BibleBoy's Blog

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Wow I was a mess in 2003

So since I have been blogging since 2003 and blogs really didn't have tagging back then I decided that I'm going to slowly start working my way through my old posts and tagging them..... Good Lord I was a freaking mess. The most popular tag so far is "tiff" .... Man, I have noooo idea how that girl dealt with me... Well, I don't know how anyone dealt with me but especially her. Now she wasn't such a piece of cake herself at the time but, well.... just if you havent known me long and you think I'm an emotional mess at times now, go back through the archives of this blog and be amazed :)

Labels: archives, blog, emotions, tiff

Posted @ 8:52 PM // 0 comments // View Links // Create a Link //

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

What I want

There have been a lot of things going on with multiple friendships and with organizations, jobs, and churches that all seem to fall back to a similar theme. They are things that desperately need to be taken control of.

The anxiety issues that I have been having are continuing on but I think it's kind of narrowing down as to what the cause of the majority of the issues are. Its a hard thing to try to understand your purpose but when it seems that your purpose is the opposite of what you are prepared and equipped to be it just makes it a lot harder. Once of the biggest things that I have realized is that I try too hard to be the person that someone wants me to be. This is true for pretty much every human on earth but I think it goes a little over the edge with me because it seems that my compassion for helping people motivates me to be there for someone and to help them with things they need beyond my abilities. In doing this I lose sight of the things that I want and need and I completely lose focus of myself until these anxiety spells start hitting. Sometimes it is very hard for me to remember what it is that *I* need and the things that *I* desire.

Unfortunately with the life that I generally end up living I constantly feel that the things I need and want are asking way too much and I silence myself when I should speak up. It's very hard caring for people in the state they are when they don't have the capacity to care for you back but that is part of compassion. The problem is that when you end up in a situation where its not just that they aren't able to care but its that they don't even desire to respect you. This situation occurs in my life over and over and over again. Why? Simply because I don't stand up for who *I* am and what *I* need.

What do I need?

I need to be loved for who I am and respected for who I am. I am not the perfect person and I'm, quite possibly, one of the worst... but I am me and I try my best. I fail... I fail a lot.

I can't always drop my entire life to help someone but it is going to kill me when I can't. I need to be able to feel appreciated even when I can't do what it is that is asked of me.

I need encouragement.... Lots of it. I try my best to encourage everyone else and I'm often left feeling that I really am not making an impact and that I shouldn't even bother anymore. Most of the time I think I end up talking into the wind... There is no confirmation that I was at least heard.

I need to be told when I am doing something right and/or helpful and not only told when I'm screwing something up. I will certainly screw things up and I do want to be told when I do but if all I'm ever told is when I'm doing something wrong then all I know is that I'm fighting a losing battle and should move on to somewhere that I can actually be making a difference.

I need to be a part of what I am working on. If I really can't be a part of the people or the project then I don't believe that there is anything that I can do that is going to be effective.

I need to be trusted. If I am not trusted then I am not going to feel a part of whats going on and I know for a fact that I am not going to be able to help.

I need cooperation. I can't do anything on my own and even if I could it wouldn't be worth it. If I am fighting for something or working towards something but no one else wants to be part of it then it's a futile effort.

Most of all -- I need people to remember that I am human and that there is a good chance that the things I am dealing with elsewhere are probably much larger than what you know -- in fact, I can pretty much assure you of that because I try, often too hard, to hide what is going on with me for the sake of the person I'm trying to be there for or the project I am working on. Even if I do manage to help in some minor way it does not mean that I am superhuman.

Labels: church, emotional pain, emotions, friendship, jobs, needs, volunteer

Posted @ 9:20 PM // 0 comments // View Links // Create a Link //

Friday, April 11, 2008

Facing the Opposition

There a a few things that we truly are not capable of until we are put into a certain situation. For example, moms have lifted cars off of their child or the nicest person in the world shot and killed someone in the act of defense. In these scenarios we will never know what we are capable of until it actually happens. This is how our minds work. In James 1 it explains how we need to consider it joy when we face trials and tribulations because it is strengthing us but it's hard to see how this can be until later. If we are wise, we will realize that some amazing things couldn't happen until some negative things happened first.

A little while ago I wrote a blog titled "Living for Life" in which I talked about a lot of things that I believe were important to life. It's obvious that most people do not share the same views and that is awesome because that is part of what makes life exciting because the dynamics of people keep us entertained. Earlier today I received a comment on that post reporting that Jesus was sweet and that He jumps on pogo sticks.... I thought it was awesome that this person decided to break this news on my blog. Who could have even imagined that he would pick me. Ok, so there was more to his comment than just that breaking news. Logically I should have been offended but this is just another example of where our logic often throws us of course of just living life for life and, ultimately, leads us to feelings of worthlessness. In a way this goes back to my analogy of a surfer who harnesses the awesome (and many times negative) power of waves and has fun with it -- and the bigger the wave, the bigger the thrill. It's a lot like this in life too. If we are to really enjoy our lives we need to learn to harness the power of our opponents who attack us and have fun with it.

In high school I was picked on a good bit and, yes, it did bug me. I guess it's also true that no one totally gets over the fact that people attack them but it's really an issue of how you respond to that attack internally. I've had a lot of people tell me that I have matured just about every year that has gone by and I think one of the key points to this is that I've learned how to better harness this power and allow it to not upset me but to confirm that I have a purpose in what I am doing. I think just about any blogger would agree that the worst type of comment is the one that isn't left. I gave up caring what people thought of me a long while ago. I've realized that the logic that our society uses is what is hurting us the most and if I want to deviate from this logic in any way then I really need to understand that people are going to attack me and disagree with me and I need to understand that if I really believe the words that I say then I need to realize that when words I say strikes a chord with someone then I am actually making an impact on someone's life which is exactly what I am hoping to do. When I receive a negative attack I think the more negative that it is the more it gives me purpose and fuels me to keep doing whatever it is I do here.

Back in 2006 I wrote a blog based on starfish that I think also captures what I am trying to say here. The people that are constantly picked on tend to be the people that make the largest impact in this life. You may want to consider it a phenomenon but I really believe that its because these are the people that have the potential to become extremely motivated for the right reasons in life. They have experienced first hand that attacking someone for their beliefs doesnt get anyone anywhere so they embrace their own beliefs, become proud of who they are, and they work towards the things they believe are important. Those same people end their lives knowing they lived a full and worthwhile life and having made a great impact on this world. It's never about what bad luck comes your way or how much people hate you but its about how you feel about you and how you take the things that come your way.

Opposition fuels advancement. The human race has invented things the fasted out of mother necessity. The more that we have an opposing force the more that we will work towards answering that force. I'm sure the Wright brothers faced a lot of opposition but I'm also sure that when people attacked them they didn't argue with them.... in fact, maybe they listened to what someone was saying and maybe the person calling them stupid actually gave them a new perspective. Ultimately, they flew..... and I'm sure there were people that were humbled.

It all boils down to believing in who you are and what you believe. If you doubt yourself then anything that is said to you will cause you to falter in what you are trying to accomplish. On the other hand, if you truly believe in whatever it is that you are doing then the only thing your opposition does is confirm that you are working on something that is worth noticing and, in that realization, understand that negative comments and attacks really are a cause for celebration.

Labels: attacks, blogosphere, emotions, psychology, purpose, society

Posted @ 4:31 PM // 2 comments // View Links // Create a Link //

Thursday, April 03, 2008

Living for life

I still think it is amazing to watch how animals behave. There are distinct ways of telling when an animal is happy and when an animal is upset. While I don't think that animals experience emotions, per se, I do believe they experience euphoric states as well as states of fear. I love watching Lisa go about different things and just by watching her feathers and the position her crown is pointing, I almost instinctively know how she is feeling. I also know the reaction when I give Lisa her favorite egg crunch treat or I give Bacardi peanuts or I give Cracker, well, anything edible :)

I also think about the joy of seeing a newborn or seeing a child learn all of the amazing mysteries of this world. To a 2 year old a yoyo is an amazing thing and there is this desire to learn about the world - and we smile at watching that amazement. That same 2 year old doesn't understand that she shouldn't put the yoyo in her mouth. Eventually she grows up and learns that its wrong and figures out that she, too, can make a yoyo go up and down on her own and suddenly that amazing toy is now just a boring piece of plastic on a string.

What is it that turns something so exciting into something boring? Its the lack of wonder or mystery. With my birds I need to give them new toys and I need to confuse them so they have something entertaining to figure out - and one of the best ways to do this is to create foraging situations which is basically making them work for their food and figure out how to get it.

In almost all cases we will see an underlying need for survival in just about everything. The greatest sci fi and mystery films all have an aspect of a human surviving. Make a sci fi about someone that can't find an object (that's not crucial to their life) and you have a poor movie.

What is it that differs between us and animals? And does that difference mean we're better off or is it just something that simply makes us different. One of the fundamental differences is that Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. But why is it that this tree was the subject of a curse? Isn't that knowledge good to have?

Consider this. In the Bible sin is not based on laws in the new testament but on what is in someone's heart. Basically this means that if you don't know something is a sin then it really is not committing a sin if you do whatever it is. So one could come to the conclusion that if we didn't have the knowledge of good and evil then we obviously could not sin. And yes, this is why dogs can hump anything and still go to heaven. They don't need to be judged because there is no right or wrong to them. If Adam and Eve hadn't eaten the fruit then the result would be that permarital sex would not be a sin. The sex the human race would have would be completely different but it would still be euphoric.

So why is foraging such a great way to keep birds entertained? Simply because food is essential to life. When you hide food then they have a desire to find it because they need to survive. When they find it, it is euphoric. Sex is essential to life so when animals mate it is euphoric because it is carrying on the race. Seeing a newborn baby is euphoric because its our race continuing.

The problem that us humans have is that we are so confused by things going on because we now have a "logic center" that has to weigh the appropriateness of each situation before acting upon it and to further confuse that the same logic system is trained by those who came before us using their logic system. Every generation that goes by we get further and further away from who God intended us to be. I believe we were created very similar to animals in that we were not intended to have this logic system - we were intended to live for life. The simple things in life are what are supposed to make us happy. Simply surviving another day is meant to be exciting. Every generation that goes by we're seeing more and more distortment of what life is supposed to be. In today's world our logic systems are telling us that we need to do everything that our boss says no matter what because we can't survive without that job but we just end up living for our boss instead of life its self. We need to drive nice cars in order to be worth something and we need $100k salaries in order to "make it". All of these are the result of our twisted logic.

Most of the world no longer lives life for life. We regress more and more in life the more we progress in society. We are all losing the fact that we are all a team and the greatest way to survive is to work together instead of rising above others in order to survive. We see more and more acts of greed and we covet things more and more. We have truly lost what it means to live and yet we spend so much time figuring out the meaning of life - as we drive by someone stranded on the side of the road. Afterall, according to our logic system, our life can't continue if we don't hurry up and get to work to make money.

Our world is not going to get any better until we all start living life for life. If we can start to realize that survival is survival as the human race and that with that survival comes euphoria and happiness then we might have a shot at making this world a better place. We need to live life for life in general rather than just for our own lives..... This is where we find the meaning of life and become happier people.

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Labels: ***, animals, birds, emotions, psychology, purpose

Posted @ 4:45 PM // 2 comments // View Links // Create a Link //

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Do I even exist anymore?

I really don't know whats been going on with me recently but something just isn't right. One of the biggest oddities that is occuring right now is I constantly feel dehydrated. It doesnt matter how much water I drink I still have that dry mouth feeling, the sucking impulse, and eventually the dehydration headache. I know, I know.... go see a doctor, right? Well, I am.... but here is the problem. The doctor won't refill my prescriptions without a checkup so I have to go and pay $120 to say hi. Tell him about the dehydration? Sure, I could.... but I'm more affraid of that because that will result in him wanting to do tests.... tests that I just simply can not afford. The $120 office visit is going to kill me as it is..... I can't afford for there to be something wrong with me so the only thing I can do is pretend that nothing is.

There is probably a good chance that all of that links in to the other stuff.... but some of it is also the fact that I feel like I don't exist. Aside from the fact that I feel emotionally (and sometimes even physically) numb, it seems that anything I say just doesnt get heard. It started on Twitter when I noticed that none of my friends that usually reply to me were doing so.... but Twitter has been having issues so I write it off as that. Then it goes to emails not being responded to.... then text messages..... then phone calls...... anymore, I can't figure out if every communications device I own is broke or if people just simply don't care anymore. Even in the people that did pay some attention to me recently it seems that the majority of all of that was just when they needed something.

Overall? I just feel drained. I'm not overwhelmed or anything.... I don't feel stressed out.... I just don't feel like me. I'm functioning incredibly well doing the consulting work that I've been doing so at least its not something my clients have to worry about..... but when I step outside of the "work zone" I just don't know who I am..... and more importantly, I don't know if who I am even matters anymore since there isn't anyone to share that with. I don't know if you'd call any of this depression because it doesnt really have the footprint that depression has.... but at the same time I can't say that I'm happy.

So I guess there is an awaited "bob update" for anyone who actually still cares enough to read my blog. Sorry it wasn't happy.... but at least it isnt the deep depression driven blog posts of 2003 and 2004..... I'm sure things will turn around.... I'm sure that God has His hand on me..... I just am really hoping that there is some breakthrough soon.

Labels: emotional pain, emotions

Posted @ 11:34 PM // 2 comments // View Links // Create a Link //

Sunday, July 22, 2007

"I hate my life! I wish I was a [insert favorite animal here]"

How many times do you hear someone say that? Actually, how many times have *I* said that? As humans, we deal with so much crap that we don't want to deal with and I believe the truth is that God never intended it to be this way. There is a very important key to the story of Adam and Eve and that involves the name of the tree.

When God gave Adam and Eve the Garden of Eden, there was one tree that was called "The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil" and they were told that they were forbidden to eat from the tree. Later, Eve was tempted and mankind fell. People interpret all of the pain we experience now as a result of the sin but I don't think that is entirely true. Oh, the sin does not help, but I believe the tree really was what God called it. If you ate from the tree you gained knowledge of good and evil.

So what is one of the largest differences between humans and animals? Animals run off of pure instinct. Animals have very large emotions at times but everything they do is the result of an instinct. They don't have moral reasoning. When you're training a dog, the dog does not respond to negative reinforcement because you hurt their feelings but rather that they associate the bad thing they did with the bad result. The more I learn about birds, the more I learn this concept. My quaker says a lot of different words and she says them in very humorous times in many cases.... but those words are not said out of reasoning but rather out of a situation. It's an association of the word and some kind of external stimuli that prompts that word to be said. Again, there is no reasoning and no thought of "hey, it would be really funny if I said this"....

If we combine these two concepts then we can understand why people say they would rather be an animal. We're being punished for our sinful nature out of the natural result of the sin. If a child touches a hot stove, they are naturally punished by being burned. The nature of eating of the fruit of that tree was that we now have this knowledge and moral reasoning that we were not initially intended to have. As a result, we have to deal with a lot more than just acting upon instinct. So if animals still act only upon instinct, it's only natural that we would want to be one of those animals that doesn't have to worry about moral reasoning. They don't have to wonder what the "correct" response is and how it might affect other people's feelings. As humans, we don't want this responsibility. The truly sad part about this is that we take on even more than we have to. We take it to the extreme and we transfer this into a model of weighing what other people think of us before we act.

Last night I was hanging out with a 1 year old and I was curbing fussiness by acting like a complete and total idiot in a very congested neighborhood. The happiness of that child was much more important to me than what other people (strangers) thought of me. Last night I was able to simply act without thinking of what anyone else thought of me. I erased that line that everyone so often prevents them from allowing them to do something that their nature and their instinct would have had them do. They miss out..... the same way I miss out all the times that I allow that line to stop me. I was rewarded last night by something that I couldn't have even began to expect. Out of nowhere I received one of the greatest hugs of my life. It may sound small but in this situation, it meant more to me than anyone can even begin to imagine. Nothing I did was working towards that hug -- but that is what made it so awesome.

There are a lot of trade offs to the fact that we now face moral judgement. We experience ups and downs. While it may be true that things would be less painful if Adam and Eve had never sinned, it also would mean that we wouldn't experience a lot of the amazing happiness that we now can. For one example, animals don't even enjoy sex -- oh, but we do! Because of our struggles, we gain great rewards and one of the reasons those rewards are so strong is simply because we had to work for them and we understand the opposite. We understand the pain and as a result, we can enjoy the happiness even more.

While there is a very evident sign of emotions inside many animals, it is not the same as what we, as humans, experience. The emotions that animals experience are based out of instinct. This doesn't mean that your dog or my birds don't want us around them or that they are not happy to see us but their base emotion is not what we know as love. While my birds are happy to see me and sad to see me leave, their instincts are greater. Bacardi has bit me quite a few times and it wasn't because he was out to attack me or because he wanted to hurt me but rather because he felt threatened for one reason or another. Animals are not able to have a self-less love for anyone else. It is only humans that are able to intentionally lay down their lives for a friend....

.... and it is that reason that selflessness and erasing the lines of "the way it is" is so important to our happiness. When we make a sacrifice for someone else we are rewarded by knowing that we have done something that most of the universe is incapable of. It's what makes us, as humans, unique... and that is what we search for most: Uniqueness.

Labels: ***, animals, emotional pain,