This is your life: Yourself

This is the start of the “this is your life” series, and yourself is where it all starts. No matter how much you know about the world, if you truly intend to know about life and your life, you’ll be pressed to know more about yourself. Do you know yourself? Is that even possible? Do you know how you live? Do you know why? Why should you know more about yourself? What’s the point? Where are you now? How are you now? Who are you?

The alarm’s loud sound pops you out of sleep, “It is morning”, you think. “I want to sleep some more! ...” “No! I must get up now if I don’t want to be late” “Come on, I can have five more minutes…” “Wake up! Get out of bed” “Shut up! It’s warm and nice in here”. This is one of the dialogues you might have when you first wake up in the morning. This is a dialogue between you and yourself, yourself and you.

The keyword is “dialogue”: The internal dialogue, the mind chatter or just (vocal) thoughts. How many of those you have all day? How many of those are worthless? How many are useless? Who’s talking to whom? Are you the asker of the responder? Or maybe you’re neither, just the one who’s listening.

The keyword is “one”: Are you one? Are you many? Are you the same one when you think and feel those happy, loving thoughts and those other dark, hurtful thoughts? Are you yourself when you fuck up and say “this is not me, I’m better than this”? Are you really what you say you are? Are you what think you are? Are you yourself or what others want you to be? Are you what you want to be? Are you the one you see in the mirror? Are you the one you know you are? Are you the one you remember you were or the one you urge to become? Are you yourself?

The keyword is “yourself”: There’s a lot to ask about yourself. There sure is a lot to know. This is your life, this is yourself. “Know thyself” (as the wise say), know your life. If you think about it, everyday, from the moment you wake up, till you fall asleep, there is only yourself…

Lebanon

Free

What’s on your mind, sweet?
Are your thoughts confusing and running wild?
Are those tears, dripping down your feet?
What does your heart speak?
When you ask it about your dreams,
When you see that far high mountain peak,
You’re craving to climb. It seems,
You have lost the light,
That burned in your eyes,
The light faded, wrapped up with lies.
You carry too much stones to fight;
Too much unneeded pain.
Just stop fighting in vain,
And look inside for unseeded ground,
Throw away the rocks and be found,
Where you belong, in the long lost place you long to see,
Where you were once free:
Free, that’s all you need to be…

Inspire the "This is your life" series

Hey, it's been a while, "The Keyword" is going to be more active then ever with a new series entitled "This is your life". The new posts will be an atempt to describe/interpret/analyse/develop (!) the various things guiding your life and maybe ruling it:
your emotions,
your love,
your desires,
your thoughts,
your beliefs,
your behaviors,
your communication,
your relationships,
your dreams,
your senses,
your ego ...

For this project (yeah, I'm calling it a project), I will put away my favored philosophical and abstact perspectives and approches for something more pratical, something that, I hope, we can all use everyday. It's not going to be easy but it's never been that way with this blog.

If you feel inspired and have something to propose, something you think that's a big part of your life, something that makes and affects your life, please feel free to post a comment.

This is your life: your map

The world. Life.

The world is grand, large, huge, immense, very, very big. Life is even more so. Do you see that?
Inside that mind of yours is a map, your map. This map is what you know. It is how you know what there is; It is how you know which way the cars drive, it is how you know which stairway to take coming home, it is how you know that your ice cream will melt if you don’t eat it fast, it is how you know what to say, it is how you say what you know.

This map dictates how you interact with the world.

The keyword is “dictates”: Can you see and think about what you don’t know? No you can't. Do you perceive what you can’t imagine? No you don't.
Let’s take this further. All you can possible plan is based on what you can perceive. All you can possibly do is what you can imagine. Except from the not so frequent occasions where we surprise ourselves, there is always a zone of possibility for your decisions and actions. Your “maneuvers” (a considerable part of them) are mostly restricted to this zone. It’s like having a giant lens and seeing the world through it. It’s not the world you really see, you only see your mapped out image of it.

But hey! Who said you can’t see straight in the first place? Why do you need lenses?

“The map is not the territory; the word is not the thing defined.”

Some of you might say that you somewhat inherited maps from your parents, society, friends, that those maps where drawn from what you’ve been through in your life. While this is true, it’s your map and you created it, you can change it, you can make it as you like it.

The keyword is “interact”: Life is interaction, constant interaction with all there is, all you see, taste, feel, touch, hear. Good interaction comes with experience, a good map helps too.The only sure thing about life is change. Life as it is changes and your interaction changes it too. The more you know, the more changes you can intend and handle. The more you handle, the more you know. The more you know, the bigger map you have.

The keyword is “world”: This is your world. This is your Life. When was the last time you learned something new? The last time you drew something on your map? How many unknown places are there on your map? How many “uncharted territories”? I hope you get the map-analogy now. This post is a call to making that map bigger, better, clearer. Your world will be bigger, better, clearer. Your life will be bigger, better, clearer.

Mind Games

There are many mind games you can play with people and eventually yourself (huh ?). Mind games are rather simple but intricate tricks and techniques you can use to spread confusion and illusion. Those can be used to claim power, resolve some conflict, take a surprise advantage over a given situation, reset some misconceived idea or more pictographically, to reset the sails to a new land or retake some ground.

The Mind is mainly about focus. A focused mind is a strong mind. A mind focused on a task is an achieving mind. Playing with the mind is playing with its focus. The mind just goes where the focus is. You know the trick now: focus.

Imagine you want to sell something. You need to convince the other of the importance of whatever it is you’re selling, lemonade for example. You really need to put forward the amazing qualities of your lemonade. You also need to conveniently conceal the fact that your (incompetent) friend that’s making the lemonade is secretly pissing inside. (Yeah, I’m making it hard). So whenever a potential client doubts the tastefulness of your healthy (and all natural) lemonade, you need to gently refocus the attention on your lemonade life’s altering benefits. If you somehow stop to think about the potential urine matter that’s inside, you will lose focus, your mind will drift, the client loses focus and you will have to drink your own horrible lemonade. Sometimes, you may have to take or give a free taste, which eventually will teach you not to sell your own shit. Seriously though, everyone wants great refreshing lemony zesty lemonade, you’re just describing it. Let’s take that idea further (more??...).

Here’s where it gets interesting. You are like the lemonade. You know there is some genuine lemons in you and you know there’s some piss in you too. And, same as before, you need to “sell” yourself. But, here’s where it gets different: Everyone has drank his own share of piss in his lemonade. Some are used to this, other’s just don’t want to admit it; either ways it is being drank and sold, everywhere you go. You could make better lemonade of yourself but you need to sell more of that first grade lemonade first. So you’re left with mainly one choice, make your lemonade better, and make yourself better. The better your lemonade, the more people will come, the more people will come, the better the lemonade. Till, eventually you find your ultimate lemonade, the lemonade that makes you and everyone happy. Now, if only you could just stop pissing in your lemonade, it sure will lack some taste and maybe if you could only stop thinking about the piss inside, then, maybe, you could sell and be more. What you focus on, you see, and what you see is really what you get. Are you lost? Good, that’s part of mind games. This is a mind game, after all.

Mind games are about words, words are about pictures, pictures make a movie and a movie is a nice game you are playing. Make it a nice movie.

The keyword is “lemonade”: Did I really just talk about lemonade? ...

Birth

It's my Birthday.

This is where I am.



This is where I want to be.

Mindsets and Paradigms

Here’s some definitions:

Noun: mindset
1. A habitual or characteristic mental attitude that determines how you will interpret and respond to situations
Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindset

Noun: paradigm
1. Systematic arrangement of all the inflected forms of a word
2. A standard or typical example
3. The class of all items that can be substituted into the same position (or slot) in a grammatical sentence (are in paradigmatic relation with one another)
4. The generally accepted perspective of a particular discipline at a given time
Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm




There is what you think, what you think you think, what you think you say, what you think you do, what you think they said, what you think they did. There is also what they think, what they think you think, what they think you do, what they think you said, what they think you did; They, as in everyone else but you, each and everyone.

Call it chaos, call it variety, it just is what it is: Different thoughts, different perceptions, different views, different opinions, different interpretations, different words… It’s just different.

The keyword is “different”: Those differences are sometimes huge. But those huge differences form similarities. Few can handle being different; a common ground is bound to be found or created, a common ground for thoughts, a mindset.

The keyword is “mindset”: positive mindset, negative mindset, rational mindset, sensitive mindset, nihilist mindset, socially oriented mindset, insensitive mindset, socially inept mindset, whatever mindset. Actually, It’s just a mindset and a mindset is just thoughts.

The keyword is “thoughts”: thoughts about life, thoughts about society, thoughts about love, thoughts about politics, thoughts about the future development of the energy market, thoughts about driving the car in the rain, thoughts about the right shape of that girl’s …(Fill in favorite body part), thoughts about getting that next promotion, thoughts about where the world is heading, thoughts about desire, thoughts about god, thoughts about how to have the best fun in a party, thoughts about what to read in the next keyword, thoughts about if the world is ever heading somewhere, and even, thoughts about thoughts. A paradigm is all those thoughts at once. A paradigm is just thoughts too.

The keyword is “paradigm”: Mindsets create and/or induce paradigms. Paradigms affect social structures, laws, conducts, taboos. Paradigms affect how you spend your day, how you drive your car, how you eat dinner, how you do business etc. and etc.
Paradigms may seem to exist alone but they are driven by you, me, us, the ones who put us in this world (i.e. Parents…), the ones who cares for us, the ones who educate us, the ones who hire us, the ones who talk to us, the ones we live with, the ones we meet, the ones we suddenly bump into, the ones we don’t like to meet etc. and etc.

The keyword is “mindset”. The keyword is “paradigm”.

To be continued?!?, You want real life examples?!? comments!

We fear only

'We fear only that the Sky fall and crush us or the Earth open and swallow us or the Sea rise and overwhelm us',
An Unknown Celt to Alexander, 335 BC.

Try to 'feel' that... I'll be back soon.