Monday, April 10 : 35 truths

Some things are true, and some are kind of true and some are just bullshit. A guy yesterday asked me what was true. It was a good question but he was pretending to be Mr. Wise. I picked up a flower, held it in front of his face and said, “When I let go, this won’t go up. That’s true.” I let go and it fell. He got all pushed out of shape and said, “You don’t want to learn,” and walked away. Fine by me. I thought the questions was a good one, though.

Here’s some truths, as I understand this Life thing as of now.

1) Gravity is a major organizing force for life on earth.

2) Whatever I think or believe about gravity has no effect on whether a rock or flower will fall when I drop it.

3) What I think or believe about my mate will probably have an effect on how we get along.

4) When people don’t get along, usually one or both are interested in proving that they are right and the other person is wrong.

5) This usually leads to unhappiness, since people don’t like to be put in the wrong.

6) Often the choice when people don’t get along is between being happy and being right. And if the argument is to continue, all you have to do is keep insisting that you are right and the other is wrong.

7) People who can listen to other people are rare.

8) If you can listen to other people, sooner or later you’ll hear how they are right from their point of view.

9) People can learn, and many choose not to.

10) When we are born into this world we are essentially blobs that are great at learning.

11) We learn to roll over and sit up and crawl and walk and talk. We learn this without consulting any time schedules of how many weeks old we should be to crawl or roll over or walk. We learn by experimenting and curiosity and trying this and that, and resting when we’ve had enough, and going down a lot of dead ends. We learn by giving ourselves an opportunity to experience a huge variety of possibilities.

12) This is still a great strategy for learning.

13) If we are afraid to experiment and make “mistakes,” chances are we won’t learn much.

14) In a interpersonal thing, if someone tells me I’m not listening, two things are probably true: one, I’m not listening. Two, the other person isn’t listening.

15) If I tell another person they aren’t listening, this is always true: I’m not listening.

16) Listening to myself when I “make mistakes” is a way of learning.

17) People breathe. This is essential to life.

18) So is movement. Life is moving: to eat, to find a place to sleep, to make housing, to reproduce, to play musical instruments. Without movement there is no life.

19) Improving movement can improve all of life.

20) I am either breathing in, breathing out, holding my breath, or between in and out breath, or between out and in breath.

21) I can be aware of this.

22) I can be unaware of this.

23) I can be aware of my awareness.

24) To not be aware, I am doing something else.

25) To not be happy, I am doing something else.

26) To not move with ease and grace, I am doing something else.

27) Discovering the things I do with I am not aware, not happy, not moving with ease and grace is a big step to improvement.

28) To be able to change I have to know what I’m already doing.

29) To be able to change is interesting and gives me freedom.

30) Freedom feels good.

31) Feeling good feels good.

32) Someone will come along sooner or later and try to tell you that you should only feel good the way they think you should feel good.

33) We have a choice of whether we believe them or not.

34) We have a choice, though usually we don’t’ take it, or whether or not we believe a huge amount of things we have been taught, told and force feed.

35) To be aware helps us wise up to the possibilities all these choices offer.