Breaking Newton

I’ve always been a watcher, an observer, a student who studies the comings, goings and behaviors of the people around them. Or, at least I have tried to be overthe course of my life. This behavior has helped me through the course of mylife. It has also hindered me in the fact that I have been a bit slow to respond to people when they ask me a question and I am weighing in my mind what they want to hear and what I believe in.

So, I should not have been too surprised when I discovered an almost ancient truth the other night. The truth? “The apple does not fall far from the tree.” I guess, I need to explain myself and the situation a bit further… so listen upand read carefully because I have no idea how many toes I am about to step on.

A personI have known for the past thirteen years, I shall call this person… Chris…that’s a nice androgynous name, I’ve known Chris since he/she was about fourteen years old. Now, Chris has gone on to college, graduated early, still lives at home with his/her folks and proclaims his/her independence. This person I have seen grow from adolescent awkwardness into a semi-responsible adult.

Over the years, I have tried to build a relationship with Chris, help Chris when he/she needed it. Assist when Chris wanted to do volunteer work to pad his/her graduation resume. Look the other way when Chris was doing things inappropriate in a public space with his/her boyfriend/girlfriend. Offer simple yet sage advice about such things as careers, goals, savings accounts, politics andvacation spots when he/she asked me. In other words, trying to be a good person who helps others.

But…but… but… I should have known, for you see my dear reader, I am an acquired taste. If you hang around me long enough you know I speak my mind. This habit comes from the fact that I see life as a short but fruitful experience. Most people, young people that is, can’t handle this sort of honesty and openness. To be blunt, I speak my fucking mind. I don’t hold back and I refuse to try and take your feelings into consideration when you are goofing up so badly that you don’t even know it.It’s a personality quirk that endears me to somet but alienates me to those among the human race who are lying to themselves and the people around them.

This seems to be the case with Chris, and I had such high hopes for him/her. Chris over the past year has proven himself/herself to be a cut from the same cloth as one of his/her parents. I will call this parent Pat, another nice androgynous name. Pat, who for a lack of a better term, has lost faith in everything andeveryone. He/she, Pat that is, has been overheard saying on numerous occasions“If you lie to me then you will steal from me and I HATE a liar.” Now, as much as I would like to go intoeverything that is WRONG with that statement right here and right now, I won’t.Why? Because we all know this is a falsehood and holds about as much water as a colander full of pasta for Sunday’s spaghetti dinner.

For you see, Chris has been influenced all his/her life by the negativity of Pat. A negativity that has gone unchecked and will fester like an open wound untilChris is sitting alone in an empty house devoid of any happiness that could have been found or built upon because he/she refuses to recognize that people in his/her life mean no harm or malice to Chris’s life and that any misunderstandings or mistakes that may occur are purely accidental in nature.This misconception of humanities intentional harm is going to be the downfallof not just him/her but of humanity itself.

I have stated or implied in a lot of posts that I truly believe we as humans, are good in nature. I want to; no I NEED to believe this. Not just for myself but for my daughter. I want to believe that one hundred years from now, some semblance ofme will exist in some form or another. I want to believe that down the line mydaughter will tell her grandchildren stories of her insane, out of control,train addicted father and that all the work I did for the betterment of my community will not have gone to waste.

I suppose I am speaking of posterity, and all the implications of leading a goodlife and trying to do right by our fellow earthy compatriots imply. Of tryingto overcome the obstacles that have been put in our path not just by ourparents and lineage but by our government and elected officials. THAT WE ASLIVING, BREATHING, THINKING BEINGS have an opportunity to be better than theexample which was set for us by the fallible and impressionable humans beforeus. We can rise above our situations andbe better than the people who came before us. All we have to do is strive to do better, and not make the same mistakes our predecessors have made.

I knowI have tried to be better and to overcome the trappings of my examples in mylife. Have I been successful? I would like to say yes, but I know there are many times when I have failed. When I have succumbed to the easy, angry and blazed path of my forefathers in how I deal with failure, insecurity and perceived insult. I’ve lashed out in anger, pride and a wrong sense of righteousness. And I’ve paid for it in aloss of pride and self dignity. I’ve had to crawl back to my station and ask for forgiveness when I knew I was wrong. Swallow the pride of my native Polish/American roots. It hurt and I am sure it will hurt again.

To see this person, Chris, follow in the steps of his/her negatively charged parent hurts me and I wish I could do something about it. But, I know I can’t. Only Chris can change the course of his/her life and I hope he/she does soon.Because I would hate to think that the dysfunction of his/her childhood getspassed on to another generation.

Lastly,I would like you to do some homework this week, go to your child or significant other and love on them. Tell them you need them in your life and that you wantthem to help you be the best that you can be.

Have agreat week.

Guest Appearance.

Ok, I have a guest BLOG over at http://horrorwritingdaddy.blogspot.com/?zx=38a68a4e389b4864 If you are brave enough to scroll through the mess and read upwards to 3,000 words. Enjoy.

Friends and Relations

                One of the blogs I read this past week was about friendship, well not really about friendship. It was more about someone trying to understand friendship and it got me thinking about relationships. This particular blog hints at three types of friends, and they are, reason, season and life. I don’t think I can address all three in one blog, simply because I have a lot of thoughts about each one of these classifications to go into here.

                You see, I don’t really classify my friends in the manner I read about. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the point the writer was trying to make, it is just that I don’t have the same view. You see, and for those of you using google plus will understand this, I’ve always looked at my friends by how much I could tell them about myself without them freaking out and running off to live in seclusion or to the nearest sanitarium to get someone to commit me for the rest of my life. In other words… circles.

                That is how I keep track of how close a person is in their relationship with me. And the smaller the circle, the more you know about me or the more I will reveal about myself to you. It’s just the way I work. Now, are all my circles/friends in the same category? Nope. My mental picture of how this whole thing works in my life looks more like a VENN diagram done by some sort of schizophrenic paranoid sociopath. But it works for me.

                Sure people can move in and out of my life through the difficulties of time, space and death, but do any of these factors detract from the relationship we built? Nope. It does not. You, my dear reader, should know this of me by now, just through the way I’ve written about some of my childhood friends, Navy buddies and even my current chums. None of those people mean any less to me now that I am older, as a matter of fact, I would go so far to say, they actually mean more to me today than when we were running headlong into our respective adventures. And just because we’ve lost touch with each other, moved away, had disagreements about things we don’t even remember does not mean that they are any less close to me now than when we said our last fare thee wells.

                I know this is not the case for everyone, it can’t be. We as humans are programmed to not always be nice to each other. We hurt people who are close to us, we betray them, we ignore them, and we treat them like three day old meatloaf and then wonder why we sit alone at night in an empty apartment drinking wine straight from the bottle. We hurt each other out of fear and ignorance and occasionally malicious intent.  It is the way of the world.

                But as time passes and our pain fades to a dull emotional scar whose origins have been lost in the ether of our memories we yearn for the companionship we once shared with those who have moved on in our lives. Our brains lie to our hearts and the soldiers of our IDs whitewash the past into a sparkling glorious fun filled time of frolicking and remembrance. I for one am glad of this.

                Once we reconnect and stories of our conquests and misadventures are re-hashed we end up growing even fonder of our past friends. Sure, we easily lie to each other, we are older, wiser, less likely to make the mistakes of our past simply because we are too tired and our bones creak and ache. But we know, deep down inside we know that we truly can’t remember the trespasses that separated our love for one another at an earlier time in our own histories. We try as hard as we can to be good people to each other and in some cases we succeed, in others we fail.

                In the end, we all have friends of varying levels, degrees or closeness. These friends are in the same situation as you and we are all trying to make meaningful connections while trying to move forward in a society that is moving forward at a pace no one can be expected to keep pace with. After a week, month, year or even decade we forget the pain others have caused us and weep at the loss of friend we once had. Our existence here on this mud ball is linear in nature but not all of us are on the same path so it is nearly an impossibility we will maintain the same set of friends throughout our lives. Besides if that were the case, our lives would most definitely be boring and unfulfilling. New people in our lives mean new experiences and new stories that flesh out the chapters of our individual lives. And I for one want an extremely large novel at the end of my existence.

                Have a great week!

Special Guest

     Today I am going to do a guest blog. Unfortunately for me the guest is going to have to speak to us from the grave. And, while he has been dead for over three years, the points he made then are just as relevant and funny today. Also, they are scary and very true.

Enjoy.

But there’s a reason. There’s a reason. There’s a reason for this, there’s a reason education SUCKS, and it’s the same reason it will never, ever, EVER be fixed.

It’s never going to get any better, don’t look for it, be happy with what you’ve got.

Because the owners, the owners of this country don't want that. I'm talking about the real owners now, the BIG owners! The Wealthy… the REAL owners! The big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions.

Forget the politicians. They are irrelevant. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice! You have OWNERS! They OWN YOU. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls.

They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying, to get what they want.  Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I'll tell you what they don’t want: 

They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests.

That’s right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table and think about how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that!

You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shitty jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later cause they own this fucking place! It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it!  You, and I, are not in the big club.

By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table has tilted folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care! Good honest hard-working people; white collar, blue collar it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard-working people continue, these are people of modest means, continue to elect these rich cock suckers who don’t give a fuck about you….they don’t give a fuck about you… they don’t give a FUCK about you.

They don’t care about you at all… at all… AT ALL.  And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. That’s what the owners count on. The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that’s being jammed up their assholes every day, because the owners of this country know the truth.

It’s called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.

George Carlin (May 12, 1937-June 22, 2008)