I've been seeing quite a large amount of list type posts and I wanted to give it a shot compiling one. The last few months have had me sincerely reconsidering some ideas and doubling down on others. I decided to share some of the ideas that have been floating in my head.

I want to highlight the ideas that have a strand of self-responsibility running through them. That is the overarching and connective idea between them all. I want to share all of them, as I love free discussion of ideas. Also, I am sure there are many other souls in post-college life contemplating some of the same things.

I hope you enjoy all these ideas, as they are very close to my heart.

Enjoy!

1. Live with Love, or Active Compassion

When I say love, I am not talking about "oohh, ah, gaga" sappy love. I am talking about appreciation. I am talking about understanding and appreciating the vast diverse and vibrant scope of the miracle of life on this planet. And the beautiful person inside yourself. If we look at each person on this planet, they all have such incredibly powerful unique stories. All of them are so intricately different, and yet we can bond over the same few things. There is beauty in the systems of the Earth and the way our fellow humans interact with one another.

Life is hard. We all mess up and we all act like jerks quite a bit. That compassion is a buffer for whatever happens in your life. It allows as level of understanding that can separate us from petty problems. So very often, we get set off when we decide to have an emotional stake in what the other person is saying. That stake always comes from seeing the reflection of something you hate about yourself in the other person. When you come to understand their opinion is also troubled by that same fallacy, you begin to realize it actually has zero connection with who you truly are. It is entirely their own creation.

I will argue to the death that it is so underplayed how effective a smile or a kind action or word can be. I've seen the grouchiest people break and give a smile. People remember how you make them feel. When you make people happy, they want to make you happy. I have learned that anger poisons my soul and very often does nothing to the person you are angry at.

The greatest piece of this is that I am relatively sure that on my death bed I will be seeing faces of people whom I love. I will be feeling my legacy. I am sure that the times we felt our best will be when love was the dominant presence in the room. I strive to have no time for any less than that.

2. F*ck Everything the Government Says.

I do not and will never the trust the government. Every time I do research I find another smoking gun, flip out, and go post eleven statuses on facebook. Then, I find one that's worse and repeat the process. Our history is loaded with facts that are less than complementary to the United States. The media just doesn't report the facts because they're bought and paid for by the wealthy elite.

The United States of America is stuffed with a megaton of bull. This is a country that was created by a smart group of wealthy, upper class, landowning men who said that "all men are created equal".

Of course, except for Indians, women, and black people.

James Madison himself was concerned with protecting the landowners. Meanwhile, good old Sam Adams turned his back on protesting farmers a mere few years after the constitution was signed and said that anyone speaking out against the republic ought to be put to death. I hope that demonstrates the disingenuous ideas it was built on.

However, history hasn't provided a stronger argument as to why I should trust the government. It has lied during World War 2, the Vietnam War, the War in Iraq, about emails, about intel leaks, science, etc.

If that's not enough evidence of example of less than wholesome factors at work behind the United States, here's John Ehrlichman, Richard Nixon's domestic policy advisor.

"We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana, and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

Its all about keeping the middle class divided and looking down on the poor preoccupied with "stuff" and arguments over worthless issues while the wealthy white landowning men (sound familiar?) at the top skip to the bank.

P.S. - This is here because all our choices have some reverberation through the community. Then our community helps to define the state and so on. Its unfortunate that the world has grown so large it feels like we're inconsequential, but we, have power.

3. Fight Fear. It is the Greatest Enemy

This is one of those things that lives in our hearts every day, and we have to acknowledge it when it rears up. It can protect us, but most often it impedes us and causes us to make damaging choices.

See for me, insecurity is fear. The lowest denominator of fear is the fear of damage to your self-concept and concepts. As I said above, life is painful, so we build these constructs to keep us safe by defining our world. The unfortunate thing, is that these ideas become too rigid, and we become too scared when they are challenged.

It is all about insecurity when people are ostracized because they are different. What happens is our gut reaction screams "DIFFERENT! SCARY!" From there, we just aren't a society that collectively has the audacity to say "nope, that's wrong." Instead we spend the immediate moments afterwards satisfying our ego. We do this by working to justify the bad feeling just because its bad instead of consulting our brains.

The media whips up scapegoats by supplying the gut reaction. It drums up that fear and then seconds later the anchor does the justifying for us. Give Fox News a watch and you'll see they apply the formula to great degree.

When you make any decision based on fear the long term consequences generally suck. You might escape pain in the present, but you probably won't get what you wanted in the end. The biggest personal issue with this is you never get to truly do what you want. Fear makes us take the "safe" route, and we've learned that breaking your comfort zone is the key to growth, and in turn, a shot at happiness.

Perhaps this though is the worst part: As Yoda says, "fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering." In turn, that suffering leads to a perpetuation of the cycle of escalation of violence. Humans move shamefully quick from scared, to angry, to violent.

The greatest atrocities committed by humans were done by insecure people who believed they were doing the right thing. Fear is where it always starts. Fear and ignorance have brought us shameful pieces of history.

Sometimes that first voice to react in our heads is not to be trusted.

This leads us to the monkey.

4. Don't (Always) Listen to the damn Monkey

Don't forget each and every one of us have a selfish, horny, obscene monkey living inside our heads. I like to think of it as those obnoxious cymbal clapping monkeys. Its a very habitual animal. Change pisses it off, and different people scare it. its going to kick and scream every time you can do more drugs, have more sex, be aggressive, or it feels you need to be afraid. This is why guys end up having chest beating contests in the street. This is the voice in the back of your head that says "SAY THAT" when you come up with the best shit eating grin comeback in the world even though you know your wrong.

It is Mr. Ego. The id if we were being freudian.

It is a serious aspect of our lives. We are still connected to these relatively primitive impulses, and the general reaction to them is to listen to the monkey and justify the monkey, instead of consulting the brain and talking to the monkey.

I am not saying never to do things that satisfy ego, or offer a sort of hedonistic pleasure. Repression is a problem too. Acknowledging it exists as a normal part of us takes away a great deal of its power. Living with it you can make choices that satisfy it every so often that aren't destructive. We can learn to make the differentiation between what gives us pleasure and what gives us happiness. Sex and drugs are pleasure, finishing your book, or watching your son graduate is happiness.

The point I'm trying to make is that we have another side to us, and it should not be denied because it is reality. Perhaps if applied to recent times it means that maybe people would have thought twice about why they listened to who during this election.

5. All Things with Balance

Even with the above stated items, I must always remember that as a flawed human in a flawed world I can never force myself to follow all these things completely.

This extends to everything. I don't want to take things too seriously, but at the same time, I don't want to take nothing seriously. I don't believe that humans can't figure these things out. You have to live and fail.

We are so concerned with X vs. Y, and A vs. B, that we never stop to realize you don't need to commit 100% every second to an idea. Besides the fact thats stressful as fuck it just doesn't work.

A belief system can't encompass everything. It eventually has a downside as everything does in this world. Every ideology does. That's why democracy is so cool, cause it lets us cover all the bases by combining different ideas. One person's double edged sword, is balanced by someone else's and in turn again by another.

A little levity here: Life is worth enjoying. I would be pissed if all I did was work and die. I would be pissed if I never accomplished anything. And we all have to have a laugh at the world and ourselves sometimes. Some of this stuff is downright gorilla-in-a-clown-suit batshit crazy and I think it does us good to have a laugh at it.

I've also learned that evil hates being laughed at. It loses its power. Something to think about.