Expectations

I don’t even know why I bother. I can’t seem to deprogram myself. I keep expecting things and then I quickly remember that that’s a no-no. I shouldn’t expect things from people because I wouldn’t want anyone to expect anything from me. In fact, I don’t want anyone expecting anything from me unless you employ me and I signed some sort of contract. Now we are both in compliance and both should understand what is expected of me.

However, with no hint of a sealed fate, I can’t say I’ll do it. I basically want to be treated the way I treat others. Is that a crime? Probably, this is America and people will find a way to stone you and justify the crusade against you if something you do offends them. Expectations have been the death of me lately because I keep slipping back into that frame of mind. I blame all of my problems on social learning. This fucking society and having to learn about it has been the worst thing that has ever happened to me.

I hate the codes we live by and the guilt trips I get anytime I go against the grain. I hate the fact that you’ll burn more bridges or burn in hell (there’s always burning in hell) just by being misunderstood.  I get swept up into the trap of our oh-so honorable system of expectations that I’m constantly disappointed in others and myself (the shame! the horrrooooorrr!) Then I snap out of it and remember to just, “stop with the expectations and shit,” – Unknown.

It’s all a set up. Having expectations is a set up for a miserable, depressing, face full of tears life. Don’t let anyone tell you any different. It’s a trap. Okay, great, hold people accountable. Accountability:  prove to me you’re serious about whatever it is that is expected of you, prove to me your love, prove to me you care, prove to me you’ll be there, prove to me so I can prove to you what can prove to me– accountability. Listen, where is the contract, where is the compensation, where is the meaning of it all because that’s what this country has conditioned me to think about – the money and motive.

Is it the integrity part? Is that what is trying to be upheld here?  Well what if, just what if, without assuming those things still won’t be in tact despite me not meeting expectations I did still uphold the integrity. I guess it’s because I’m so cool about it and understand the ridiculousness of its extremity. In fact, sometimes I come off as meek and docile when really it’s the depth of my understanding of a lot of things that put me on the offense.

Once you understand something it isn’t a problem. Problems come by way of not understanding. I do. That reflects in the way I handle things and my character. I can’t ask for someone to be like me. I can only explain where I’m coming from and hope to be understood. No more getting pumped up to be let down. If I want to do something I will. If I don’t want to I won’t. That should go the same for those around me. That’s how anyone can truly be themselves honestly and openly and not be condemned for it.

Without expectations no one would do anything? Is that what you’re asking me? I don’t know. We haven’t gotten that far as a people consciously to truly really know. Without accountability no one will do anything? Is that what you think? I don’t know. We may never know. No one is forgiving enough, patient enough. Everything in the world depends on the absence and presence of something to validate its existence. We increase or decrease our value to others in this respect. It’s a science. My advice is to find something that makes you laugh, grab your favorite book, and live. 

Cyclical Hunches

What are your beginning, middle, and end? This is how you unfortunately structure each blog and blah, blah, bl - oh hey guys. You snuck up on me! I was hoping you were some big corporation coming to swoop in on my blog and pay me millions to continue writing as these priceless memoirs can’t write themselves, but I guess not. Do you guys even remember me? Probably not, nonetheless, excuse the first sentence as I am trying to recall basic first steps to writing – you know, in order to keep my readers interested (ha!)

“Spill out everything onto the page,” they say. “Go for the jugular,” they say. Well, I’ve been missing in action for a while so here I go:

Today is a crappy day and I have a hard time focusing. I mean hard. I normally, no matter what, can just snap back into focus (especially if I am at work because I’m stone cold like that), but nope not today. A young lady named Sandra Bland is the topic or hash tag if you will. There is information about her coming in all at once. She was 28 from Chicago trying to move to Texas for a job. She’s dead now. Hearing this news led me to write. A lot of emotions are surging through me at rapid speeds after realizing she is dead and herein lies the thick of my anguish: I couldn’t catch her. Me - I couldn’t stop whatever happened to her. I would have had something amazing to say to stop the fate of a stranger, but I wasn’t there.

This was a journal entry from a while back that still rings poignant to me because it reminds me of why I fight for life and freedom so much. Machiavelli said it best when he wrote,“What am I here to reproduce at this time? I am only a figment of what has been to bring to the world something it has already seen just not in this particular timeline. What O’Lord am I to recreate that you so desperately need the world to see again? To remind us of what again? Please whisper loud enough for me to hear.” 

I’m unsure of the remarkable words that would have surfaced that day but trust me incredible was coming out. A trail of genius tends to slip out of my mind sometimes and what I want to say is too much to write down. Again, it probably would have been the most amazing crap I’ve ever thought but just too much to remember. A snapshot would be, “Look, like we’re all fucked anyway,” or something along those lines. “Capitalism is rotting this country. Black people don’t belong here, but we’ve been trying to belong for quite some time now. We’re all going to die,” yada, yada, yada – stuff like that. Maybe, “Read and utilize the past in order to shape, and understand the present.” Okay that isn’t me it’s Machiavelli, but seriously the advice would have been A1.

I hope to overly stress that in order to identify with yourself more you must identify with others. Try to stay alive, healthy, and sane in the process of identification, and in every situation give thanks. In every situation remember the situation before. Remember at one point you never really knew how the situation could or would change or when. Remember that it eventually did. Something happened one day, things shifted, and you slowly progressed into another part of your life.

Today I chose to identify with Sandra and let it be known that we’ve been stripped of our core ingredients (love, compassion, empathy, patience, forgiveness) for the all mighty dollar. I have to keep saying that until people start or realizing it. Being gone for so long has taught me how to stop correcting my intuition – not even slightly.

Enough

You don’t show it. You don’t do it. You don’t see them. You don’t see him. You don’t see her. You don’t say it. You don’t call. You don’t speak up. You don’t preach it. You don’t teach it. You don’t play it. You don’t ask it. You don’t read it. You don’t practice it. You don’t watch it. You don’t wear it. You don’t have it. You don’t make it. You don’t use it. You don’t write it. You aren’t doing.

Where's the list of what I’ve done. What I do. Where’s that list? Where’s the list of how I’ve been and what I’ve said. When I’ve showed it and when I saw? When I spoke up and when I preached? When I taught and when I read? When I practiced and when I played? When I watched and when I made? When I helped and when I shared? When I wore it and when I had it? When I used it and when I called? When I wrote? What I did do?

No one lives for the positive moments. No one even lives for the moment. We are too busy worrying about the lack there of; the times when something didn't happen instead of the times something did. Instead of holding onto that moment and letting that be the classic standard and overriding thought, instead of realizing that that good moment did happen, we revel in disparaging thoughts of things we feel are not enough. As supreme beings, we think very limited and we shouldn't - we are SUPREME. Unfortunately, we are supreme beings with no idea how to unlock the true, raw, and real potential in ourselves. We conceptualize the negative. We conceptualize the very opposite of what we are supposed to live for: greatness. When you start to openly magnify small instances of love and appreciation as they come forth spontaneously I believe that is when you truly do understand more than just the basics; when you truly do understand that it is enough.

"His insight refines him." - Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

 

Cringes

“I’m up to my ears in unwritten words” – J.D Salinger

It is definitely difficult to go deep down and produce something that makes sense and put it on the page, but I must, I have to literally make myself bleed words of encouragement and intentionally infect you with a different type of stimulation, one that you may not be used to. Creating a voice that will perpetuate imaginative assimilation, or create some sort of euphoric mental escape is my strange vision.

Assimilating the enveloping nature of wild imagination sounds and feels more mentally pleasing and refreshing to me instead of agreeing to digest more of what is and has already been fed to me. My mind always gets away from me, as I think about things that seem mentally impossible and socially unacceptable. However, if I just let it out, discuss it with you, and empower you to think outside of your box, then that can mean something and release something in you that needed to be released as you guide your eyes through the words on this page. If only I could stop letting these soul binding thoughts linger in my head and actually get them out exactly the way I think about them I could be that much more fluid and effective. Articulating exactly what you envision is what I consider the mark of genius, what I consider orgasmic, tantalizing, and can always leave you in an all encompassing, circumventing awe. I wish I could do that. As I think I must remind myself, “wisely prune your own imagination,” and please write it down.

“You’ve got to stop learning how to state the obvious.”- J.D. Salinger

Being myself needs to strategically breed an evolution of unchaining in you; me being me I hope stirs up the inclination of release in you. Don’t you see I have to do this for you? I have to be me for you, not just for me; as I free myself that energy involuntarily frees you. 

With that said, it is hard not to state the obvious sometimes. Read this, watch this, eat this, meditate about this, instructions on top of obvious instructions. When people start listening to you it is humbling and a grave responsibility. It sort of causes a certain type of dependency. For conversational purposes and less more so for instructional purposes, I don’t want you to depend on me I want you to depend on you and my words only to spark what you have had in you all along.

Why don’t you see what you have in you? Or do you? Have you yet? Can you see it? I want to help spark that tiny little flick of light in you, just a flick, it is indeed there; a miniscule gleam of some sort. That is all you really need before that little light inside of you consumes you; engulfs you. Become aware of certain dependence on external things and how quickly you react to the external things in your life, maybe it is your circumstances, your job, or maybe a relationship – how quickly you react emotionally and then physically to these things.

Without that dependence you will be able to soar with or without other people’s words, other people’s encouragement, and other people’s thoughts. Figure out things for yourself, learn on your own and develop an all encompassing originality about yourself. This will give you the freedom to make you discover deeper ways to think and exist; you will not then speak the obvious, you won’t know how to. Cleverness and uniqueness instead will come natural to you; a wiser mind indeed.

“Each of us faces life with an undeveloped psyche.” – U.S. Andersen

Talking to myself raises my level of consciousness. What makes what? Who makes who? Why do someone else’s thoughts of you create or solidify the measure of who you are or the measure of what you are? Why don’t your own thoughts create that? Why don’t you measure you? This reminds me of another quote, “knowledge illuminates.”

Our minds are undeveloped? What does that mean? I can tell you something towards that. It may not be the answer for you but I can tell you something. The social beliefs that are engrained in our minds, how you are brought into this world, how your parents raise you, and how you are treated as an adult, are a start. There are many layers as to why this is, but negative thinking, emotionally thinking, linear thinking, contributes to this phenomena.  

Lately I do not really know how to feel, and the more you are aware of who you are the more you see certain inconsistencies and imperfections. It is sort of confusing and headache inducing. When I come to the understanding, however, that I really am not using my mind to its fullest potential and I am just letting my ego, emotions, and external stimuli guide me through my life I see that I could be maximizing so much more out of the world. You sort of have to let your mind go where it wants to go to develop it.

“To be self-conscious is to be fearful and restricted. "– U.S. Andersen

Being considerate of your ego and having a sense of self will bind you in fear and tension during the simplest of tasks. Cringing the thought of being relaxed and loosely moving forward as you would if you did not think about your "I" so much is very apparent in you, in all of us, and even in the tiniest of creatures:

The centipede was happy quite

Until a toad in fun

Said, “Pray, which leg goes after which?”

That worked her mind to such a pitch,

She lay distracted in a ditch,

Considering how to run.

                                                                         - Mrs. Edward Craster

Why do we care so much about what people think about us or say to us, which in turn develops doubt and a weak mind, feeble character, and an unstable existence. Why are we so self- conscious and fear the thought of truly acting and being ourselves? 

The point of it all is this: in all that you cringe, you must have courage.

Have the courage to imagine. Have the courage to unlearn what you’ve been taught or keep what you have learned and explore other things. Have the courage to write the unwritten, be unique, explore and develop your psyche, and the courage to not be so self-conscious. Hone your craft as well, if the inconsistency of your output stems from the fact that you have no real knowledge of your craft. This is easy to fix. Be patient with yourself and slowly and surely start collecting knowledge on your craft.

Step boldly, do it anyway, and always take this quote with you, “the individual performing under universal will is irresistible, doing something that must be done.”