Sayings I came across

"Every good man I know been through somethin'."

- Cris Carter, NFL player.

mentioned by: Trucker at Flying J. VA.

My interpretation: It takes enduring hardship and experiencing personal tragedy to make a man lose his ego, feeling of superiority. To be good to his fellow man, to treat others with kindness, and not take advantage at the expense of someone else.


Well, it's not always true. Everybody reacts differently. Some people are nice by nature, others are ruthless. But a common decent man who has gone through a personal difficulty is more likely to have a compassionate attitude towards his own life, and the lives of others. Not led down the blind road to personal gain. And the same person who hasn't gone through somethin', won't know as deeply, viscerally the meaning of leading a benevolent life.


"Misery is a habit.
Happiness is a habit.
The choice is yours."

- attributed to Brian Tracy, motivational speaker.

mentioned by: Church near Lovingston, VA.

My interpretation: OK, first of all... whoever Brian Tracy is, he's not the first one to come up with that idea. It's not that hard to think of, and I'm sure the ancient Greeks, as with everything else, have already thought it up and every new generation digs up something as new and claims it as their own. But Google says it comes from this guy, so fine. You can sell your books using this one, Brian, buddy.

Feelings themselves are not habits. But the habits we make are the ones that produce misery or happiness. If we can make a habit of promoting our values and temperance with the actions that lead to unhappiness, we can practice a life that minimizes bitterness and grow our hearts wide and forgiving.

So those are just words. Words upon words. What am I trying to actually say? If a behavior pattern always leads to bitterness, make the choice not to walk down that road. The employees at Starbucks, the company attitude and the trendy, urbanite causes and interest stories they market piss me off. I'm going to steal my free WiFi and power outlets somewhere else when I can. I'll go without those things if need be. I don't support the behaviors that lead to my misery.

OK, that example is stupid. I'm sure there are better applications. Not starting arguments with loved ones. Stop getting pissed off at things that don't need your getting pissed off at them. Life has too many positive endeavors to devote your time and energy to, to get stuck in an unproductive loop commiserating over stupid shit. Yeah it happened. Shit happens. Stop stepping in the shit each time, thinking your anger at the shit will cause it to not be shit. Ya know?

Some things we can't escape. But sometimes we need to try. Because the only real prisons that can hold us are in our mind. (I'm sure I'm stealing that idea from someone else, or the Cloud ... general public collaboration of cliches). Because like I said in a previous post about 'having no choice' is a choice, you don't have to do anything. You choose to because the alternative is unacceptable to you. But if you're willing to accept any consequence, all actions are voluntary and they ought to be treated as such. You can be physically forced against your will, but 'having no choice' is an enslavement of the mind.

Ok back to the topic of the quote itself. Feelings are not by choice. You will face some serious psychological problems if you try to force feelings. The brain will not be self-consistent. Some situations, it feels one way and others it is forced to 'feel' a different way. Your brain won't be allowed to make sense of things. It's like, at 2:00pm this thing makes me feel sad, but at 2:01, 2:41, and 2:51 I must feel good. Then the times keep changing without the brain being able to predict when it's time to flip 180 on its assessment. WTF? How would anyone be able to do their job, if the work one produced at random times would have opposite expectations.

The brain would malfunction, crash. It has all these acquired learning associations that produce natural feelings. Then you try to drug them away, or 'will' a different feeling. Laws of nature and physics prevent that. You can't produce nothing from something. You cannot reverse gravity or make electrons attract instead of repelling. Your brain is not a blank slate on which to draw feelings, it's not an arbitrary piece of computer software that executes whatever commands you give it. It's organic matter. Like hydrophilic molecules bond to water, you can't choose for them 'like' or 'dislike' water. It's natural law. You can repress, choose not to act on your feelings, you can medicate and fake, but you cannot 'doctor' up how nature works. All you can do is practice the activities that maneuver around bitterness, and feed your brain the positive it tells you are good.

You can always find good and bad in things. Getting the good out of things is one way to practice beneficial habits. But you're not denying your own feelings, you're merely
walking to the good and away from the bad in any situation. That's not always possible, to live off the good you can scavenge from a miserable situation. The misery is not a choice, but accepting that situation is a choice. We can always choose to resist, we cannot choose to always win. But at least our defeat is a happy one. To recognize that if we accept 'having no choice', that when we win, it brings no joy. That victory is not our own, but someone else's when our victories bring misery. Yeah sorry about the writing becoming incoherent. Too much writing. Too tired to structure my thoughts and form sentences.