Somehow to Smile

Okay... I wasn't going to write.. I was just going to enjoy my whiskey and work on my computer, but here I am.. Call me a sucker.....

Feel better?

I've developed this complex... I was taught at a young age that pride is a horrible sin. That I should always be humble. Well... I don't know if that's really true or not, but it's scored into my brain so true or not, if I act accordingly or not, I'm stuck with the emotional ramifications of this conditioning. So what's my point, and what does this have to do with a smile? Well... I know the sense of pride, it can swell up quickly, and while I haven't had the world come crashing down on me as a result of it, when I start to feel confident and pleased with my accomplishments, that fear of 'indulging in the moment' kicks in, because it may undo the good I've accomplished, and I in turn re-wire the emotional switch board to a less pleasant emotion to derail me from such a potentially damaging indulgence...

Some of this I've known, and some of this I just put together as I've been typing... So what emotion have I chosen to superimpose over any sense of accomplishment? If you're one of the VERY FEW people that know me intimately, you'll know the answer is Guilt.

Why guilt? Who f*****g knows? Seriously, I've untangled several other issues in the last 6 months that are equally if not more disturbing, so why not guilt? and... why am I perpetually feeling as though I need to do more in parallel to feeling more guilty? This may actually be terribly simple in the end, but then again, what isn't after you've figured it out?

We humans love our downward spirals. It may be a natural order of things, or it may just be an unending potential for us to lock into an infinite feedback loop which tears us apart.

- Need to feel a sense of accomplishment to feel, content, adequate, valuable, 'important'
- The need for accomplishment drives me to action, learning, doing, changing, developing, creating
- The action results in accomplishment
- The accomplishment results in a feeling that is associated with pride
- The fear of pride, results in a need to shut down
- The mind reaches for a tool that is effective at shutting down pride
- The mind uses guilt to shut down
- The guilt negates the value of accomplishment
- The need to feel a sense of accomplishment continues to grow

Hmm... Let me put this another way:

______

private Boolean MayIRest()
{
Boolean Guilt = false;
Boolean Action = false;
Boolean Accomplishment = false;
Boolean SenseOfPride = false;
Boolean SenseOfAccomplishment = false;
Boolean Rest = false;

while (SenseOfAccomplishment == false)
{
Action = true;
while (Action == true)
{
Accomplishment = true;
while (Accomplishment == true)
{
SenseOfPride = true;
while (SenseOfPride == true)
{
Guilt = true;
while (Guilt == true)
{
SenseOfAccomplishment = false;
}
}
}
}
Rest = false;
return Rest;
}
Rest = true;
return Rest;
}

______

There, that's must easier to understand... So there is my programming. The function that I use to determine if I am deserving of rest.. Make sense? So.. If you look at it in such, not human terms, there is a simple solution to this problem. Just remove:

______
SenseOfPride = true;
while (SenseOfPride == true)
{
Guilt = true;
while (Guilt == true)
{
SenseOfAccomplishment = false;
}
}
______

and replace it with

______

SenseOfAccomplishment = true;

______

But that's cheating right? Because, there may very well be some value to the fact that pride can be disastrous. So that leaves us with two potential immediate courses of action....

1) Go ahead and make the aforementioned modification to our programming, and see if our 'fear of pride' is actually warranted. If not, than the change was successful

2) Develop another tier of logic to determine if a feeling is truly prideful, and not simply a sense of accomplishment, and allow that logic to determine the next part of the loop.

This leads to the next set of questions. What is pride, and will I ever 'really' know, until I allow myself to experience it and see where it takes me?

ha ha! You've got to love the fact that wisdom without experience, is hollow... Without making our own mistakes, we'll be eternally broken and incomplete... So, there really is only one logical course of action, and that is to allow what has been perceived as pride to exist, develop, and be measured, to be understood.... After this, I can modify my programming to what it 'should' be....

You know, the more organic we become, the less organic we become... Life is so consistently inconsistent that it's impossible to comprehend, and so easy to predict... You just have to see the pattern.

wow... and I wasn't going to say anything... It's kind of like, 'The Wizard of Ozz', and if you think that was ironic, you've yet to realize how many more connections there are... Start looking, you'll be overwhelmed...

Final thought... Well... I was also raised to believe that wisdom can be passed on to the young and inexperienced... "You should learn from my mistakes!" Yeah, well, life has taught me that you have to make your own mistakes before you can fully embrace wisdom, because nobody, no matter how gifted they are with words can communicate their depth of experience in terms that are fully compatible with someone else's life experience and perspective. So that leads to the next thought, which is, can wisdom truly be passed along if mistakes are truly to be made.. I think the answer here is that wisdom, when passed along, gives the recipient a proverbial map to follow. This map can enable them to more quickly, confidently, safely, and deliberately get from point A to point B... But the travel still has to occur, you can't live purely in the world of knowledge and idea... You must also live in the realm of experience, for without that, the knowledge you have is inapplicable.