Play

All work and no play make Jack a dull boy. Play is essential to life, even animals play. Play is what makes life enjoyable. Play causes happiness, lowers stress and fatigue, and makes us more pleasant to be around. Being serious all the time or working all the time is just plain exhausting. The lack of play is a death sentence. We are currently living in a zombie apocalypse, and no one even noticed. Capitalism, consumerism, pandemics, politics, religions, war, racism, sexism, and every other ism. There is a lot of shit going on in the world right now. So many of us are too focused on all the negativity and so few of us have any positivity in our lives. How do we become happier?

Who are the happiest people on earth? Who plays the most? Children. Even now children are slowly being turned into zombies from birth. Children are losing the ability to play. Babies are being sat in front of tablets and being handed phones as a method of distraction. Children aren't even being given the chance the learn how to play. With the rise of technology comes the rise in suicide, depression, anxiety, and just plain misery. Too many of us spend our lives staring at a screen and never playing. Video games isn't play, not that there's anything wrong with videogames in moderation. Play requires the use of our imagination. Screens take away our ability to use our own imagination and therefore take away the ability to play.  

There is a whole generation of people who never learned how to play. Education is heavily dropping along with mental health, physical health and social aspects. The more time we spend looking at screens the more detached from the real world we become. We are becoming afraid of each other, and social anxiety is at an all-time high. We have been turned into zombies just working to keep the system going.

Some of us were raised in homes where we weren't allowed to play, have fun or be happy due to an abusive home environment. Some of us were taught that play is "wrong" and that we would get punished for it. Some of us spend out entire lives never having played once. We're taught that when we become adults that we need to act like "adults", quite often children are even taught to act like "adults". If an adult plays in public view, people will comment on the play since it's such a rare site. 

Do you play regularly? Do you know how to play? Do you like to play? The good news is we all have the ability to learn how to play, it's a natural function of being alive. We all have this ability as children, we just forget it or don't practice it enough. It can definitely feel very overwhelming and terrifying at first and you may have no idea where to even start. You can do it though; you are strong and powerful! Put the screen down for a few minutes and play. Don't overthink it, just do whatever comes to mind. It will probably feel extremely awkward, just ignore that feeling. If you are afraid of being embarrassed or ashamed or of being punished just do it in secret. Go in a room close the door and give yourself the permission and freedom to play for five minutes. I promise, nothing bad will happen. The more you practice playing, the easier it will come. There is no need to worry about doing it in front of anyone, just play. Eventually you may find yourself playing around other people without even realizing it or caring. 

Imagine a world where everyone played every day. Imagine how much happier we would be, imagine how much more harmonious the world would be. Play is contagious, when we see people playing and having fun, we naturally want to join in. The problem is most of us ignore that instinct due to social norms. Imagine how much less anger there would be in this world. There is a hell of a lot of rage in this world from people who have been taught that they are not allowed to play. There's no reason to be so angry all the time, just go play for a little while. Go look at kids playing on a playground, you don't see anger or rage very often on a playground, the kids are usually running around laughing and smiling as the result of play. 

Go play, have some fun, enjoy life. It's ok, nothing bad will happen. You just might find yourself happy! Love and Peace!

How To Accomplish (Almost) Anything

I have to start by stating that there are exceptions to this post as with everything in life. For example, if you are blind, you could not be a pilot, and if you want to join the United States military there is an age limit in which you can enroll. Taking in account that there are certain exceptions, this post will apply to every facet in life. It also needs to be said that this advice only applies to things that don't effect other life beings. One example being that if you want to date someone or have sex with them and they don't feel the same way, you need to respect that person and accept that in this situation, you will not get what you want. Despite what the movies make us believe, we live in the real world and in the real world, if someone doesn't feel something towards you, there is absolutely nothing you can do to make them change how they feel. It doesn't matter how much you Love someone or what you do for them or what you say to them, if they don't Love you, there is simply nothing you can do to change that. I know that sucks, and I know it can hurt. By accepting that, you can move onto to someone who does feel the same way for you that you feel for them and truly be happy.

The answer to being able to do anything in life, which includes but is not limited to, your character, your health, your social life, your abilities, your talents, your mental health, your perspective, your education, your career, and so on and so forth. The answer to how to accomplish anything is... baby steps and small goals! That's it, it really is that simple. With that method you can literally transform your entire life and your entire being. You have the ability to be anyone you want to be and do anything you want to do.

Of course, we need some examples just to see how easy this truly is. Let's go with our physical health since so many of us are unhappy with our current health. We have all been told to exercise, any quick google search will result in thousands of sites telling you all about the benefits of exercise. Yet many of us still don't exercise, why not? For those of us who don't exercise when we think about exercising our brains automatically jump to some hypothetical future where we've spent thousands on a gym membership only to never use it, or if we do go to the gym, it's the having to spend countless hours there being miserable.

Obviously someone who doesn't work out and who never has is not going to want anything to do with that kind of thinking. So how do we solve this issue? Baby steps and small goals. Set a small goal that you 100% know that you can do and start there, that is the baby step. So for example if you can only do one push-up, commit yourself to doing one push-up everyday. That's it. One push-up a day can be done anywhere, it won't cost you anything, and it will only take you a few seconds. After a few days of doing one push up you will start to feel more confident in yourself, you are accomplishing a goal that you set for yourself that wasn't out of reach. Even if you can't do one, just do whatever you can and keep doing your best, if you can do a partial push-up then do a partial because eventually you will reach one push-up a day.

Too often when we want to accomplish something, we set this huge unrealistic goal which we can never attain and when we inevitably don't, we get frustrated and give up. When we set small goals that we can accomplish, our brain rewards us every time we reach a goal. When you accomplish the goal of doing one push up a day, your brain will reward you with that feel good chemical that we all crave, which will in turn naturally cause you to want to create another goal as to get that reward chemical again. We can then set a goal and commit to doing two push-ups a day.  When you do two push-ups a day, another chemical reward will be blasted in your brain, and you will get another rush. Continue this pattern of moving the goal post to a reasonable distance indefinitely. Eventually you may find you want to add different types of exercises into the mix. Who knows maybe someday you'll not only compete in a triathlon, but you'll also win it. All because you learned the trick of getting your brain to reward you for meeting your own achievable goals!

The other side effect to this, is the inevitable massive increase in self-confidence. The more goals you achieve, the more you start to see your true strength and the more confidence you gain, the confidence naturally pushes you to see your own limits and even test some fears that you have or traumas you've been repressing. Along with strength, confidence, fearlessness, and stamina you will also learn how to Love better not only yourself but others, how to have more empathy, how to see a more beautiful world. You will eventually start to see the world and everything in it as perfect since you see that you are powerful enough to do literally anything, since you know you have this enormous powerful energy within you, you know that all others have this enormous powerful energy within them also. All this was achieved by setting a goal of doing one push-up.   

The first step is 100% the hardest but as soon as you get yourself to take that step you are able to look back and see just how tiny that first step was and how tiny every other step along the way is. As stated earlier, this advice applies to (almost) anything. Want to be more social? Set a goal of saying hi to one stranger a day or even a week if a day seems to be overwhelming. Want to be smart? Make a goal to read one paragraph a day from a nonfiction book. Want to be an expert at something? Read a book on the subject that you want to be an expert in. Want to be rich? Set a goal to find a way to make a dollar a day and save it. Want to be a nicer person? Do one selfless act a day, not as easy as one might think, but it turns into a pretty fun game of trying to find ways to accomplish it. Want to be happy? Smile once a day, fake it till you make it.

Want to play an instrument? Find a way to get one, if you're poor there are second hand on eBay, if you're broke, ask around the music scene, post an ad on your local sales groups. There are plenty of musicians who would give you an old instrument for free if it's just sitting around not being used. Set up a go-fund me, ask anyone you meet for a couple dollars to help you get an instrument. The point is, there is always a way to do something if you want it bad enough. Once you have the instrument you will just play it, since you have it anyways, getting the instrument really is the hardest part. After you have the instrument, there are apps, free and paid, there are YouTube tutorial videos, there are subreddits dedicated to learning instruments. A thirty second google search resulted in this subreddit for learning guitar.

Think of anything you want to do or anyone you want to be. Ignore the millions of steps that your brain immediately tells you are in the way of you getting whatever it is that you want. Find the first step and set a goal for that first step, achieve said goal and add another goal, repeat indefinitely. That being said even setting more than one goal at a time can be too much at times which can cause the goals to fail despite how tiny they are. If you are someone who struggles with goals, just set one goal in one aspect in your life, as you get better at achieving your goals and start to see your resilience, the more goals you'll be able to set. Someday in the future you could have hundreds of goals in hundreds of aspects of your life going all at once, becoming an expert goal maker and achiever. Just think of the possibilities!

Don't compare yourself to anyone else. Don't listen to anyone who tries to tell you what goals to set for yourself. You are the only one who knows what you are capable of, you are the only one who knows what goals you will be able to achieve and what goals you won't. Pick a goal that you 100% know you can and will achieve, pick a goal that it would be impossible to not achieve. If you know you can't even do a push-up as in the above example set a goal of taking one step a day, if you can't get out of bed, set a goal of clapping your hands for a couple minutes once a day. The size of the step is not important at all! The only thing that is important, is that you meet that goal and then add to it and keep doing that. You can take as much time as you need between goals but if you never add more goals, you will stagnate and you will essentially end up back where you started. 

Any human in the world can do this. This doesn't require any training, this doesn't require and special skills or knowledge, this doesn't require anything specific. This is something that is individualized to every person which means it can't be given. No one else can do this technique for you, you have to do it. The good news is since you are the only one that can do it and you know yourself better than anyone else that means you know exactly what goal you can achieve and then you can achieve said goal. Give it a try, what do you have to lose? That was rhetorical but I'll answer anyways, you have nothing to lose, absolutely nothing! You can do this! I believe in you! You got this! I want to hear all about how you played at Carnegie Hall or won that triathlon or won a Nobel peace prize all because of that baby step and tiny goal that you made! You are amazing and beautiful! Love and Peace!

Thoughts

Why do I crave Love so deeply? Why am I not content with what I have? Will I get everything I want? What do I Want? Who am I? Who do I want to be? Thoughts come and go, some illicit more feeling than others. Some thoughts overstay their welcome, some thoughts vanish before they can be seen. Some thoughts come in the form of memories bringing either turmoil or peace. Thoughts can paralyze us and thoughts can liberate us. Thoughts can transcend boundaries and make the impossible possible. Thoughts either give power or take it away. Thoughts can turn a sinner into a saint and a saint into a sinner.

We believe what we think, and we think what we believe. Our thoughts and our beliefs create the world. There is overwhelming evidence that the earth is round. Some of us believe the evidence that the earth is round. Some of us do not believe the evidence and believe that it is a conspiracy, and the earth is flat. It does not matter how much evidence is provided that the earth is round, those of us who believe the earth is flat will never be persuaded to believe the evidence.

There are all sorts of beings that exist on this planet that we reside on. Some of the beings on this planet will never be seen by human eyes and therefore will never “exist”. Something can only “exist” to us humans if we are aware of it. We are discovering new species all the time, all of which didn’t “exist” prior. Once we become aware of something it begins its “existence” to us in that instant. Whatever it was that we discovered, existed before we discovered it. It simply didn’t exist to us; we had no concept of it. It was only by discovering it that we were able to conceptualize it and create an existence for it in our mind’s eye. Even after a species is discovered, there are still some of us who refuse to believe it exists since they have never seen it with their own eyes.

Something does not exist when we are unaware of it, that’s not to say that thing doesn’t exist at all, it simply means that it doesn’t exist within our conceptual minds. We need to “discover” something in order to have the ability to conceptualize it to be able to see it in our mind’s eye. If we haven’t “discovered” something, we are incapable of seeing it. How do we discover something that we don’t have any way of conceptualizing? That’s like going into the rainforest looking for a “Toobit Tuger” but having absolutely no clue whatsoever as to what the hell it looks like or without knowing anything about it whatsoever. How would we even know to look for the “Toobit Tuger” in the first place?

Imagine someone we trust once told us that the “Toobit Tuger” was real. They told us that they themselves had seen it. So, we say, "what does it look like?" and they respond with "it's too magnificent for me to put into words, there just aren't any words for its beauty". Looking for more information to go on we say, "well how do I find it?" and they say, "only you can figure that out". Then we head out into the jungle trying to find the “Toobit Tuger” only to spend our entire lives never knowing whether we found it or not or whether it is real or not. Maybe it is real, and we saw it but because we didn't know what it looked like we thought it was something else. Or maybe it is real but were never able to find it. Or maybe that person just made it up and we've been chasing nothing.

What are you chasing? Why are you chasing it? Are you looking for something that doesn't exist simply because someone once told you it did? Or are you chasing something you believe in your heart to be true? Where did that belief come from? Did it come from intuition or was it given to you by another?

Only you can know what you're chasing and why you're chasing it. If you've been chasing something your entire life and haven't been able to find it, maybe it just doesn't exist. Is it really easier to believe that something that you've been chasing your entire life does exist but your just "not good enough" to find it, then to accept that it just may not exist. Even if it does exist, maybe it wasn't ever meant for you to find. We all have a different path in this world and no two are the same. It is only when you get down to the core of why you're chasing what you're chasing that you can discover the reason you're chasing whatever it is you're chasing. Does the fact that you are chasing this illusionary, impossible to catch belief benefit you in any way or is someone else benefiting off of you doing the chasing. 

None of us like to be tricked or be made to look like a fool. There are so many of us who would rather burn ourselves to the ground rather than to admit we have been made to look like a fool by another. We see this happening with others all around us every day. People who hold on to a belief so tightly that they alienate themselves from everyone around them. To them it is damn near impossible to ever consider that maybe they have been made to look like a fool due to that belief. They never once stop to realize that a real fool is someone who just blindly believes. A real fool never questions their beliefs. A real fool never bites the hand the feeds even when it is the same hand that is beating them senseless over and over and over.

Are you being beaten down by your beliefs? Are you being made to look like a fool by someone manipulating you? Do you have the courage to even ask yourself these questions or will you, as most of us do, just look at everyone else who is giving themselves up to their beliefs. Never once realizing that you yourself could in fact be the fool. Maybe your hero is actually a predator who is only using you for their own gain. Maybe you yourself have also been made to be a puppet on a string. If you're never willing to ask yourself if this could be, then you will never know. Always destined to be at the mercy of your puppeteer. Love and Peace!

Subjective Vs. Objective Reality

We are the meaning makers. There is no subjective reality because we make subjective reality whatever we want it to be. There is only objective reality. It’s your fault, it’s my fault. You are self-centered, I am self-centered. We make the meaning, we decide. OR we can choose that neither matter, who gives a shit. It's no one's fault because we are all at fault. No one is a self-centered because we are all.

Objective reality is all there is since subjective reality is a matter of perception and everyone’s subjective perception is biased. Subjective reality can’t be verifiably proven since subjective reality is coming from an individual perspective. Objective reality can be verifiably proven since the facts of the objective reality cannot be affected by individual perspective. Subjective reality is opinion, objective reality is fact.

We all assign our own meaning to everything, anything that opposes us is our enemy, and anything that is for us is our friend. Damn the enemies, embrace the friends. Release all subjective meaning that you decided is true and there are no longer any friends or enemies, no one is for you or against you. We are all just making our own subjective worlds in which we play the victim or the hero, the friend or the enemy. There are no victims or heroes, there are no friends or enemies, those words are just meanings that we apply to everyone around us. 

One says there is a God, another says there isn’t. One says there are morals to follow, another says there isn’t. One says life has meaning, another says life is meaningless. One says I am right, another says you are wrong. We all choose what meaning we want the world to have. We all choose our own subjective reality. OR we can choose to stop giving it a subjective meaning. We can choose to only watch the objective reality that is happening all around us at all times. We can choose to embrace the objective world and stop applying subjective meaning to it. OR we can use our subjective perspective to create a more beautiful objective reality. Love and Peace!

“In Love”

To be “in Love” is just something that we are taught to believe in. Being “in Love” is for fairy tales and romance novels. True Love requires effort, honesty, communication, openness, willingness to forgive, patience, mutual respect, and selflessness. True Love is the decision to Love another person indefinitely and unconditionally. True Love is a choice. 

romantic love activates brain regions that contain high concentrations of a neuromodulator that is associated with reward, desire, addiction, and euphoric states, namely dopamine.

Falling "in Love" is a chemical response within the brain that releases dopamine. We confuse the dopamine high with the feeling of falling "in Love" and when the dopamine fades away, we are left confused as to where the Love went. That dopamine rush was never Love. 

Anything that gives you pleasure will trigger the release of dopamine. This can range from a fun activity you enjoy, like dancing or cooking, to sex, shopping, and even certain drugs. Dopamine activates the reward pathway in the brain, leading you to desire these activities more. For this reason, dopamine can play a role in addiction.

When we have sexual, romantic, or erotic urges, it releases dopamine. That gives us a high and we feel like we are "in Love". We can ultimately become addicted to that person which is causing us to feel those elevated levels of dopamine. Many of us will experience addiction type behaviors when we fall "in Love" such as loss of appetite, loss of motivation, and the desire for more.

True Love isn't desire, attraction, or chemistry those are just our physical instincts the same as hunger and thirst. Most of us experience Love for someone that is a completely platonic form of Love, such as the Love for a parent, child, relative, or friend. Love and sexual attraction are separate things. You can feel sexual attraction towards someone with whom you also Love, but you can also feel sexual attraction towards someone with whom you don't Love.

Some of society says that Love and sex are equal. Sex is biological, and Love is a choice, the choice to Love, not just when Loving someone suites you or when the receiver deserves it. Love is a choice to put someone above yourself and your own needs. Love is a choice to stay when the dopamine fades. So many of us confuse the dopamine high as being "in Love" and when it fades, we assume the Love is gone, and move on to the next person. We are constantly just chasing the dopamine high. Some of us spend our lives jumping from one relationship to another always seeking out that next high being addicted to what we think is "Love". Some of us go through our entire lives never having felt true Love, only having chased the dopamine highs or just giving up on Love altogether.

Iannis : When you fall in love, it is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake, and then it subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots are become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the desire to mate every second of the day. It is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every part of your body. No... don't blush. I am telling you some truths. For that is just being in love; which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over, when being in love has burned away. Doesn't sound very exciting, does it? But it is!

This is the best description of true Love that I have seen. True Love is what is left when the primal urges fade and when the dopamine subsides. True Love is the choice to Love someone not despite their flaws but because of their flaws, true Love is the choice to Love even when it doesn't benefit you in any way. True Love is selfless and eternal. Love and Peace!