I'm happy to say that the sun came out yesterday and lit the way for St. Patty's Day. I didn't make any effort to be in the middle of crowded bars with drunk people, but I drove by a few places to see how the town's people here in Thousand Oaks do it! In the Homeland, where we pretty much use any holiday or celebration as a excuse to put up large beer tents, put an Irish band on stage, and drink way to much, is probably still going to keep partying till the weekend. Eh, I don't blame them even with the mild Winter season this time around. More than a month of no sun has a way of changing your demeanor and personality, and that's why I continue to leave..more regular, all year long sunlight! I know. I should talk about something else! So, it's FRIDAY and time for another weekly review of Rants from a Midwest Guy In The Land of Milk and Honey!
After a few days of not getting anything done, especially stuff at the gym, I decided to try and do a little bit of catch up. Yup. I finished replacing the last of the suspension myself with a few specialty tools from my buddy. The jeep still needed some alignment work, but after it was all said and done the water pump finally died. Hahahaha. As one of my friends said, I'll be driving a 2016 Jeep soon if I keep on replacing things broken and functional; it's better to be a little ahead of if than stranded on a highway or mountain road somewhere, and I really just enjoy doing some of it...repairs and maintenance. It makes me think of those old Chevy commercials with the guy and his girlfriend deciding if he should fix his truck or get a new one in light of his girlfriend essentially saying that he needed a new one. This is the commercial where you see the girl standing alone and the guy driving off in his truck. LOL. It's what I think of when people say I should get a new one, which I've considered, but I wouldn't get rid of my jeep if I did. When it makes it to 300,000 miles, I'll retire it and use it as a hobby vehicle. Ya know...some things run deep.
Continued from last Friday's Rant on Spiritual versus the Religious Spiritual.
I left off last week on the note that we want to believe the people we like more than the ones we don't like or would prefer not to be like because clearly, in our opinion, one of the two groups of people have something we want. It could be fame. It could be a better house. It could be a better job. It could be they have a more attractive mate or better looking, smarter children. Whatever it is, it's something that we want to or we allow past our logic center and accept whatever comes out of these people's mouths as truth when in fact it may not have anything to do with it. Most of the self help seminars promote changing your mental attitude about yourself first and then the things that you feel you want. I will admit that some of this is good stuff. If you don't strive to improve yourself, you may not be able to be in a position to move onto better and more desirable things. There is something to be said about 'fitting in' to some degree for other peoples' comfort more than your own. I find that when one has evolved, learned enough of the right things, and is able to apply them in a way that has a positive outcome for yourself and your environment, you maybe ready to grow even more.
Personal evolution begins with the understand of how you think, why you think it, and your willingness to challenge old beliefs and truths that were passed down to you by society, your family, and your peer groups (namely church groups). It is important to understand this aspect of yourself well enough to know how it is you come about making decisions, the values that you use to make them with, and ultimately how you move forward when in all circumstances..good, bad, and other. Knowing yourself is the beginning of freedom and beginning of understanding the world around you rather than you in the world and what the differences are. We cannot escape the basic tendencies we all come with as human beings. We continue to have the need to be loved, understood, and accepted and how we go about fulfilling those needs is largely influence by our environment. Having a more complete understanding of both, you and your environment, is the key needed to master both. And when you're able to master yourself and understand how to master your environment, attaining more of what you want is much easier and all things become a bigger possibility. It's true.
It's been more than once I was told, "You're a lucky guy." I usually laugh when I hear it because it seems like it's true. The more I've thought about it, it turns out that it could be the randomness of life giving to me or me living my life so that more good things can happen to me, but it has not always been good. It just seems like it. Perhaps when 'lucky' things happen to me it just seems like it compared to those peoples' lives because it's not always been rainbow's and butterflies.I usually say it's my job to show up so I can see what might happen. I say it because staying home or not doing anything will result in exactly that--nothing or worse because the world will happen to you and more likely not in a manner you want it to.
So, we are obligated to do if we want to change. This is much harder than it seems because we easily get caught up in living life or maybe just surviving it. It's too hard to see the big picture or even more basic to understand yourself when every moment of your time and energy is going to just trying to make it. I guess this is more true in some professions more than others. Labor intensity robs you of the opportunity to think while less physical jobs or brainless ones may allow for too much time for you to think leading you into potential regret, depression or apathy because you're situation may not so easily change, and this is when it's important to know yourself.
TO BE CONTINUED......
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