For many, many years, I lived with the belief that if everybody else in the world would only conform to my standards, then that elusive peace and happiness I sought would come to fruition. My unresolved issues had accumulated to the toppling point, exponentially intensifying with increased frequency and duration my feelings of both desolation and despair. My set of friends was nearly empty, and I was questioning whether or not I even liked myself.
One day, out of nowhere, a package arrived addressed to me. In it was a box, and a simple, unsigned note saying only "I hope this helps you." Inside the box was an assortment of books, tapes, and videos. The topics varied, but the common theme was ‘taking responsibility for my own feelings and actions.’
Every four years we see the people poke their heads out to state again how tired they are of politics. Some of it is actually okay. There are people who simply are not into politics, who don't want to discuss politics, and who don't want to be dragged into political discussions. There is consistency when the person whose head pokes out to tell someone that they don't discuss politics when everyone is talking about politics.
However, there are those people who feel the need to follow the declaration by offering their opinions on politics. Then, they claim their opinions on politics are valid.
What do they mean when they aren't interested in politics, but they think their opinions on political matters are valid? That is like saying they aren't interested in cooking, but they have opinions on how we can improve our recipes. How would they know if they don't know our recipes? They can't know. They can't support the reasons for the improvements if they don't know what already goes into it.
The same goes with politics. If someone doesn't want to know what went into the political discussions, how can they possibly offer anything of value to improve it? They can't. They shouldn't. If it's you who does it, don't.
Who knows if I really was accessing the thoughts of Socrates and Einstein, or if I was simply going deep into my own mind to search archives that I had blocked for whatever reasons I may have had? Perhaps, I had merely happened upon a stream of collective knowledge to which we all have access. Whatever it was that I was doing concerned my friends and family. They would sometimes catch me in deep, self-induced trances, but mostly they would see me doing research to challenge or verify thoughts I had while in the trances.
I can't disagree with them that it seems like a type of insanity; however, if it is insanity, I have been insane for as long as I can remember. For example, I was fairly adept at dividing large numbers by the time we learned long division in school. There was no way for me to calculate earned run averages for the pitchers on our make-believe teams without that. When Mr. Reed was showing us the proper way to divide big numbers in eighth grade, I told him about the method I figured out years earlier that also worked. He challenged me on that. I proved it to him.
Happiness resides just above as the air to the vast sea of depression. Tho' not landed, there is much company adrift.
