From the Bowels of Centerville

The Morning News

 The death toll is already at 17 and it's not even 7am. A child shot another child from McGavock High School where President Obama will speak today. Security is elevated. It's 12 degrees. Traffic is at a stand still. New grocery stores are opening to sell out dated, unregulated food. We'll be right back after this commercial break. Buy this, this week only, on sale, clearance, get your heater serviced, go ahead and get your AC checked, summer will be here before you know it...and we're back. Breaking News, more deadly terrorist attacks in Russia, right on the cusp of the Sochi Olympics, arrests are being made...don't forget to like us on Facebook, tweet us on Twitter, don't forget to plan your trips around the President's motorcade shutting down the interstates, they're sleeping in cars and stores or freezing, slip sliding on black ice on Atlanta roadways...what's gotten in to kids these days? Playing the knock out game? The parents are the ones to blame...and that damn rap music. Follow us on Facebook for your chance to win Keith Urban tickets...have a great day.

The problem is...

It's inherent in us to find and focus on the mistakes of others. It makes us feel better about ourselves, it helps to distinguish our individuality and more often takes the focus off of our own mistakes. This isn't our fault. I believe from elementary thought, we are engineered to find the problems a lot easier than the solutions. Take a simple math story problem from second grade. How can you get to the solution without recognizing first the problem. In a twelve step program, the first step is admitting you have "a problem." Even the psychologists and psychiatrists I adore reading learned more how to deal with their own psychosomatic problems by diagnosing an dissecting what they found wrong in others. Politics is the art of creating problems just to solve or never solve them, then instill fear around those problems through advertising. The television we watch is based around people bitching about theirs and other peoples problems, drug commercials for the problems you have, new foods creating new problems, new studies on a new problem...This negative thought is contagious. Yet, there's not much in the way of shelter from it. We all choose our escapes. Some people compound their problems so much that they put every single ounce of their being into escaping them. Some balance this out. Some pick at other peoples escapism in the middle of their own escapade. From where I stand at this moment, with such futile happiness in the world, how can we hope to sustain any happiness ourselves by pointing the finger at someone else's choices for happiness. Pain is evident. Period. Everyone is going to deal with it differently. Becoming so conscious of another's choices simply means we aren't happy with our own. And if we continue that cycle how do we ever draw any conclusion? "Happiness in intelligent people, is the rarest thing I know." I believe this and have ever since I heard it. It's often led me to wish I were unintelligent - ignorance can truly seem blissful. Though from an intelligence stand point, I've always defended my choices for escapism/happiness. I usually seek it in the happiness of others or in altering my subconscious. I've been entertaining and spinning around in circles (a child's first chemical reaction of altering the subconscious in the brain) since I can remember. Right or wrong, I've based my existence around those things. But, I know when I'm wrong. We all know when we're wrong. Why do we need others to tell us? If we don't like something, can't we simply choose to disassociate with it? When our choices for happiness cause others pain, then we reflect. We hope. Though there are those moments when we fixate so much in the choices of others and take them so personally that we are inflicting the pain ourselves. Not them. Love makes us blind to this. Families always know best, so on so forth. No one can tell another soul what's right for him or her. Our experience if soul based is a singular journey. That journey changes shape and form constantly. We invite those we want to share in it with. Then we change. We grow together or we grow apart. Most see this as a problem. Why do we not support people's singular journey's without having to see ourselves in it enough to think we can fix everything or anything? The only difference that can be made is inside you. Life is short, so very very short to stay caught in constant conflict with what we think we know. We know nothing. Nothing other than ourselves. Everything else is perception. Rarely do we perceive correctly. We perceive based on what we've learned, which is most commonly second hand knowledge. True wisdom is experience and no two people ever experience anything the same way. So why are we picking on everyone we see? What makes us so enlightened? Nothing. We dream. We are how we treat people. Whether we like it or not, they are making memories if that. The judgements will never stop. Noticing em I guess is the "first step" in solving that "problem" individually.