Autumn Rain

If I am dreaming, do not wake me

For here I have found happiness

Peace and calm, tranquility

A source I've found for all this

I've struggled long, and fed the lands

Throughout the growing season

With my own blood, with my own hands

I fought to keep my reason

When in my sorrow I felt drowned

Despaired though I had done my best

The Autumn Rain streamed softly down

Upon a beautiful harvest

Thanks to the Universe...

Having just turned 40 after enduring a not so fun year in my closest personal relationships (your closest is always with yourself), I've had a wonderful set of experiences to help change my perspective again. Yes, I'm older. Yes, in many ways I see my body aging. Yes, I've had many awful hours, days, and weeks this year and even over the past few years. But, once again the universe has reminded me that the Unknown is far greater than the Known by throwing me some unexpected wonderfulness, causing me to rethink my perspectives, and throwing me forcibly out of the ruts I have settled into. Thank you, Universe....

Sum Total of Knowledge

I saw this in a dailyOM message from www.dailyom.com, and it also spoke to me:

"The sum total of our knowledge will never compare to what we do not know..."

Seeker of Truth

I couldn't resist this quote when I saw it, as it speaks to a very deep-rooted feeling inside me:

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
- Rene Descartes

A Matter of Life and Death

I've recently learned of a few close acquaintances and friends who have been diagnosed with cancer or some other life-ending condition. While it is true that decline and death are as much a part of life as birth and growth, it doesn't make it any easier to be able to think about and accept this part of the larger natural cycle of life and death.

Death and dealing with death is one of the things that is shared by all humans throughout history. It has been said that humans are different from most/all other living organisms in that humans are able to ponder their own death. Whether that is true or not, death is an inescapable part of our lives, and it always will be. No matter what heights of achievement we reach, and no matter how rich we may become, death will always be the final result of one's life. It is guaranteed. We're stuck with it. It is truly a tragedy, and one that the elderly and the sick know all too well, and one that causes the young and the healthy to spend incredible amounts of thought, energy, and money to try to avoid for as long as possible.

So how "should" we deal with this fact of death? How can we integrate it into our lives in the mentally healthiest way? How can anything related to decline and death be thought of as good?

I think the simplest answer lies in the realm of spirituality. Spirituality, in this case, I define very roughly as a paradigm of thought that you and your life are a part of something bigger than just you and just your life, and that the larger "thing" you are a part of is good. Thinking that decline and death are part of a much larger "good" makes them seem much smaller, and gives you something "bigger" and "more important" to focus your thoughts on. Christians can help themselves through decline and death by believing they are part of God's greater plan (which happens to include death as a transition). Atheists can help themselves through decline and death by revering the cycle of life and feeling that the ecosphere of Earth is "good" and so their decline and death is a necessary part of the larger cycle of life. But are these transferrals of thought to something bigger enough? I don't think so, because even though humans can think of themselves as part of a larger whole, they still have to think and die as individuals. So, the simplest answer is likely not sufficient in day to day life.

So what else is left to us if we can't get our focus outside of our physical self? What about the "I've had a good life" and all the other ways of getting our focus outside of the current time? These mechanisms also work, though they too are simply transferral of focus. Is transferral of focus away from the pain or disappointment or fear of decline and death enough?

I don't know. In some ways if you have a long slow decline towards death, the effort to find something positive to focus on becomes harder as you have less and less of your remaining life that you can consider positive, and the reminders of the inevitable end are present in ever greater proportions.

Is the ideal then to be able to face the end with as much dignity and calm as you can muster? Is the ideal to be able to show others that decline and death can still be a positive part of life in some way? Is the ideal to be inconspicuous and as little trouble and inconvenience as possible to others as we deal with the decline to the end of our lives?

Personally, I hope to be able to maintain my dignity and sense of perspective. I hope my ability to focus on positive thoughts (of any kind) stays strong to the end, and that I can be an example of how decline and death may be a necessary part of life, but the self-caused destruction of one's view of life is not a necessary part of that. I hope I can do even a small part to help destroy the perceptions that lead our society to spend so much of its resources and abilities on the impossible task of trying to avoid the unavoidable....

Pain and Suffering

I have come to Las Vegas mostly to get away from a lot of mental/physical/emotional discomfort and pain in my "normal" life for a while. My general mental and physical health has been pretty good here, though today I had an occurrence of my "blocked intestine" situation (with no discernible specific cause or trigger) that was quite painful but which passed (no pun intended) within 20 minutes, as usual. These pain experiences cause a physical and mental state that borders on excruciating insanity, with an ebb and flow to this particular situation that gives me ample opportunity to try out all my tricks to calm myself in the face of the experience and expectations of the next peak of pain.
Not having really had to endure many painful circumstances in my life, I frequently wonder about just how my pain experiences compare to others, specifically when I'm trying to decide if my pain is something I should worry about, or if it is common to others. It sounds silly in some ways, but it is pretty critical to deciding things like "should I go to the hospital", or "should I take something for this", or "am I just being a wimp".
Pain itself is one of those grand unmeasurable items in our time. Doctors have to ask patients about pain, with no way of telling if they are responding with the truth, and only crude methods of comparing that pain with that of others.
While I consider pain to be a base physical response, I consider suffering to be something completely different. Suffering I think of as a completely mental response, and as such, it is something that is possible to affect and control, and even eliminate. Pain is one of many potential triggers and inputs to suffering, but suffering does not necessarily follow from pain. Pain, like emotions, is an inescapable part of being human, and as such, we cannot control or escape it. What we can control is our response to that.
Am I saying that we can control even our reflexes (such as to pull our hand back from a burning-hot contact)? No, but as soon as you get beyond reflexes and maybe some other hard-wired responses, I think we do have the potential for full control of all other responses. Saying this makes me wonder what other things besides reflexes come under the category of my "hard-wired" label. Blood-flow, heart-rate, and muscle-tension seem to come closer to reflexes, while tears and vocalizations are closer to the under-our-control side of things.
So, what good can all this pondering and distinction do for humanity? Well, for one thing, it would point to where any future "measure" of pain should be (measuring of the hard-wired responses). It can also help people to realize the things they shouldn't feel bad about not being able to control (and shouldn't waste time and effort trying to control). And, it can help people to take responsibility for the aspects they *do* control.
(Note that I know that many "controllable" responses are the result of long-standing habit, or "programming", but these responses are nonetheless controllable, even if the strength of the habit may make it *seem* like the behavior is hard-wired.)

As good a start as any...

Welcome to my first blog here. Why am I doing this? I suppose in part to feel part of a larger movement, but even more so to experiment with how much blogging may be a way for me to share my life and thoughts with others. We shall see.

If you are reading this, you must have found it. Welcome to my thoughts...

Archer (location: Las Vegas)