Day: July 4, 2017

2.5: On Love and Priorities

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If I were to write a book on love I’d tell you I am no expert–at which point you would put the book down and label me another quack with a concept. You’d be right, but if you bothered to read a bit further you’d learn there are no experts in love, just people who figured out what works for them and assume that it works for you too. I would confess to being different than that. I would confess to being someone who has screwed up love on an epic scale, like one of those epic fail videos but for love. Then I’d tell you about those failures and how I learned from them. Maybe that advice would be a little helpful.

I’m divorced. Afterwards I found the woman who I am truly meant to be with for the rest of my existence (like biblical stuff here–post life and all–the other part of of our shared soul). I’d tell you how I screwed that up fairly quickly and spectacularly and have spent the better part of my existence afterwards understanding the conditions I created in my life which led to the state we exist in now. Obviously the thing wasn’t entirely my fault, but I cannot change another human–even one so entwined in my heart as to be a part of me. Which leads me to explain the relationship between love and priorities.

Today when I woke up I checked in on my love first thing. Checking in on her is the closest I can come to waking up with her between my arms. Instead I roll over, text, and when possible, communicate.  Then I checked on my kids, made sure they were handled, know they are loved, fed. Then I came here to the blog where I am doing something for me that represents me and my heart and my growth as a person. After I’ll probably curl into a video game for a while and then do some work. It isn’t entirely me-centric, but it is more than I’ve offered myself in the past. The greater part of reducing the areas in my life is having more time and energy to focus on the one’s I kept and more mental ‘grit’ to continue growing all the while.

So, here is what remains:

  1. Love
  2. Kids
  3. Self Growth
  4. Writing
  5. Working
  6. Games
  7. Coaching*

I haven’t committed to the last and I don’t know where the 4th is headed anymore. Still, I know the first three matter and exist in order of attention for today. I also know it is okay for that order to shift, perhaps constantly, so long as I continue to hold all three parts of my being equal. So far, I do.

 

Some Thoughts:

  1. I don’t think there needs to be a 3.1 ever, but never say never

2.4: Wondering if the World is Moving On

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When the President tweeted a picture from his days with the WWE of him beating someone up and superimposed the words CNN on the face of his victim, I shrugged. I don’t think I entirely cared or was surprised. He’s that guy. However, that guy is going to have a lasting impact on what we call decorum in our world. He has billed himself as a ‘Modern President’ and exposed a culture that still, at the root, is about allegiances and a story it wants to tell. I feel like the entire world in in that place right now. It was evident in the Arab Spring and the Brexit and Trumpxit’s that are very much connected. It exists in the way that Manny Pacqiuao lost a boxing match when he landed twice as many punches as his opponent and connected at a much higher percentage than his opponent but was fighting in his opponents home nation.

We have separated from reality and begun to spin ourselves around dispersed non-realities which match the ideas that we want to believe in. Author Lisa Cron wrote, ‘We see the world not as it is, but as we believe it to be.” There was a moment late in the Bush II presidency where I thought that the world was on the verge of both recognizing and counteracting that philosophy. We were going to see the world as it is, if only briefly. Instead we closed our eyes even tighter against the reality and allowed those doing the talking to spin a narrative that gave us cause, blame, and even a way out. Cron also writes, ‘From birth, our brain’s primary goal is to make causal connections–if this, then that’. This is the basis of modern advertising, which is the basis of modern politics and decision making. We convince ourselves of cause and effect and create from that causality a world view that is not entirely real. The result is a world that is on the verge of moving on from common sense, and moving towards open ignorance of anything that is possibly wrong with it.

Once we move on, then what?