Is your reality your God?

Let's do time warp again.-Rocky Horror Picture Show

This week’s essay is going to be short. I am +4 days from the hit and run and +1.5 days from being released from a Level One Trauma Hospital, so I ask for a bit of grace this week from you please. I am nowhere close to 100%.

I am taking a break from my day job for a moment to think, push my mental boundaries of abstract and critical thought, as well as creativity to reduce what I am thinking in this still concussed skull to something of value.

Economy of words is not my strength, but I will endeavor to be frugal today in what I write in order to hopefully to make a point. And perhaps to make the point an interesting read.

(If it isn’t or if it is, let me know and why please).

NOTE: If you have not read my two previous articles: ‘The Lost of of Being Human’ and ‘Hit and Run’, you may want to. This is sort of part three.

I am a good person…Right?

Some people are inherently good. Yet most people think they are inherently good. There is a difference.

‘Are good’ is doing the right thing when you know it is the right thing, regardless of how well the right thing serves you or doesn’t serve you. It is the right thing. Give up your seat on a flight to a woman on standby whose son is in the ICU and she is trying to get to him. Your schedule isn’t pressing. What’s 4 hours till the next flight? That is good.

Doing what you think is the right thing because it fits in your world view or paradigm (you are right, I am wrong…I just don’t know I am wrong) fits that.

Why do people think they are right? Because they are stuck in a time warp. Their world has stopped evolving and everything is static. They become more than ok with the lack of change as the world rolls by. And, as it does and their relevance and connections begin to slowly fray, there becomes an inner panic. A ceasing not to be OK. This causes anger or rage when their status quo is challenged. Maybe a new subdivision being built across the street that used to be a field. Maybe (oh no), it is a neighbor who is….Muslim. Yep, check the box, the world is ending here in the Midwest. Used to be quiet. Everyone knew everyone. We were the right kind of folk. Now we have suburban McMansions down the street, people 20 years younger than me driving cars that cost more than my house (how dare they) and dangerous kind living in our midst. (Believe me, this shit is real).

The God of Status Quo that is commonly worshipped today is collapsing. The Buddhists believe in Impermanence. Change is constant. Which it is. You cannot lock yourself into a time warp and expect to be ok. It just doesn’t work. Often, we call this when taken to extreme, ‘Radicalized’. More often than not, it’s just pissed off.

Tungsten versus Digital Diarrea.

Two things happened on Sunday.

One from a person who accepts and embraces change. His world and reality is constantly in flux. He is smart, curious and successful. In part for these reasons. After my accident (he is not a cyclist), he sent me, via Amazon, a block of Tungsten. The hardest element. Take from it what you will. It’s on my desk.

The other is from a person on Facebook who wanted to pick a fight and win an argument on Facebook (of course, right). Cyclists have no business on the roads. Doesn’t matter if you pay taxes, roads are for cars and truck. Maybe motorcycles but those are annoying too.

“You got hit. The hit and run wasn’t a crime (actually it was), it was your fault. If you die because you choose to ride in places you don’t belong, that’s on you.”

To me this post sounds a lot like what the a group of people tell themselves before they beat up a person for being the wrong color or wearing a shirt with the wrong message in a part of town ‘they don’t belong’.

Picked out because they don’t fit the vigilante’s version of what is right and acceptable. Had nothing to do with the victim, the group was threatened by what the person represented to them. They were threatened in their ignorance and selfishness, the desire to keep things as they are…for them and them alone.

People that believe they are good (rather than are) are often able to convince themselves of this quite easily. Ask anyone whose committed a hate crime if they fundamentally think of themselves as a good and just person. You’ll get the answer you expect. Same on social platforms.

Do online trolls and bullies look in the mirror after dinner and say to themselves, “holy shit, you are awesome at being a completely miserable human being with absolutely no morals or ethical boundaries! Dude, you are PROFESSIONAL GRADE! But, let’s work harder at it tomorrow!” Umm no. Not even sociopaths tell themselves this.

Ask yourself, if something offends you… why?

If something offends you because you don’t understand it, learn. If it offends you because it is different, grow. If it offends you because it is wrong, understand why. If it still offends you, and you are not being harmed, let-it-go.

You don’t like something? Fine. Work to change it. Be a force for good, for positive societal change. Run for office. Start a petition. Volunteer. If you want to become a better, happier person who is (mostly) free of anger, rage and anxiety, accept change as the constant. Let things go. Wake up and tell yourself, I wonder what new thing I can experience and learn today. Your world will change.

Remember, it isn’t on ANYONE ELSE other than yourself to improve. YOU are the ONLY one who can stop being offended and start improving. It isn’t anyone else’s issue or problem. And, our world will get a hell of a lot better when more of us start to figure this out.

“The more I know, the more I realize I know nothing.”

―Socrates