Learn
I'm sorry I've been so inactive on here lately, but trust that I have not been inactive in the journey. It's so hard to put all that I have learned and all that has happened in to words at the start, but once I get going it comes easier. That is one point that really has been driven home as of late. If you stand in your own way, you really never will get anywhere. If you step out, and most importantly step forward onto your path, there is nothing you cannot do and no one who can stop you. The only way another person will ever be able to stand in your way is if you let them make you believe they can. This world is full of distractions, and I think a lot of the purpose of these distractions is to keep us all from figuring that out. Can you imagine if we had a world full of people, particularly young, informed, intelligent people, who were completely aware of their own power and knew exactly how to use it? I use the word power very intentionally. I selected it over strength because they are very different, yet not unrelated ideas, Strength can be applied to anything, whereas power has a very particular link to free will. Strength is essential. you must have the strength to face things, to accomplish things, both mentally and physically. Until you realize your own power, you will never realize the full potential of your own strength. I can pull a rock up a hill all day long for anyone who asks me to. I can be motivated by my love, my fear, or my respect for them. However, if I knew that getting that rock to the top of that hill would get me closer to achieving my own dreams, that rock would move ever so much faster. As I was saying about distractions. This world is full of things to take your mind away from itself. We are surrounded by advertisements trying to convince us that our bodies, our possessions, and our beauty is not enough and that we need to spend money to fix these fabricated inadequacies in our lives. That brings us to money, and working to get it. A startling portion of our young people sell off massive portions of their lives at what is literally called minimum wage. If you are living off of minimum wage, you are probably working more than 40 hours a week. You may be working 6-7 days a week, and in the little time off you do have, all of that working has not left you with enough money to provide your own basic needs and enjoy yourself. Many of us are caught in a cycle where we spend all of our time at jobs we dislike to go home to a place we dislike and eat food that is bad for us because it's all we can afford. A lot of us get more jobs, work more to try and break out of this cycle, work more hours so we can afford that better apartment or something we saw in an advertisement that is going to make our lives better. When all someone does is work and panic and focus on moneymoneymoney so they can eat and live and maybe have a little scoop of happiness on top, when exactly do they have time to think and realize, not only their full potential, but how royally fucked our system is? The answer is they don't, and whether society has engineered this to be so, or whether it is the result of being so focused on the moment that we couldn't see the big picture going on around us, that is how it is. I am seeing a beautiful bloom of people trying to break out of this cycle, taking off in a myriad of paths to find their definition of better. I see people going to school. Learning is beautiful. Specialized, higher learning is beautiful too! Sadly we then face debt, and the sad reality that in this world, when you chase your dream of learning everything about something you love, you better make sure that "something" is valuable to society. Society doesn't always value the artists or the musicians. Society doesn't always value the insatiable learners that are archaeologists and scientists. Society calls our kind fools, dreamers, and unless you can convince society and the people around you otherwise or find some other way out, you will fall right back into the pattern of working to live that devolves quickly into living to work. Many of us will pay dearly for the audacity of a dream. I see people toss off the burden of society and completely leave it. There is a growing culture of young people who travel, relying on their skills, the cooperation and kindness of other people, and the will of the universe to exist. These people are largely silent cyber-wise, for obvious reasons, so those who exist in the land of screens don't hear from their minds. Step away from the screen. Talk to someone completely different from you, face to face, and really hear what they say. Ponder it, learn from it, but try not to judge it, at least until you've done the other two. This is my latest challenge. Observe the world yourself. See what kinds of filters you see it through. Do you see the world the way someone else has told you to see it? Are things like your own fear or prejudice keeping you away from things or thoughts? Are your filters keeping you safe or keeping you insulated? I don't know the answers to these questions, and if you've already answered them in your head mere seconds after reading the words, you don't either. Go think. Go think and learn and observe both alone and by talking to people. Talk to people you know and love, talk to people you have never talked to before. Talk to street musicians, politicians, parents, children, friends, actors, peers, supervisors, everyone. Hear them, hear the way they see life, and see what they say. Make your priority the intake of information. Observe people, observe nature, observe the world. Observe the sky. Observe the water. Observe in such a way that you are completely separate, and observe without judgment or fear. Learn. Your thoughts and opinions are important and need to be shared, but that is true of everyone on this planet. Do you know why that is true? Because we are made to learn. So learn.