Two turtle dives

Unsolicited Advice

I1. Most things can be done one of two ways, quickly or correctly but not usually both.

2. You will work harder than you ever would have later to be lazy now, than you ever would to just work now.

3. It is far better to keep up than to catch up.

4. Do what you need to now, so you can do what you want to later.

5. Never assume that anyone will care or make more effort toward a particular end than you are willing to, although many would ask and let you care and exert more effort than they do toward that same end, even when they are the  only benefactor.

6. Don't  expect to be thanked simply for doing what is right. Let your excellence in your work be its own reward. It will pay off in the end.

7. There are things that will be done only if you do them asked things that will get done because they have to. Concentrate on the former.

8. Do the jobs that no one else wants to as though you want to regardless of how you feel about them.

9. If we ever hope to stop having our time consumed with addressing what the problem is we have to start addressing why the problem is and work from there.

10. Avoid time pirates.

11. Salesmen sell. Their objective is to get your money. They will not treat you better after they have your money than they do before they have it.

12. Everyone is selling something.

13. Anyone who tells you they believe in God and pursues Him no further than that doesn't actually believe in God.

14. Managers manage.

15. Perception is more important than truth.

16. We move in the direction of our vision.

17. It's good to do important work, but it's important to do good work.

No Words

When you are at a loss for words, but you feel like you need to say something, just imagine the conversation in your mind. Start it with," Words escape me. I wish I knew quite what to say here." You'll find a whole bunch of words after that.

Life in The Passed Tents

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Life in The Passed Tents

We want a hero and we want a villian.
But those things don't truly exist, at least not in the mythological proportions we seem to desire.

We really want a world that's easy to understand, but that doesn't exist either.

We fear the future and lament the nonexistent glory of days gone by...
just like every generation before ours.

The truth is, the romance of a more simple time is mostly found in retrospect more than it is experienced in the moment.

It is the difference between the experiencing self and the remembering self.

Back then it was just ball busting work which drove people to create solutions. We have the technology we can so callously curse today, because we haven't known a life without it like yesterday.

Focus on the future, learn from the past.

♡ d (●¿●) b

Grinning From Here To Hear

Originally Published Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Grinning From Here To Hear

I don't actually understand it myself, so I won't pretend to know why it happens,  or try to convince you about what happens afterward, but for some reason we are here.

If we are here first, or only here ever, is an answer that you alone must decide, make peace with that and be certain enough of to live and die in it without regret.

It is a journey of sorts. More of a process than a product and all that beautifully glorious, horrifically tragic, mundane shit that we all experience before we die, well we call that life.

Life is for living.
Enjoy it while you can
Endure it when you must.

However short or long it may seem, in this brief moment, it will always be too short for someone and too long for someone else. We all get the same in the end, a lifetime.

In the big picture though it is as it should be, exactly the length it is and no more and who are we to say otherwise?

Whatever it may consist of in length, it is very brief in the grand scheme. Perhaps it is brief so the end will be visible from the beginning. Perhaps it is to make it more than simply endurable, but enjoyable as well.

The end looms larger as we approach it but we also gain the advantage of hindsight and perspective as we approach it.

I have come to find that a great deal of life ultimately means very little, but that there is a very little bit of it that in fact means a great deal more than we care to consider sometimes.

We are given life to live it.
This too shall pass.

It ours alone... but it somehow takes on greater significance when we realize that we are not at all alone in our humanity.  That our lives and the choices we make can and will impact the lives of others we may barely or not even know and for far longer than we will ever live to see.

Yet, as mysterious as each of our lives are we can at times hold very little regard for the value of our own or those of others. We manage to live in denial about our ultimate fates, until we are forced to face them. Until one day when one of those lives intersecting our own is abruptly removed and a void in their absence is left.
A void that will never quite be fully filled.

Like hearing a noise for so long that it becomes as silence to us over time, only after its source is permanently removed do we begin to realize what a beautiful sound it was after all.

Whatever the reason, the purpose, the meaning, the significance, we are here.

We are small to be sure.
Our existence perhaps barely noticible.
It is true, we are only one of millions, billions in fact.
But we are not insignificant...
...or so the prophets of truths and the tellers of stories would have us believe.

Whatever you may believe, whether by default or design, we are somehow here, and it seems that at the heart of most matters it is the heart that matters most if we are to have a life worth living.

Be good to yourselves, more importantly, be good to each other.

Solo Cristo Salva
d (-_-) b

roberto esponja at 14.1.15

We Who Wait Welcome You

This is the new blog.
I have several ideas about the direction it will go, but nothing in concrete quite yet.

My only real hope here is to return to the original intention of Failure in the Victory Garden, with painfully honest transparency for both spiritual healing and clarity on my own perspectives/direction. With that, I will say that I intend to republish some of the more personally relevant articles I've written from the Failure blog here as well.

If you find value in it all the better, but it's not the point of it.

If you know me at all by now, you probably know that I have no concern for offense, either offering or receiving it. (Although I would never needlessly do so.) It like so many things can be a part of the healing process. Get over your offense enough to learn why you are offended,  rather than considering that you are offended, and you'll know what I mean.

Removing you self as much as possible as a factor from the equation is vital to gaining a less distorted view of any truth... or so I think. You can figure that one out if you want.

Most often it is we who block our own view of truth.

If you know me, you also then know that I believe that the ugliness we can see on the outside is far worse once we start looking at the inside. I think that's true of people everywhere, and most often what we see is only what is revealed intentionality or not. Sometimes it is plain to see other times we have to look for it.

External beauty is far easier to achieve than internal beauty.

It's a difficult thing to face that ugliness which is in ourselves and it is why I think most of us, and me too, would rather avoid it if we can. It really does take a lifetime to prepare for living.

I don't really care if anyone likes what I have to say. Trust me I dislike myself far more than you ever could, the major difference being that only I am stuck with it and only the efforts I expend will change it.  With the best and worst of intentions several have tried and failed throughout my lifetime.

I am not beyond correction, however if you feel inclined to tell me that I'm wrong have the respect to explain to me how it is that you believe I am wrong or your opinion will be regarded as simply that, your opinion. Teach me all you wise ones.

Based in my own experiences, I have to think that what holds true for taking in personal guilt and blame also holds true for our own thoughts processes over all. That is, we believe what we have been prepared to and are then willing to believe.

All of us know that we have limited experiences and understandings that shape our belief systems. If we believe in a God that operates through design and not default we would take into consideration that those same experiences and understandings that shape our beliefs, are also different between each of us. So then it would seem natural that while some of our beliefs may have as much commonality, as our histories do, they may only share that much, and it would be arrogant on our part to think that only our beliefs are the correct beliefs.

If right and wrong are factors to consider we must also consider that we may unknowingly be either at any point as well. If we can acknowledge that much, we would be wise to reserve that level of judgement we could easily share in ourselves and simply listen to the tales of others and share with them our own without ulterior motive. It called bearing witness and I think it's we are called to do. God will sell Himself.

Lessons from the playground:
1.It takes one to know one.
2. ... words bounce off me and stick to you.

Back to the point, this applies not simply to faith and our perceptions of God and His attributes, but also those perceptions and attributes that we apply to others and ourselves.

Perception however is not reality.

That being said, our culture loves to blame shift and confuse one as being the other in labeling them as "our truths" when if fact they are simply "our perceptions" and not truths at all. It's a grand way to really muddy those waters.

Given the bigger picture, and that by design we perceive the world around us through the lens of our own understanding, we may be capable of grasping limited truths as they individually apply, but as the finite struggling to comprehend the infinite, I'm not really sure anymore that anyone can know actual reality or the never changing nature of those multifaceted universal truths we like to think we do.
This is where faith and trust come into play I suppose.

Again that's up to you to figure out.

I don't expect or even ask that anyone believes what I do because I do and I wouldn't respect it if you did. I have arrived at my own conclusions throughy own experience and so I suggest you do the same. Search your hearts with the sort of honesty that allows you to forget any pride about having been wrong so that you can move forward.

Think for yourself, please.
I'm as fucked up if not worse than you.

Last,  I will say this: It is in the end better to run toward something instead of away from something.

The latter will simply keep you running forever and accomplishes little in the end. Even the best horse in the race will drop if they are run hard enough, long enough.

Solo Cristo Salva
d (-_-) b