There have been so many times in my life where I knew that I was missing something, that I wasn't seeing it, feeling it, knowing it... that there was something, just out of reach, touch, sight...

I would feel that hollow place in me, aching for... and I just didn't know. I just ached.

I also remember all the times I've thought that I wasn't ready to deal with all the new things in life. That dance between wanting and being afraid of what it might be, or do to me. And once past, I was almost always laughing at myself at how silly or fearful I had been, or even more often, awed by how simple things were.

I think our imaginations do a far better job of making the unknown fearsome without any outside help.

Mostly, I think I was always surprised that what I ached for, wasn't what I had feared. It was the not knowing that I feared, not the finding.

"Cosi va'l mondo!"

 "Such is life, that whatever is proposed, it is much easier to find reasons for rejecting than embracing." Joseph Baretti, 1762

It seems that the more I learn about life the less it seems that we change. So many times I'm reminded that no amount of technology or knowledge solves the basic problems of just being human. We still struggle today with the same questions that were the very foundations of ancient philosophies.

This is far from normal for me, but I've felt that what is being said here has been true for a very long time...

How Sexism Hurts Men 1 and 2

I simply cannot tell you how many times I've known, not believed, but known, that no woman will ever want me because I'll never measure up... I see it every day, every single day.

"Imitation is the sincerest of flattery."

That thought has been around in one variation or another for a very long time. So long that I'd bet that almost everyone believes that it's an absolute in terms of human behavior. But while I was doing some research today a few things came up that have caused me look closer.

In fact, what seems clear now is that imitation and mimicry are tools of survival. In the world at large mimicry is used to keep a species alive by imitating a predator, in humans it's a tool for us to win the approval of others. We imitate the attitudes and ethics of the people in power so that we won't be singled out as being different. It doesn't really matter who it is we imitate, but it will always be someone we see as having some form of control over us, our acceptance in society and our ability to find mates. It isn't flattery at all. If you look at any community it becomes obvious who the imitators are. Whatever trend is prominent, they'll be in the thick of it, repeating ad nauseum the dogma of whichever side they've chosen.

Some how, most of humanity has been programed to want the things we've been told to, watch the accepted programs, eat the correct foods... and we do, thinking all the time that we're masters of our lives.

The truth is that we are not thinking at all.

If we did think for ourselves it far more likely that we would reject the hoard reaction and find something more to our tastes. In fact, once free of the mimicry, from what I see, we tend to have a fairly violent reaction to what we've held to be true for so long. And quite often we simply shift to either the opposite viewpoint, or to one that equally radical in it's own way. In other words, we find something new to imitate.

Who are you if most of your life is spent following the tends that draw us in?

Who are you if we never actually look at an issue by first tossing out our preconceptions?

Who are we if we are more worried about being accepted than if we have the ability to find our own heart and mind?

Imitation proves two things. First, that we are afraid that we cannot survive without the approval of our "peers." Second, that we have become unwilling to even try and understand someone else, because if we did, we might find that all we've believed was wrong.

Every time I see a relationship fail I wonder how, and why it happened. It's not an easy thing to figure out. Even when it's been one of my relationships. The problem, I think, is that their is almost never a single reason. Then when you accept that, you also have to accept that there are two people, with more than one reason for the failure. But something that struck me last night... hmmm

One of the basic facts in life is that people lie. There is no one who does not lie. If you can't accept that, if you can't accept that even you lie, there is no chance that you will ever have a successful relationship. There is no possible way for two people to interact with out some form of lie being passed between them. No matter how simple or insignificant, each lie hides something, it forces our partners awareness away from something. The reason doesn't matter, even when the reason does have merit, it still obscures something that we think might change how we are viewed.

And it's that, the fear of whether we are understood, accepted, loved, or if we will be rejected, that makes it nearly impossible for us to admit our lies, to come clean.

It destroys us at our most basic levels. But it will happen. It always does. Somewhere, somehow, one or more of our lies will come to light, and when it does, from what I've seen, we find it impossible to come clean. Instead we fling up walls meant to re-enforce the lies we've told, instead we push those we've lied to away, so we don't have to face the truth we have kept hidden. We create more lies to bolster ourselves and work to avoid revealing any more than is absolutely needed.

And sometimes, we turn away from those we say we care about because it's easier than facing the lies.

We never imagine that the person we love already knows what the lies are, we can't conceive of anyone who would accept us once they find out... So we plan for it, make excuses that we can use to support our actions, and lie, again, to the only person who truly matters... ourselves. Because if we expect anyone else to believe our lies, we have to find some way that we can believe them our self.

We use every skill we have to rationalize, reason and justify what has happened, never once being willing to lock the door to our mind and clean up the mess we've made. Logic and reason are no better tools for finding truth than any other, neither work when the basic presumptions we use to start with are as much a lie as the question we're seeking to resolve.

And let's be honest here.

If we can't, or are unwilling, to question every aspect of what we hold to be truth, any conclusion we make will be skewed and misleading.

Once again something I need to understand blindsides me.

"Focus on what you can control.  If you get distracted by what you can't control you lose effectiveness."

It's so easy to think I'm finally getting somewhere, that the things I learned, usually the hard way, now out number what I don't know, Yeah, right....

Even after all this time it's so damned easy to overlook something obvious. Mostly because I've just stopped looking.

How do I explain what it feels like?

The desire burns. I know, trite, cliche.. but in many ways it is beyond description. There is so much like this, so much that simply "is" and no one can know what it's like until they cross the barrier between innocence and knowledge. Nothing will ever prepare you for that moment, you'll never be ready, because nothing you've even known compares.

And those of us who do know just shake our heads as the innocent pontificate on all they've learned.

We wish you well, and safe passage, but we know you'll be forever changed. We were.

"I'll know when it's right." I heard. More than once, twice... there is no "right" it can't be planned.

There is no map to show you the way, no manual to give instruction. You either take the journey or not.

Until you can question what is, you can never know what might be.

An admission...

I've given up.

I don't even want to try anymore.

I don't bother to look.

I don't dare hope.

I never want to hear the words... again. Ever.

I'll just live in these fantasies.

It's better than life.

For years I've stared at these walls, this prison that confines my heart, my hope, my life. I've searched for the cracks, any flaw, that might lead to freedom. I know it's here, I know there's a key, because I've found moments, brief, but real, where I've seen the truth and felt it's touch.

These bricks, I thought I knew what they were. Maybe I do. But a pile of bricks is not a wall, do not make this a prison, it's what binds them, makes them solid, forbidding, impenetrable, that holds my soul.

The mortar that binds my heart...

The secrets that I fear more than this prison...

each, cementing another brick into place, building the walls even higher, thicker, darker.

Secrets I hide behind, for protection...

for protection...

in this prison.

When you look at nature there are some very interesting things that happen when there is a reaction. If it's just physics, it's fairly simple in theory, but in practice, there are usually more forces acting at a given time than we realize, so predicting a reaction can be chancy. When it comes to chemistry there are, again, some rules that we can go by and while some reaction can be very vigorous we can at least predict that, to some degree. When we start getting into more and more complex systems though it can become very confusing.

When we get to us, as humans...

I see it quite often, the knee jerk reactions of people from all walks of life. Every time I see it I can't help but think how pleased our political and moral masters must be. Frankly, we as humans, have been the objects of conditioning for a very long time, all I have to do is read philosophy to see how it's been done. Add world history, and it becomes even more obvious. Some times it works, most of the time actually, sometimes it fails, usually in a catastrophic way.

But that fact is that most of the time we do react in ways that are very predictable. Pick any society and inject a foreign concept and watch. It can be very amusing, and also very disheartening.

It's simple really, our societies don't want us to accept ideas it considers foreign. If we did, we might find out how conditioned we are. If we were to feel that our fantasies and dreams were just as valid as what we've been conditioned to accept we might abandon the "norm" and maybe find that we are far more capable than we've been led to believe.

The truth is simple though. If you look at all the possible variations there are in societies around the world it becomes painfully obvious that we, as humans, are capable of anything. Name anything that you find objectionable and somewhere on earth there is a society that practices it, either now, or in the past. Somewhere, or when, it is, or was, acceptable, encouraged even.

I watch the knee jerk reactions and wonder if they can see the walls that imprison them.

Of course, if you want to be free, you have to find the key.

And very few people ever find it.

It's a question...

"Why did I react that way?"