Indispensable

If we believe that human character is static—that there is an innate, inextricable, and unchangeable trait that exists within all of us that predisposes us to good actions or bad actions—we need neither patience, humility, tolerance, nor forgiveness.

Otherwise, they are indispensable.

Self-awareness

I’m an acutely self-aware individual, though often to a fault. 

While self-awareness and mindfulness are indispensable companions within our journey towards what modicum of free will that actually exists, there seems to be some inherent magic that exists within pure, unadulterated experience of life—untainted and unfettered by skepticism and doubt, without this constraint straining against the chains of our conceptions of right and wrong, bereft of reason yet abounding and immersed in feeling. 

In the same way there is a universe of truth to be found in thought, I simply cannot deny the existence of any less truth to be found thoughtless.

Lessons learned

Humanity’s collective internalization of lessons learned is akin to a glacier—a gigantic heterogeneous mass of ice, snow, water, rock, and sediment—inching along month after month, week by week, and day by day, moving so slowly that its progress is virtually imperceptible. 

However, many of our individual lessons learned are far more akin to an avalanche—a torrent of snow tumbling down a mountainside at staggering volume and dizzying speeds.

When there were hundreds of millions of people who lost everything in all the horrific wars of the last century, why do we in the present day lay complacent? Why do we continue to perpetuate hate, intolerance, and violence in our world? Why are we so ambivalent about the nature of right and wrong, when for those that actually endured such tragedies, would not have an inkling of doubt? 

It seems as though many of those lessons are simply lost generation after generation, but it’s clear, when we look at the progress of human civilization at the macro level, it’s clear that they aren’t simply lost. It may be that the vast majority of lessons are indeed lost, and what few remain are those resilient enough to impart some degree of knowledge or imbue some form of wisdom into our collective consciousness, 

It is also another conundrum entirely if we question the value of collective progress; we already seldom ask ourselves what specifically needs progressing, let alone whether or not we need to progress in the first place. After all, to nature, it makes no difference; what are an avalanche and a glacier but water molecules shifting around from place to place? Everything that happens on Earth is a cycle, and all is one and the same.

If we go back to this paradoxical notion of suffering, perhaps that is the point of it all—to suffer, even if not collectively advancing humanity as a whole, even if we repeat the mistakes of the past, for it is all that gives us meaning in the end.

Urgency

In the moments where we feel we least need to do something—to hone our moral and ethical awareness, to cultivate our capacity for effective reasoning and empathy, to merely give a modicum of attention to someone in need—are the same moments when we probably most need to do it. 

Amidst unsurpassable chaos, great pain, great pleasure—when our emotional impulses conquer and occupy our consciousness—seldom do we make the right decisions.

There needs to be a texting disclaimer

I find it particularly interesting that in face to face conversation, virtually no one with a semblance of emotional intelligence can possibly bear the agonizing awkwardness and shame that comes with the act of blatantly ignoring someone who is directly talking to us, yet we find it acceptable and commonplace to both intentionally ghost and inadvertently ghost—whether due to a technical error, messages getting buried when we’re busy, or simply forgetting to respond to messages. There’s something inherently unnatural, something poignantly dehumanizing about ghosting; this act of temporarily shutting out communication is virtually never a part of our real-life social interactions, yet it has become the norm of our interactions online and through our phones.

This elicits the underlying problem of texting; it is an act so farfetched and disassociated from the nuances and minutiae that constitute the complex dance that we innately know as human communication. 

Just stop

and remind yourself,

what you’re truly meant to do.

There’s no reason

to feel nervous or uncomfortable around strangers,

to occupy my consciousness with things I cannot change, 

to relentlessly conjure up absurd scenarios and conversations that will never happen, 

to fall in love with someone I know nothing about, 

to even begin to conceive that they might just be the one I’ve been searching for after all these years,

There’s no reason. 

There’s no reason.

There’s no reason. 

As if reason will change how I feel.

Ambivalence

“A stranger,” my mind reassures itself.

“A soulmate,” my heart beckons me to listen.

To be wrong

How many mistakes must we make? How many lessons must we learn? How severe of suffering and internal dissension must we face before we decide that we were wrong?

When it’s among the most difficult things to do in our lives, perhaps the bravest, most gracious contribution we can make to one another is to simply say, “I was wrong.”

Change

There will always be exceptions to the apparent truth, to the established convention—things that defy our belief systems, that challenge our conception of reality, that threaten to question our definitions of right and wrong. We should always remain skeptical of them, but never contemptuous, because insofar as we are dissatisfied with the current world we live in, it’s the only way anything will ever change for the better, even if most of them are inconsequential or wrong. Honor not their untruths, but their genuine desire for change.