Run It's Course

  I met up with one of my favorite professors the other day.  I worked for him as a research assistant during my pursuit of a psychology degree.  He introduced me to the topic of Positive Psychology, and with that process, the concept of authenticity and how it was integral to an enduring sense of psychological well-being; this, in contrast to common understanding of happiness being more pleasure, less unpleasantness, or increase of satisfaction.

  A key component to authenticity is unbiased processing.  What that boils down to is not making up stories about personal behavior; to not attempt to rearrange facts in order to protect a projected positive image.  The ideal is to keep your integrity in tact by loving yourself; warts and all.  The end product is laudable, as the process is by nature open ended; kind of like self actualization, you’re never really finished attempting to remove the warping reflex from, well, a habitual practice of self deception.

  We’ve often talked about the point of view where once being aware of the facet, it would become apparent in all of our relationships; then like it or not, we’d see it most as lacking in others. This jibes with observations saying we’ve been given other people to reflect our own strengths and weaknesses.  In the words of Jean-Paul Sarte 

  “Hell is other people.” 

  Sure as any who have studied the notion of self improvement will attest, anything that annoys us about other people is usually the characteristic we deny possessing or attributes we resent not being able to freely display.  So the professor and I were in agreement that organically everything falls into place eventually, and to focus on influencing the one person each can actually change; ourselves.

  I’ve seen the process recently taking more of an effect on me than before.  There was a time I was on fire to play music; at all cost.  Then it was to write; get published.  Then I realized I resented the industry that fed off the insecure and desperate souls who, like me, were aching to be acknowledged.  It was then, like the opening of a blossom, as I was reviewing my past essays, where I noticed with clarity I had nothing more to say.  It was all just an elongated complaint; a bleating of victim seeking a martyr’s dream of importance through suffering; I’m finished for now.  I have nothing worth commenting on any longer; I have made five hundred post and those are mostly noise; there is far too much noise to be tolerated. It morphs people into cynics; I’m glad I wasn’t punished for being stupid.  I am glad I had time to wake up to living.  It will be alright; my mother use to say when as a child I would skin my toes running barefoot.  It will always be all right; just a question of being honest about how I make it personal. That is five hundred words on my 500^th post.

Happy Trails