybe be less public and socially pressuring?  However, especially as our society becomes more and more polarizing, we have more and more categories where this kind of prideful assumptions about others are seen.

It doesn't mean that you are bad, if you are different.  It isn't that being an extrovert is better than being an introvert.  We don't need to give people advice on how they can stifle their emotions to please those less reserved or to make an emotionally reserved person have to display them to please someone that isn't so reserved.  We don't need to make people be more intellectual, religious, diverse, or any other quality.  

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that individual preferences are not important.  I definitely have my own personal style and preference.  Others can and will have a different preference than I do.  Our goal should not be to change people at all but to recognize that just because someone or ourselves are different, it does not mean that they are less or that their way is less valid.  It is valid for them, just as it is valid for us.  Nor is it or should it be important to make someone be different in order to "work" with us.  I believe we should be diverse enough of a society that we are able to recognize the differences of others an interact with them in a way that meets their needs, even as we retain our ability be live our lives our ways.  If there are needs that cannot be met by those differences, the problem is not the inability to meet those needs but the expectation that we have that they must do so.  If someone cannot meet those needs, it is INFORMATION that should guide us in the selection of what level of connection we have with them and to guide us in our search of those who will.

So, what I would like you go understand from this post is simply this.  People are different, and that is ok.  They are not less, and you are not either.  We are just all humans, trying our best to make our journey more happy. 

Heartfelt

My expression has not been politically correct or comfortable for a VERY long time, but it is always heartfelt. I don't post to please anyone.  My goal has always been to be true and real and help others by presenting a real life in struggles and joys.  That has made me be rejected by both major political parties, ruffled the feathers of religions and atheists, and has lost me friends, acquaintances and more.  But, one thing that should not be said of me that I ever intentionally lie.  That runs contrary to my nature.  I would rather be judged by the world than be false or to fail to help someone in need.  And, I often AM judged by the world for speaking my thoughts that challenge groups of status quo or accepted philosophies.

When I was in high school, I hated English.  I was so tired of sentence diagrams and grammar rules.  Then, I got to the Renaissance period of literature, and my soul lit fire.  I found in the pure emotional expression of the period a home.  It was not just a period for literature but for lives that were learning to experience and learn from life, not instruction.  Later, this would be called and condemned by the religious as "humanism" and "liberal arts".. two labels I would welcome about myself.  I DO stand for humans being human.  I do stand for the conflict of ideals and free expression of thought.  I think that is the only way we grow.  I know that is the only way that I GROW... for sure.  Why would I limit my contacts to those that agree with me and expect to grow beyond myself?

So, when I say something, I have not just put my mind into it but my heart into it.  I don't just decide to do something, I choose to do something.  I believe it was John Wesley that said that there was a counterfeit for faith that existed in the church in his day.  He said that it was "mental assent" ... which said that he would believe something so long as it made sense and if it did not would be rejected.  While there is a value to putting your mind to use for what it was given to you to use, there are things of the heart that cannot be quantified or explained.  

We are entering in the period leading up to Christmas, right now.  On many of the Santa movies that are out there, there is the theme that faith is not seeing to believe but believing to see.  It is about believing that there is some good in the world, whether or not we are seeing it.  It is about BEING good in the world, even when that is not being returned to you.  It is about living HEARTFELT, and that is my personality and my curse, because I can do no other.

So, I would challenge you in this time that you would believe in good, go good, love, and be hopeful for the future, even if there is no reason to do so.  Carry forward the good memories of the past, whether they are still present.  And, care for others.  If you can improve the life of ONE PERSON this season, you would be the world to that person and give your life meaning and their life blessing.  And, that heartfelt way of living and loving is... in my opionion.. the greatest truth that God deemed for man to be.