March 27, 2011

  • The longer I hang around the more obvious it is that it's the simple things that truly define a person. In a way, where I work distills the basics of humanity and filters out thee unimportant, leaving the bare essentials standing as stark skeletons that will, without sufficient support, collapse. It simplifies the structure of society in a way that I don't think many people ever see. It also cuts away all the masks people use to hide behind.

    More and more I'm drawn to the conclusion that the value of a person's word is the foundation of all our forms of society and where any of us fit within them. It's the basis of any form of trust. And without trust, no true relationship will ever be strong enough to stand for long.

    What puzzles me is how many of our societies are based on dishonesty. To me it doesn't matter why the dishonesty is there, the fact that as adults, we still refuse to examine the inconsistencies that pop up routinely as we live our lives. No change, in ourselves, in our society or in human nature can ever happen until we acknowledge that there are discrepancies between what we believe and what actually happens.

    Which swings back around to the most basic part of how I think we define ourselves.

    What is the value of my own word. Not to you, or anyone else, but to me. When I do see that something I see is different than what I think it should be, do I take it as a challenge, or tuck it away where I don't have to bother with the inconvenient possibility that my beliefs might not be as true as I thought.

     

     

    I know for me, that this has changed how I perceive my life and all the people I interact with.