Forward Thought

If we don’t use our minds, we can be certain that someone else will.

Freedom properly understood is less about the privilege that we’ve been granted to make decisions. Rather, I think that it’s far more about the opportunity that we have not to make them when we shouldn’t. We don't have to be defined by the things we did or didn't do in our past. Some people allow themselves to be controlled by regret. Maybe it's a regret, maybe it's not. It's merely something that happened. Get over it. When perception, thoughtfulness and understanding do meet, we can fashion a range of viable expectations and craft a world of togetherness. As light splinters into darkness, new thoughts may take over in the mind and allow upbeat views to gain power. Thus and so, thoughtfulness readily opens a blistering sky in the faltering shadow of unawareness. It is well to believe that there needs but a little more thought, a little more courage, more love, more devotion to life, a little more eagerness, one day to fling open wide the portals of joy and of truth. An unkindness for an unkindness does not goodness make. If perception is limited to experience and knowledge, what proof do we have of moral judgement?

Your thoughts are based on your perceptions and those thoughts are capable to refine your perceptions again. There's something about sitting alone in the dark that reminds you how big the world really is, and how far apart we all are. The stars look like they're close, like you could reach out and touch them. But you cant because sometimes things look a lot closer than they seem. I like walking because it is slow, and I suspect that the mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour. If this is so, then modern life is moving faster than the speed of thought or thoughtfulness. Most people are not naturally reflective any more than they are naturally malicious. Live a life that you do not need to take a vacation from. Live in a way that makes yearly resolutions unnecessary. Make the kind of choices that leave you Happy and Healthy, where all of your needs are satisfied. Live a life where your only ‘wants’ are for others to feel as good as you do. There’s the old saying about ‘killing two birds with one stone’. However, most of us aren’t paying enough attention to know what the birds are, and even if we did we wouldn’t know where to find the stones. So maybe we should start looking for both. Storms don't come to teach us painful lessons, rather they were meant to wash us clean.

I've no interest in being thought provoking. Who needs more thoughts. I'd rather go down as one who is thought disposing. Very little of the great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to cruel instinct. Most of it comes from thoughtlessness or inherited habit. The roots of cruelty, therefore, are not so much strong as widespread. But the time must come when inhumanity protected by custom and thoughtlessness will succumb before humanity championed by thought. Let us work that this time may come. It is inevitable that I will leave a legacy simply because I cannot walk through life without leaving footprints as I walk. Therefore, I would be wise to consider the path before I make the prints. The ability to experience bliss requires the gift of attentive awareness, curiosity, and constant learning. We are ultimately the product of what we want our personal obsessions and how we think. Thoughts merge into feelings that determine if we are happy or sad. Feelings can manifest into thoughts that drive our ambitions and guide our personal actions, which enable us to live an intensified life. Our thoughts create our future.

There is no greater evil than men's failure to consult and to consider. Human existence is enigmatic journey of improvisation. A meaningful life commences with a precise examination of oneself. A person seeking self-awareness cannot afford inexact observations or vague thoughts. Somehow I said “yes” to whatever put me here and “no” to whatever did not. And if I don’t like where I’m at, maybe I should start trading out one answer for the other. Wherever I am is a result of me saying ‘yes’ to something when I should have said ‘no,’ or vice-versa. And me getting out of wherever I am is going to be based on saying the same things, but saying them in a different order than I did the first time. This is why some relationships look so beautiful and some look so tragic beauty belongs to the thoughtful; tragedy to the neglectful. If you open the flood gates of thought you do not know what may come. You may discover that you are better than you thought or worse than the devil himself. The closest thing to perfection is imperfection.

But the answer isn't just to intimidate people into consuming more serious news; it is to push so-called serious outlets into learning to present important information in ways that can properly engage audiences. It is too easy to claim that serious things must be, and can almost afford to be, a bit boring. The challenge is to transcend the current dichotomy between those outlets that offer thoughtful but impotent instruction on the one hand and those that provide sensationalism stripped of responsibility on the other. Free men can easily become enslaved, if they let others do their thinking and talking, instead of using their own heads. Thoughts are the shorebirds scurrying back and forth just beyond the edge of the oncoming wave. As you awake from dreams may you find this one the wondrous one to awaken to. Well, enough of this introspection. It’s depressing, quite frankly. Sometimes, the intent is good enough when the action seems impossible. I am a slow walker, but I never walk back.

Human nature is like water. It takes the shape of its container.