If God has better things to worry about, shouldn't you?

I have prayed for one thing in recurrence:

"God, purge the hatred from my heart."

As with many things spiritual, I cannot be sure of the response. But I do believe the answer has been

"Do it yourself."

Martial Art

It is not a matter of destroying your enemy, or being able to "be the tough guy", or to break boards and show off. Guns and knives have equalized practical forms of fighting, especially where life and death is involved.

The ultimate goal is not to conquer your opponent, but to redirect the blows -- the punches and kicks -- inwardly towards ones own self. To conquer your own ego. To destroy that inside your that cultivates fear and distrust of your own spirit. An outside observer would call it "confidence" or "discipline" -- but to the practitioner, it extends not just to your chosen art, but to all manner and aspect of your soul.

On humility

There is something wonderfully silencing about the motion of the natural world. Whenever a storm approaches, when the sky falls, or when watching the wind kick up the waves of the sea -- one is filled with a indelible sense of humility. It is as if these dramatic displays of nature's fury are intended to remind us of our own insignificance. Man has flourished where he has mastered the elements, but nature will always be just beyond his reach of his control.

The lightning in the sky says to you: "You may accomplish this or that, but I will show you something truly marvelous. Behold!" And the crack of thunder drowns out your own stammering words your own intangible thoughts, leaving you struck in awe of the fury of God and the Earth.

Every moment is an opportunity

Do not desire an easy life. Fill it full of hardship, with strife and tribulation. Struggle, climb, strike, and assail the odds with the might of your spirit. Let loose the fury of your soul and you shall succeed the highest of immovable mountains.

Go. Become.

Facebook

Arranging your life into bite-size tidbits upon an interchangeable canvas -- as such to ease the manner in which you may compare your life to another's. Uniformity designed such that we can reduce our outbound selves to words posted on a message board and colored pixels on a screen with little captions.

It is fairly easy to see how quickly this device turns into the bane of our lives. It is the nexus point of our social existence -- the hub of the many spokes around which our personal world turns.

Mark Zuckerberg, you are both a genius and a madman. The layout attuned so finely to make it appealing to the human eye. I wonder if we should blame you for the design, or ourselves for buying into it upon such a massive scale.

In search of something real

We spend an awful lot of time identifying ourselves with objects and ideas that are not a part of ourselves. Virtually how we describe ourselves has been in some way or another pre-furbished and processed for us to reroute as an object of our identity. Movies, music, television, fashion, and other forms of media expression act as substitutes for a real identity. Anyone with even a shallow understanding of these things knows full and well that they are all part of a business -- items and investments introduced to our culture to earn revenue.

I am torn on this. On one hand, these bodies are all types of art -- and art is part of the human condition. Since we have possessed emotion we have have identified with art. There great deal of this art out there to identify with. The strongest market in the world is the sale of identity. And yet, I wholeheartedly reject the urge to seek an identity tied to a form of processed media. Not out of some desire to "stick it to the man", but because these things --compared to a HUMAN BEING -- are simply fake.

Seeking the common humanity

As human beings, becoming more aware of the differences between us is the same process of discovering that which unifies us all as human beings.

Disagreement begs the question of the next point of agreement. It traces further and further back to the simple questions that unify us all under a common humanity. Even differing ethical imperatives are directed in the same direction. Fundamentally, all humans desire the same things – others are the products of politicization, projection, self-doubt, or other extrinsic factors that betray an honest representation of our humanity.

This is why questioning the source of disagreement is so important. It brings us closer to the commonality we share with all people. It breaks down all barriers that divide and estrange us.