It saddens me but I have every expectation that you won't even bother to read most of what I've written below. Instead, you are going to read a handful of catch-phrases, get all worked up without having any idea what I'm really trying to say, and then go on a rant or be either dismissive or insulting, or some combination of the two. If I were to do this, oh the flames, oh the flames.
"Well, he isn't completely and wholeheartedly agreeing with me, so he must have mis-understood me."
That's a pretty open minded approach to have, wouldn't you say?
Thank you. What part of my post exactly was deemed to be an "attack"? This really pisses me off. Religion gets a free pass to piss on anything that is not a complete endorsement of itself. But offering a viewpoint with a desire to help that should in fact be just as if not potentially more beneficial in a polite and passive manner is an attack......really?
I'm not going to derail this thread so I will leave that at that and try to get it back on topic.
But this....I do need to address:
Seriously, where the hell do you get off speaking down to me? You have NO idea what hurdles I have overcome in my life and am continuing to overcome. I can tell you this much, they are very complex and indeed soul-crushing. If I were to throw out some terms and labels they would be adjectives and nouns that carry with them a great deal of implied intensity. But I am not going to do that because I just have a habit of processing things internally and have never been able to have a real conversation about any of it. There might be a reason I drop tens of thousands of dollars a year of money I don't have chasing horizons I can't catch because it makes me feel better? You and I have a pretty similar outlook in this respect and I will remind you of the VERY promising PM exchange we had a while back. Am I trying to speak of things of which I have no understanding? Really? Are you an authority on human suffering because someone made you sad at some point in the recent past? Ok so you have other things that made your life terrible. So you have a monopoly on human suffering now? You can write a textbook guide for each person that is the authoritative textbook on any and all scenarios? Are your viewpoints the only ones that are valid because they are the only ones you CHOSE to employ? Surely because they worked for you, any framework that APPEARS different than yours is automatically incorrect [in spite of the fact that the vast majority of this differing framework is in many respects indistinguishable from yours]?
I will say this here. Anything has the power to crush anyone. For each individual persons, their struggles are their own and to them they are immensely significant. So it is not my intent to belittle anyone's personal experiences. They are for each of us what shapes us and makes us who we are. They are indeed significant and noteworthy. They are not, however, ammunition to belittle other people's viewpoints. If I have done so in my previous paragraph this was not my intent and it may come across that way because I am pissed off.
Lone2, maybe if you stopped making the assumption that your own personal INTERPRETATION of a series of universal truths is the ONLY interpretation, then maybe you would be able to stop hammering your keyboard for a minute and actually gain some form of additional and supplemental philosophical enlightment. These types of discussions often end up with parties with an open mind finding mutual enrichment. Instead you have contributed to the derailing of a VERY positive thread. You injected negativity into it. Why? I don't know. But you felt attacked by someone being polite and offering assistance in a polite manner. You felt your views being threatened and immediately launched a direct offensive. Would it not have been more productive to take a minute, maybe go out to the kitchen for a glass of lemonade, think and process what was said, and then come back and attempt to develop further the discussion we were having as a GROUP? Nope. Instead you smashed your keyboard in with your face. Lol. Come on guy.
Now, in the interest of returning this to a more positive light for the benefit of the original purpose of not only this thread, but everything I have already said and don't want to see slandered into submission:
I am seeing an attitude develop with respect to shirking responsibility for ones own fate and that is something I myself went through and found set me back considerably in my own personal progression. So I posted about it to further help the OP progress from his deeply felt and understandably devastating personal event. I saw a person I felt empathy for and wanted to do what I could to make him feel better both now with hope and down the line with genuine assistance regarding active life decisions.
I don't know his significant other, and I may be a bit quick to rush to judgement, but it strikes me that he may be better off building a new life based on the lessons he has learned here. The "pick yourself up by the bootstraps" will have a DIRECT affect on his dealings with his significant other because it will return him to a place of outstanding confidence and potentially remind her of the man she had initially married. I say this as a sweeping generalization, but an observation I have made is that men become complacent as they age. The elements of their personality which drew in their mate fade away slightly. A return to youthful exuberance and passionate outlays of action in any endeavor deemed productive does wonders. Not only does it remind the other person of exactly who you are, but it reminds YOU of who you are. Happiness and contentment come from within. Confidence, passion, and independence are what fertilize that seed though. And yes, you are both definitely correct, HUMILITY plays a massive and arguably one of the biggest roles there as well. Which is why I have not said otherwise.....I agree with that. But humility breeds inaction if not coupled with a fiery passion. This is where we differ in our idealogies. But I am making assumptions with respect to the personalities and personal histories of the OP and his people. And this may not be accurate. But an outright display of confidence and independence rather than yearning and pleading may be exactly what the OP needs right now.
I didn't want to be too aggressive with my language but this in particular set me off:
Really? Why is it that you feel you need to come back on bended knee when you are not at fault? Return to a position of confidence, and you will see the tone of the conversations you have with her make a DRASTIC change. Best case scenario she re-evaluates her error in judgement, and worst case scenario you find someone else more capable of enriching your life because you have started the momentum by choosing to actively enrich your own life first.
That is just my practical advice spoken from brother to brother. I do not sugar coat it because I don't feel I have to. I have every faith you will read that as it was written....to be helpful and coming from a place of empathy and compassion. If I knew you better I would use more colourful language, but this is a family forum. Lol
Yearning to stitch together the shredded fabric of a former life, you may potentially miss out on so many AMAZING things that are in store for you. This is something only you can decide as only you know the people involved, but this is not a train of thought I wanted to see left unsaid.
So you will all have to forgive me if I am not going to coddle anyone. And this I must now say because it is directly relevant to everything said about it the past few pages. You may all be surprised to learn that I am in fact DEEPLY religious. However, I view each religion as a snapshot-in-time of our philisophical and spiritual development as a species. Each religious text is one more chapter outlining in depth the extent of spiritual insight each geographical and social division of our species had managed to compile at the time of publication. Viewing them in this light, you see nothing but common trends and quite often extremely similar viewpoints. When you remove the mythology behind religions that they are all tied up in, you find your life vastly more enriched and fulfilled. You explore with a newfound sense of wonder and love. You see barriers collapse and you find yourself more in tune with your fellow man. It is tough sometimes when you are belittled for your beliefs and you get angry, but you see through it and know that on the other side is just another man dealing with his life as best he knows how. You feel love and compassion, and forgive that person for their transgressions. I don't hold it against you Lone2. I am able to see why you have reacted in the manner you have and it doesn't come from a place of hate. It comes from a place of being very defensive about a set of beliefs that got you through your own stormy nights. But there is a brighter day ahead. But that only happens if we come together and realize there is more that unites us than divides us. In the grand scheme of things, most of human history is yet to be written. Why look backwards and stop our progression? Why entrench ourselves in rhetoric and mythology? Why divide ourselves along artifically imposed geographical and social lines?
Live, love, be free.
There is a depth of wonder, mystery, beauty and awe that exists in the universe that resists definition by any one religious text. However, taken as a whole and through the medium of open and mutually respectful discourse, we can develop further our understanding not only of one another, but shed insight into the nature of the very wonder, mystery, beauty, and awe that continues to elude us all. It is indeed possible to have a great understanding of these phenomena, and no one group can claim a monopoly on it. But yet, if you don't agree whole-heartedly and enthusiastically with whatever group the individual happened by pure chance to have been born into, then you are, for lack of a better word, an infidel. Oh, and that's even if you actually have shown that you agree with many of the sentiments but have disagreed with their employment and have politely offered an alternate viewpoint for the purpose of enriching a group discussion.
This is why I get upset sometimes. There is so much beauty in the world that is ENRICHED when we come together to experience it, but instead we get hammered back into our little holes. And sitting in our little holes, we stagnate as a species and fail to uncover [or rather delay the discovery] of newly found depths of enrichment and happiness.
Well:
"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"
-Howard Beale [Network, 1974]
This forum = :rockon:
