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Our nation is divisive and fracturing into tribes.
Why? The radicalization machine is fed by alienation.
Since alienation fractures communal bonds into tribal factions, we become myopic in our problem-solving. This is by design: self-centered rage is easily manipulable, providing pawns and cover for greater social ills.
Rather than choosing a side, realize there is a larger game being played: you are playing Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Donkey while real-life Battleship is bombarding.
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You have to find happiness every day in order to be happy.
It is sitting there waiting for you but not given. It requires awareness, which is usually occupied and distracted by attempting to build or buy happiness.
This means happiness is a choice of where we focus.
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We assume people are toxic, yet perhaps the creation of toxicity is the environment: toxicity is a reactive survival mechanism.
However, not all people are toxic, even though raised and abused in the same system.
There are alternate survival mechanisms: merging, stoicism, resilience, community, kindness, and adaptation.
Do not accept the system as an excuse for poison.
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Look over your shoulder to ensure a slip, trip, or fumble today.
Naturally, we consider the past to do better in the future. (Do this when you are alone.)
When you are with others, remain in the present: with one foot in the past (fretting about a former fumble) and the other in the future (envisioning a repaired reputation), we sabotage the present.
Straddling ensures stumbling, providing us with a new awkward encounter we can never rectify.
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To treat someone a certain way for profit (i.e., “I will give you the cheaper goods and run my business cheaper, and along the way, you suffer indignity”) is a bargain that we make.
To suffer unfair accusations repeatedly is crazy-making.
It turns people into that kind of animal who finds cause in rebelling against the indignity.
Yet, we must overcome this animalistic response in a reversal: offer back an abundance of charity to make up for the lack of trust in humanity. Convert your resentment at pre-accusation not into cynicism, but into easy acts of kindness where even the smallest gesture stands out.
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Future you is a stranger, and we seldom empathize with strangers distant from us.
To improve your future life (by having discipline now), you must empathize with your future self enough to make them real: make them a vivid companion, full of your hopes and dreams, a friend that you talk to daily, writing letters into the future, and receiving them back.
Your imaginary friend who makes you better should be your future self, not your past self or your present devil.
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At one point, wanting to fulfill your potential requires work, but you also want a peaceful and relaxed life, which -if misinterpreted- denies effort.
To satisfy both desires requires “work” and “not-work”: a seemingly impossible contradiction.
However, doing excellent work to meet your potential during half of the day generates fulfillment over the next half.
In a reinterpretation, we do not have to be totalizing; we can be granted relaxation and labor for ambition to fulfill both desires, but perhaps not simultaneously.
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You can try to be happy by keeping your head in the sand. That is, to live in escapism, often taking the form of idealism.
However, reality will slap you on the ass, and once again your happiness will be stolen from you.
The other approach is clear eyed bravery: to see reality as it is, or at least as much as you can understand. This is not being a cynical realist; it is seeing through your own illusions and delusions.
Once you can see through yourself, you can see through anybody – and not being tricked, you can love them; then you will never not be happy.
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We are always complicit, but owning our part is vital.
Simplistically, there are two paths: Recognition of complicity and a lack of action, motivation, or change. This assumes you are either okay with the status quo or unmotivated to prioritize change. The other path is to be aware of your part and take responsibility: you act and practice altering your behavior patterns.
Some paradigms are so significant, such as climate change or wealth aristocracy, that change seems improbable, so we focus on what we can change: ourselves.
The goal is to become a model of possibility (people can change) and to grow internally secure enough to reverse stability and radiate outward, positively affecting global conditions.
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Albert Camus says beginning to think is beginning to be undermined.
This is specifically in reference to tragedy’s ability to provoke suicide. However – and this is arguable – once you consider any position long enough you will see an alternate version of it, which will undermine your primary position.
To think is to decrease your blind faith by abolishing an innocent or naïve acceptance.
One must consider as well the zealot and mad-man, who think excessively and have an irrational faith beyond reason and must wonder if this is actually "thinking" or if true thinking is multiple perspectives dismantling monistic thought.
