Justice?

The boy responsible for my brother's death, who having been given time served (~60 days) and parole for that offense violated said parole and shot a girl in the head within the year. This week he was tried for murder and today found guilty of 4 felonies (including felony murder) and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. While this brings some sort of ending to the story, I cannot help but wonder if Justice has been served and I am sitting here feeling as though nothing has changed and no peace can be found in this.

On the day of sentencing for Daniel's death, I watched two people be sentenced before this boy. The first - a 60 year old convicted for DUI with rap sheet : DUI, DUI, probation violation, probation violation, probation violation, DUI…. given probation. The second, a 60 year old cripple in a wheelchair who had been caught with a gram of marijuana in a plastic bag and sentenced for possession with intent to distribute got more time than this loser who killed my brother.
I lost my faith in the justice system that day.

He was 18 when charged with my brother's death, a moment of "poor judgment" as the courts ruled it. He received a slap on the wrist and was set loose on the world again, regardless of his rap sheet, his obvious lack of personal control or sound decision-making skills… and because of this, a young woman lost her life - a young woman in the wrong place at the wrong time, celebrating a friend's birthday. Now 21, I think, he will be locked in a box for the rest of his life where not only will we, as tax-payers, support him for as long as he stays alive but where he will serve no purpose and do no good. So has anything good come from this?

Perhaps a sense of conclusion, knowing that he can't hurt anyone else, a sense of relief for my mother to know the man responsible for her son's death is behind bars….

What is the point of prison anyway? It takes people off the streets and provides some of them with better lives than they had outside - is this a punishment? They have no purpose, no goal, they give nothing back to society, they merely drain our resources. So not only did he kill my brother and murder this poor girl, but now I GET TO PAY FOR HIM TO STAY ALIVE AND GIVE NOTHING BACK. Riddle me that, Batman. HOW IS THAT JUSTICE?!

Is there not a better way? Some form of contribution they should be required to make? How do you make up for a life? For two? Jail isn't Justice. 

Hell

If you're going through hell, keep going. - Winston Churchill

Assignment: Today, whatever you're going through, keep going - and Smile!

I love this quote - mostly because it always seemed odd to me. Given most people's definitions of hell if you're in and you keep going you reach… more hell… so… yeah there's that. We can keep going… but do we ever get anywhere?

When in the middle of a painful or traumatizing experience, one that requires rehabilitation or readjustment, it can feel as though it will never end - as if all there is to look forward to is more pain. To a degree perhaps that is true. It is also true that perseverance in the face of adversity creates a new reality for us in which we are far more capable of dealing with trauma such that every day we work hard to push through we are that much more prepared to take on the next dose of hardship. In this way, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, I suppose.

Perhaps this harkens back to the thread from days ago about creating our own problems.
If we see hell as normal or heaven, then we have created paradise out of sheer pain. Sounds too easy…
The brain is a powerful place though, can we train ourselves? Can we train the brain to react to "hell" as we would heaven and essentially remove the stigma and fear from pain? I think this might be possible - fake it until you make it! Or make it until it's made, as it were. If we have the power to write our own story, create our own reality, then we can give whatever weight and power to things we deem fit.

With love -

Moving forward

One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
- Andre Gide

What is it that prevents us from leaping into each new adventure head-on?
If I invest myself in something, I may be hard-pressed to give up on it. But is moving forward the same as giving up? Must we release one thing to attain another?

Change is hard for a lot of us, perhaps because we are afraid to let go of the shore we find such comfort in - where we know where our feet are and know what comes before us. Embarking on a journey where the path and destination are unknown can be very unsettling - causing us anxiety, dread and then producing physical symptoms… But every moment we live we change, we adapt - we must be fluid, we must bend like trees in the wind or we wake to find we have snapped in half.

I have at times felt very much at sea - lost in a great expanse with no land in sight, beginning to think of the shore as a distant memory. But then I romanticize the sand, what it feels like between my toes with no memory of the sticking to my feet or coating my scalp. This selective memory serves to exaggerate the positives in an unrealistic manner, altering the reality of a situation in favor of a different version - one where we long to return to it even if it is unhealthy.

The unknown is a constant source of fear for most of us. Undiscovered, uncovered, unknown - one man's adventure is another man's nightmare.

Only by losing sight of the shore, by agreeing to free ourselves from the comfortable, from our expectations can we begin to discover who we are without the sand. We are not defined by the ground we stand upon.

We only have two feet. If we refuse to move one, we refuse to move at all. Even then, the water and sand will shift... Even if we refuse to change ourselves, the world will change around us. Let it go. Learn to be comfortable with discomfort. Then we may realize that we were never on the shore to begin with, we've always been seeking - never knowing which direction the path will take us.

With love,
M

Problem

The Gates of Perception by Raffyka

One of the nice things about problems is that a good many of them do not exist except in our imaginations.  - Steve Allen

Assignment: Today, notice how conditioned mind creates problems. Ask yourself, "If I didn't experience this as a problem, would it be one?"

Starting today I will using this forum to explore the amazing Transform Your Life - A Year of Awareness Practice by Cheri Huber App. Typically I just open it and read it, but I thought to get the full effect, I should truly think about each one. So I will take a few minutes each day to do so here.

So much of what we perceive to be problematic is merely that - a perception. It is a fantasy fallacy that we create beyond the presented, an interpretation of events, a construct of our own imagination. And in this fantasy, we distort - manipulating a situation until we are convinced in our mind of its truth. Yet, though this becomes very real to us, it may be very far from reality and in this way we allow circumstances to create problems from what is essentially thin air.

Perhaps this stems from our need for drama - a need I do not entirely understand yet am acutely aware of. Or perhaps it comes from the inability most of us possess to not take things personally. Perhaps it differs for each of us. But I cannot help but wonder at the truth of the statement - If I refuse to stew, validate, misrepresent and assume… If I can stop myself from seeing things as a problem, an affront, a personal assault, then can I essentially remove "problems" from my reality?

Certainly things will happen in life. People die - they are murdered, violated, duped, challenged. These present problem that are very much real. But the next layer, the problems we create for ourselves through misinterpretation, miscommunication, misunderstanding, and mistake- these are perhaps very much avoidable.

Don Miguel Ruiz asserts in The Four Agreements that the seemingly basic principle of "Do not take it personally" rules much of our lives. We, as the center of our own personal narrative, often take personally things that have nothing to do with us. If someone mistreats us, we begin to think "what have I done to deserve this, why don't they like me, what can I do to make them treat me better" when in reality the actions of another have little to do with us and are nearly entirely if not completely the result of another person's conditioning, their understanding of their own reality. This one of the four agreements is the one I struggle with most - the one I must remind myself of on a daily basis in hopes of minimizing these self-generated problematic situations.

I love, and another does not love me back in the way I desire. Is this my fault? NO.
Can it be that I have not expressed my desire, yes.
Can it be that they are incapable of providing me with what I need, yes.
Can it be that I am unworthy? No.

If someone hurts me, this is partially my fault - not that they have acted in a way that hurt me, but in the way that I have allowed them to treat me poorly, or have allowed their treatment of me to reflect in my own view of my self worth. If I take it personally, I feel pain, and I now have created for myself a VERY REAL problem which only serves to hurt me further and has minimal impact on the doer of the deed. Why then, would I allow this person's issues to make me feel somehow less than I am? If I have been wonderful, treated someone with love and respect and they turn around and spurn me, ignore me, dismiss me… then I have done nothing wrong. And I do not have to let them continue to treat me so disdainfully, so discourteously because in truth, I am far more valuable and I do not deserve it.

The crux of the issue is this: Experience. If I experience something as a problem, then that problem becomes very real to me and it has the power, the possibility to tear me apart from the inside. If instead, I experience something for what it is - without judgment or pain, then I can acknowledge the circumstances and move beyond it without generating for myself new issues that I can never truly conquer because they aren't mine to begin with.

With Love,
Michelle

Want

Somewhere along the line we stop being ourselves and start being who we are expected to be - or perhaps more accurately who we are believed we are expected to be. Even those of us with the clearest idea of "who we are" fall prey to the fact that we are who have been programmed to be. Then we are surprised to find we have trouble figuring out who we truly are, what we want and how we want to live our lives. And with this transition, we forget a few very basic things:
1) Asking for what you want isn't weird - it's necessary.
2) Love is easy.
3) Beauty can be found in all things.

Kids know these things, without thinking - they are an accepted part of the way they live moment to moment. I watched 2 four year-old girls the other day. Without thinking they ask for exactly what they want - they tell you honestly, "I am tired. I want a hug. I don't want to play this game." They will start a conversation with anyone- they aren't afraid of what this person will think of them, don't stop to analyze the situation or look for meaning, they just approach - fearlessly - as if it was the most natural thing in the world.  Probably because it is.

They stop to help a younger kid climbing the spider net or make faces at penguins.
They don't seem to understand embarrassment-  why do babies get to be naked and grown-ups can't? Even at four, this is hard to understand. Even at four, it is obvious to these little girls that something happens between baby and adult and they don't understand why you would give up the awesome freedom of childhood. Are you telling me we couldn't be a productive society if we helped each other or made faces at penguins? I don't think that's true at all.

Advice from the other day suggested I practice asking for what I want - without expectation or attachment to whether I get it or not - for the mere practice of asking. And it saddens me to think that such a concept is now so foreign that we have to practice it to get better at it… And we are so governed by fear that even if we know what we want, not all of us ask for it. Because asking for something and not getting it… well that can be worse than regretting never asking.

Even when we try it they are so many filters it passes through that it can be incredibly difficult.

I think of what I want. This concept of desire goes through my perception of my needs and wants - an intricate web of ideas planted in my head and cultivated by my experiences about what I'm supposed to want, what other people in this situation want, etc. If I can isolate a desire, I can ask for it. Then my words pass through another individual's ears and then they process it though their own set of filters - what does it mean, what does she REALLY want? Is she saying that because she wants it or because she thinks I want her to want it. What do I do?!

Let me practice.

I want you to listen to me and hear me.
I want you to trust that if I can make it all the way to asking for something, it's important to me. And I want you to try and give me what I need.
I want you to love and care for me the way I love and care for you.
I want you to inspire me, challenge me, motivate me.

Let's get more specific.

I want you to call me or send me a letter to say hello because you're thinking of me.
I want you to tell me what you want. Without thinking about what I want. Because if I care about you I will do my best to fulfill your needs, but I can't read your mind any more than you can read mine. SO tell me what you want, what you need. Give me the chance to please you.
I want you to call or text me back when I take the time to contact you. EVEN if it's to tell me you're busy and we can talk another time. Don't leave me hanging. That makes me feel like you are ignoring me. I know people get busy - I'm an understanding person. But if I say something kind or thoughtful or romantic or suggestive and you say nothing….. honestly…. it hurts my heart. And it feels like I'm being toyed with.

Love is easy. Relationships are hard. Because love is an individual endeavor. But relationships require two people… and anytime more than one person is involved people get hurt. I think it's about power to a degree….

But the love portion itself is easy. I love you. Love pours out of me - it pours and pours and pours, coating anyone nearby. But when that love is wasted, neglected, or ignored it saddens me. And then emotions muddy the water and love becomes complicated, because now someone else's perception of my love and decisions about it appear to either validate or invalidate it's worthiness. Instead, if we can love and not take it personally that another human isn't ready, isn't interested, doesn't feel worthy, etc… then we can simply love and love and love. Someone else can't take it - not my problem. I can still love you. :) And that is beautiful. Children interacting with each other without fear or judgement - that is beautiful. Milky Way dust, wildflowers, bugs, christmas lights, bridges, old weathered farmhouses, crystal clear lake water, an outstretched hand, a genuine smile… so much of life is beautiful. I choose to see it.

Fear of Fear [of Fear of Fear].

If we are motivated by pleasure/reward and fear, we are hardwired to do so. Part nature, part nurture - since both of these things create our neural pathways that dictate everything from instinct to decision. So how is it that we move beyond fear? How can we release/remove/restructure these pathways to free ourselves from the confines of our own development?

Theories abound, all seeming to fall to one side of the fence or the other:
A) We can literally rewrite our code, erase harmful pathways and associations, replacing them with the desired ones -creating a new network of fear-free responses.
Or
B) We can't. Simply put, we can modify behavior but we can't change the physiology that dictates it.

I like to believe, with most things in life, that I have some control over myself. But I'm not entirely sure I do.

Bias is introduced early - the DNA dictates certain neural networks be established. An entire portion of the brain is devoted to fear responses and floods of neurotransmitters denote reward - an addiction shortly developing in nearly every human for whatever s/he chooses as their source of pleasure, be that money, sex, love, volunteering, food, alcohol, or human approval. And we indoctrinate our children to follow this system - Actions have consequences, so… does the fear of consequence outweigh your addiction for reward? And this "conditioning" begins immediately after birth and continues for most of us until the day we die, dictating every choice we make or do not make. Therein lies the primary fear.

But we are SO "intelligent", we can't even leave it there. The secondary fear then kicks in. We ruminate, stew, fester -[ANXIETY]- over things we can or can't change, wondering - "Did I make the right choice?" until we make ourselves sick: headaches, nausea, vomiting, weight gain, weight loss, ulcers, cancer. And we are paralyzed - stuck in an endless loop with no way out except to carve one with our bare hands.

I often wonder where this duality of thought comes from. Is it the struggle of conscience, two competing neural pathways, the burden of conscious thought? And from there - can it be conquered?

If I love but am afraid to lose love, rather than letting love dictate my actions, I am guided by the combination of my love and fear of losing it resulting in mixed signals, confusion, hurt, and quite likely the loss of said love. I could say the same for life and fear of losing life - or death.

Perhaps fear is the stronger motivator, physiologically. Or perhaps this is the result of our conditioning. If we receive more stimulation from a negative experience then we train our brain to be more afraid of failure than contented by success. An error is aggressively addressed with a "No!" or a spanking. A win is smiled at and then we move on. Is it any wonder why we as adults are subsequently ruled by our fears rather than driven by our accomplishments?

What if we change the paradigm? Teach our children to be appropriately afraid of things like fire and sharks, but for things like falling short of the goal we teach them that it is natural or even celebrate small failures because that means we have found one way that doesn't work, which is progress!

What if we could wire the brain to be motivated by love and not fear??

As a society, we can really help with this. We need to remove the social stigmas associated with things we as a culture, as a people fear most: death, being alone, etc. What would happen if we replaced pity with acceptance and positivity? Now before you dismiss is - I do not mean that we should approach the recently widowed or divorced and say "Oh how wonderful! Congratulations on your loss!" because that could cause pain. Although… the idea of attaching positive reinforcement to standardly negative situations is worth some thought.

But what would happen if we stopped pitying each other for the things that lie out of our (and their) control? By minimizing the fear attached to death, for example, we remove the pain associated with death and it returns to it's rightful place as a natural progression of life. If instead we allow our fear of death, our fear of abandonment, loneliness, consequence to control our every thought and action we destroy our ability to get out of bed in the morning… and it's hard to live in bed.

We may not be able to change the DNA-dictated blueprints we come with. But maybe it's time to do a little remodeling. Take down a few walls and let the light in.