On changing my mind.

Reflect on this: if you were perfect, you would never change your mind.

Past posts have been getting a lot of views these past few weeks, and because of the subject matter, I believe I know why.

I've expressed strong opinions about the stages of my life, but yet as I go on I find that although many of my ideas remain the same, some of them I change. I do this because I grow. I'm imperfect.

A year ago, I would have told you that I am often ruled by my emotions. These days, though, I find I've relaxed in that matter. I am in touch with my emotions...I feel them, I experience them, I know them intimately. But instead of acting on them, or letting them affect me, I can choose to let them flow through me. I've mellowed out.

In the same way, I look back on the things I've said about "where I am" and "what I'm doing" and think less seriously of my opinions at those times than I once did. I've learned since then. I am not quite so sure of myself.

Knowledge is how much you know. Wisdom, I believe, is knowing what you don't know. And I've gotten a little more wise.

I find now that I recognize more and more how little I really know and can know. Case in point: my last post about crushes. A year ago I would have never written such a post. I took crushes far too seriously to write such a thing. Now I know them for what they really are: the body's way of pointing out to you interesting women (and also, for those like me who are interested in being single for a while, at least, a damned nuisance).

People who never make assumptions and ask lots of questions are, in my opinion, the wisest people you will ever meet. If you ever make friends with such a person, don't ever take them for granted. I find they are rarer and rarer in our world these days. I hope to be one someday, and I think I'm headed in that direction.

Now, to take my own advice...

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream for a wiser world.

A mysterious silence.

I've actually written two blog posts since my last one, but I've deleted both of them. They were just not material for sharing.

Since then my mind has quieted a bit. The anger and personal issues I'd expressed in those writings are now mysteriously quiet. Usually I'm very well in-touch with my feelings and have lots of opinions about them. Now, I mostly feel numb.

"Then darkness took me; and I strayed out of thought and time, and I wandered far on roads that I will not tell," says Gandalf of his apparent death at the hands of the Balrog. I suppose even the strongest of us have only so much they can take before everything sort of...resets. And that's what I feel has happened to me.

I seem to be accepting or at least resigned to my friendship/relationship difficulties. I seem to be not thinking about my issues with Counseling ethics. I move on...I just go. And that's not like me. I live life actively, meaning, I think about it and consider where I'm going. I don't just...endure like this.

But that's what I'm doing now. I'm just going on.

Life goes on as I see people I love slip through my hands, people feign my friendship and those who seek to understand me understand less and less of me.

I suppose the best thing I can do for myself now is reflect on what I don't understand. I suppose when you're not reflecting on what's going on, the only way to not be stagnant is to reflect on your reflections. These are mine:

Things I don't understand

1. How a good friend whom I love a lot can so easily avoid my honest attempts to reach out and help
2. How people I've known who are so good and pure could be corrupted so completely
3. How people can seek pleasure so adamantly without realizing this means they obviously haven't found it
4. How so many of my friendships could have looked to last forever when they really only lasted a short time
5. How so many people can ignore what I'm trying to say because they'd rather remain the same than face the truth
6. How tolerance can be taught to be a higher value than human dignity
7. How people can seek something so strongly and reject it when it shows itself
8. How manhood can go from something so wonderful as courage, dignity, honor, and integrity, to being an ideal based on physical characteristics and sexual promiscuity
9. How women can be so easily seduced by an ideal based on seeing themselves as only free if they love anyone but themselves
10. How fallacies and false ideals can become true when they become fashionable, and the truth can be equated with hatred as soon as it becomes unpopular

An image of courage and dignity

 There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream to think and understand.