​   
            Is it easier to climb out of a 1 foot hole or a 2 foot hole or a 15 foot hole. 1 foot simple enough. Is it easier to run 1 miles 2 miles or 15 miles? 1 mile simple enough. Is it easier to quit my addiction after 1 year 2 years or 15 years. 1 the answer is always less is easier. So get out of your addiction now and it will be easier. The longer you wait the harder it will be always. But some people just prefer to plan to change.

*I recently had a friend tell me he has been doing pills for the past year...sad for several reasons. This was his addictions when we met. It's what I think of as a foundation part of our relationship. When I have been tempted to drink I think of him and how I don't want to disappoint him. We have our own addictions. I've never had an issue with pills, I don't take any. He doesn't have a problem with drinking but our addictive minds are the same. He is married, he has a kid. But this paragraph above rings true. He is that much deeper in the addiction hole now. I am so glad I started ten years ago. Now I've practiced not drinking so long its easy. Start today. He hasn't been happy for a while and I wondered why. Its shame and hiding and addiction. Its the cycle of all that that makes you want to use and then using making all that.  I'm glad he told me but I hope this is a new start.
I'm reminded of how when you dig a hole all the dirt that comes out because its a mess doesn't fit back in the same hole. This is what addiction is like so stop digging and start filling. 

                      Two ideas here. First, you know an addict because you are an addict and second. Try to convince yourself to get rid of the useless stuff in your life physical and emotional, spiritual, relational, and mental. What are you clinging to? Chances are you thought it just then but said to yourself no I don't have to get rid of that I need it. You don't.
*This is good reminder. As I have lost weight I see it as a representation of the unused things that pile up in life and weigh us down. I have gotten rid of the clutter in my life, my thinking. I had no idea that  I had so much weight to lose. It is hard to not notice it on others. We all have things to get rid of. Intermittent fasting has taught me to just not consume. 

     Addiction is imprisonment. Whatever reason a person is in a cell time goes by and as it does a person in jail becomes institutionalized. This means people get used to the cell and are comforted by it because they know what to expect from it. In this story everyone did what they wanted, when they wanted to. The only question was did they want freedom or not. Are you Joe, Tom, Anthony or one of the people in the desert?
​
This a simple story and yes it's the exodus or the Christ archetype but it also shows how we get institutionalized. Since this was written 8 years ago I have learned a lot about the brain. All brains are wired to choose function over truth. Or easy over difficult. It is a good way to not waste resources but if the easy is destructive  then resources will be wasted. This where we have to choose the short term or the long term and the answer to that question is it depends. 
If the long term has a greater return than the cost of short term pain then good. If not then bad. 
This sounds simple but so many of our decisions are subconscious where we hand the decision over to our bodies and give up our conscious mind. This can be detrimental.

Pick your battles wisely. ​

​ In this concept I'm talking about a crying baby. When a baby cries the loud noise is a problem. You could solve the problem of the noise by covering your ears so you don't hear it. No more noise problem solved. But this would be treating the symptom problem and not the cause problem. The other way to remove the symptom problem (the crying) is to stop and ask the baby why it is crying. The baby is probably not going to answer to you will have to do an investigation. You will have to think. You will defiantly have to spend more time and energy than just covering your ears. But if you care about the baby you will ask yourself does the baby need food or changed or to be held? You have to go through and start to meet all these needs and how will you know when you've found the right one, No more crying. The cause problem (let say hunger) is solved so the symptom problem (the noise) is no longer necessary.
            This seems simple enough but what do we do when we have a headache. We take a an pain reliever. but the head ache is a symptom. The pain reliever is the just like covering your ears to the baby. It is a symptom. Instead we need to ask ourselves about the cause of the headache. Am I dehydrated, or mineral deficient? Have I been staring at a computer screen too long? There could be any number of causes but you have to care enough about your head to do the work to fix the cause and the symptom goes away. I am repeating this concept because I see in my own past and in the lives of others around me symptom treating. Here is another example but this time I'll use an action instead of a physical thing. Lying is a symptom of unappealing truth. If the truth was better the lie is unnecessary.

*This idea applys most to health as people often correlate symptoms with the illness itself. One came from the other so it is subject to the other. Remove the illness and the symptoms will go away. This is a tough thing as correlations are often correct but I tell people most wounds have band aids on them so if we outlaw bandages we'll get rid of wounds? of course not but it is difficult to search deep enough to find out what issue is subject to the other. In my life I have had different people go away and realized after the fact how negative or exhausting they were to deal with and didn't know at the time. Some people bring out the best in us and others make things difficult. it's difficult to know if the person is the problem or the situation that you are in with the person. 

My big take away for the day is to step back and try to take my time to figure out what is the wound and what is the bandage. 

​Grieving Process -
   Denial — "I feel fine."; "This can't be happening, not to me."
Denial is usually only a temporary defense for the individual. This feeling is generally replaced with heightened awareness of situations and individuals that will be left behind after death.[1]
  Anger — "Why me? It's not fair!"; "How can this happen to me?"; "Who is to blame?"
Once in the second stage, the individual recognizes that denial cannot continue. Because of anger, the person is very difficult to care for due to misplaced feelings of rage and envy. Any individual that symbolizes life or energy is subject to projected resentment and jealousy.[1]
  Bargaining — "Just let me live to see my children graduate."; "I'll do anything for a few more years."; "I will give my life savings if..."
The third stage involves the hope that the individual can somehow postpone or delay death. Usually, the negotiation for an extended life is made with a higher power in exchange for a reformed lifestyle. Psychologically, the hi is saying, "I understand I will die, but if I could just have more time..."[1]
  Depression — "I'm so sad, why bother with anything?"; "I'm going to die . . . What's the point?"; "I miss my loved one, why go on?"
During the fourth stage, the dying person begins to understand the certainty of death. Because of this, the individual may become silent, refuse visitors and spend much of the time crying and grieving. This process allows the dying person to disconnect oneself from things of love and affection. It is not recommended to attempt to cheer up an individual who is in this stage. It is an important time for grieving that must be processed.[1]
  Acceptance — "It's going to be okay."; "I can't fight it, I may as well prepare for it."
This final stage comes with peace and understanding of the death that is approaching. Generally, the person in the fifth stage will want to be left alone. Additionally, feelings and physical pain may be non-existent. This stage has also been described as the end of the dying struggle.[
 
Kübler-Ross originally applied these stages to people suffering from terminal illness, and later to any form of catastrophic personal loss (job, income, freedom).[1] This may also include significant life events such as the death of a loved one, divorce, drug addiction, an infertility diagnosis. Kübler-Ross claimed these steps do not necessarily come in the order noted above, nor are all steps experienced by all patients, though she stated a person will always experience at least two. Often, people will experience several stages in a "roller coaster" effect - switching between two or more stages, returning to one or more several times before working through it.[1]
Significantly, people experiencing the stages should not force the process. The grief process is highly personal and should not be rushed, nor lengthened, on the basis of an individual's imposed time frame or opinion. One should merely be aware that the stages will be worked through and the ultimate stage of "Acceptance" will be reached.

*I used to spend a lot of time thinking about this. Where are you in this process? Where am I? Once your in acceptance the issues just fall off. Like when you are sick you feel terrible but once your well you don't feel amazing you kind of feel right. Depending on the issue I can think that i am in each phase of the grieving process all at the same time. 
Some things we hold on to so that they won't float away. Now I know that this just keeps going and I am grateful for the things I've work through but also know why I held on to them. We keep the lows to hold onto the highs. eventually we get board with the roller coaster and get off of coarse then we get board not being on the roller coaster. Before you ever get off the roller coaster you think...maybe this will last forever, innocence. Then as time goes on you learn that it won't.

Now I spend a lot of time thinking about an equal trade innocence for wisdom. I find my self a bit low on innocence to trade these days. I no longer think I can improve things I can just change them. The change then becomes the indirect improvement. The universe only has one problem and that is boredom. All the things we think are good or bad or important or worthless are all just solutions for this boredom problem. 

There are some big concepts in here that I could write about for a long time. dualism painted on time and the core universal problem being boredom. Don't believe me about the boredom problem it's how we imagine death. No wonder we fill the void of nothingness with heaven and hell because both are more appealing to us than conscious eternal boredom. Both have an opposite. If you don't know about heaven in hell than it stops being hell and vice versa. the contrast is the only thing that makes it bad. Nothingness is our ultimate fear.  

​The future is uncontrollable, we make expectations based on our past experiences and core beliefs along with our current situation. We expect to be able to use substances/ food/ dishonesty and any number of other negative concepts in the future if it has worked as a coping mechanism in the past.
            Every time our expectations don’t match up with reality no matter how big or small they are we have the potential to have a very negative reaction. We grieve our unmet expectations. The person that we expect to be exists in our minds and when we end up not being the person that we expected the future self that existed in our mind dies and we have to grieve him.
If you wake up in the morning and put on a shirt you expect that you will end the day in that shirt. You make a cup of coffee and accidentally spill it on your shirt. At this moment the end the day in that shirt expectation dies and you enter into the grieving process you may move to anger or depression. You can then have this incident ruin your whole day or week or however long it takes you to get to a point of acceptance. At this point you realize you have no control over a past event so you move on. You no longer stuck in anger or depression or any other part of the grieving cycle. The danger is when your expectations are not met over and over again you may start to expect bad things to happen to you. Then you are trapped because either bad things happen and your prepared for them because you are expecting them so no grief or good things happen but you are so focused on the bad that a good thing would be outside of your expectations and you would actually grieve your unmet negative expectations.
             People that struggle with anger or depression and remain there for a significant amount of time are trapped in the grieving cycle. There is only one way out of the grieving cycle and that is through the door of acceptance. You can't escape it any other way. Guess what other ways people try to get out through, their struggles. But when they choose the struggle they expect to get out of the grieving process. Struggle doesn't take them out but further in. This leaves them with a new dead expectations and still trapped in grief but now they are pulling around a big heavy bag of struggle, and that is a big burden.
​
*I used to think about the grieving cycle a lot. Mostly because I was in it. I think the older we get time forces us out of our expectations. When I wrote this I thought that I was supposed to be further along, making more money and being more successful. Now I see the cost of all of it and I can't go back. Now I know how much work the ideas I had are and how small the real pay off is. I let other people put pressure on me to have and do more. Now that my life is my own I can embrace the simplicity of it all.  

We are what we say we are. You define you or you let others define you but either way you are defined. That means that at some point in struggle a person starts to identify himself as a person who struggles and what do people who struggle do they struggle. If someone lies to you and you say " you are such a liar" they will probably start to identify themselves as a liar and what do lies do...they lie. A better response is this. When someone lies to you say you are an honest person why would you choose to lie. This shows the person that they are acting in conflict with their identity and they have chosen to lie and therefore could have chosen not to.
            This applies even more to how we choose to define ourselves. We may say to our self you are so stupid, self. You are then defining yourself as stupid and stupid people make bad decisions. Start to realize that the first step in changing from one type of person to another is the choice to change the identity, the choice to change your name from struggler to victor from stupid to wise.
            It is very difficult to change but it is so much easier once you have changed to remain changed. By saying that you are something different you can then start to become something different. Now notice that I said the first step in change not the only step. If you stop that this first step you will be smack in the middle of denial. This concept like every concept can be twisted. That is only done by the person that does not want to change. These people will not find freedom. The freedom and power that come with change are only found by people who look for them. Finding involves seeking. If you are reading this you are seeking. Welcome to the club, the seekers who find club. ​

* It is very interesting for me to look back and see how different I am from when this was written and at the same time how much has remained the same. I have changed so much but I have submitted to many things that I realize make me me. This is a tricky game, to figure out what to burn down and what to build up. At some undeterminable point a person ceases to be them self. I immediately think people with severe Alzheimer's. The family that is no longer recognized that the person isn't there but clearly some parts of them are. 
All lines are arbitrary. When are we human? When are we alive? When are we dead? All these questions depend. If a line is drawn then it can be picked apart and criticized, why not a little more, why not a little less. I didn't mean to go this direction but arbitrary lines are something I think about a lot. They are silly but at the same time we can't start playing the life game until the lines are drawn. 
When I am changing at what point do I stop being the person I once was? Thinking about brains, about amnesia, about mental illness and addiction, about how we can never really be known, about how strange life is and how the only way I can make sense of any of it is to think about fractals, infinite cyclical variation and repetition.  How strange to be alive.