What it all boils down to...

The larger philosophies and theologies and ideologies and ideas about life, amongst people, at least, boil down to this question, I think...

Given that people can be kind of shitheads, sometimes or much of the time...

What kind of people are we going to be in the face of that?

Are we going to make excuses for why we should be able to be whatever kind of shithead we want to be?

Are we going to spend our lives condemning ourselves and one another for what shitheads we are or have been?

Or are we going to reach deep and be better and forgive the fact that we can be such shitheads, much of the time? And work constructively to change ourselves and prompt thinking in others to change, as well?

Most of us both lie between the two extremes of rationalizing our worst behavior or condemning ourselves and one another into perpetuity for it and simultaneously entertain those extremes...

You know what makes childhood such a special time, I think?

Because it's the time in our lives when we, no matter what shitheads we often are...people so regularly forgive us our shitheadedness...

It's in adulthood when people start holding our mistakes over our heads that we stop believing in humanity as much, I think...our cynicism is fed by the cynicism of others, as they deal with us as spoiled goods rather than as flawed human beings...

The truth is that what we need for life is what we offer to children...

More commitment to more authentically forgiving and loving ourselves and one another...

The petty among us will demand different, I'm quite sure...that's what makes them petty, after all...

But humanity would be a lot better off if we all weren't so petty...if we faced ourselves more honestly, rather than perpetually avoiding the more challenging realities in our lives...

And we face ourselves more readily with more genuine forgiveness, love and compassion is my more than ample experience on this one...

Forgiving myself, when I've needed it, has been the most confusing experience I've ever had in my life, I think...

Forgiving Brandi has been about as difficult...until recently, I wasn't completely sure I had to...but I'm more confident that she needs -- and deserves -- the forgiveness...

Most pain does...

And its forgiveness that, as I give to myself, I want and need to give freely and generously...

No matter how you cut it, it's harder to forgive others than it is to forgive yourself...because you instantly know that you need forgiveness...but while you may know someone else needs forgiveness, your heart just feels pain...

But I want to give forgiveness freely to Brandi and anyone like I would for myself...this is the hardest experience I've ever had with the stuff...but I know life is better on the other side...

What it all boils down to is are we going to rationalize or condemn our weakness...or are we going to embrace our more genuine strength by forgiving our weakness...

That's the only true strength there is in this world, I'm convinced...other forms are necessary, too, of course...physical and intellectual, of course...

But the genuine moral strength that comes from forgiveness and love and compassion is the only true strength that offers any real hope in the world...everything else is momentary and illusory...

What life comes down to is are we going to aspire in that direction? Or not?

It is a choice with the most profound and serious consequence...and it is the choice that makes all the difference in the world, I am convinced...

And it is a choice that only we can make, no matter what laws people passed or encoded into tradition to make it so...

It is the most profound question of conscience...and it is a question of conscience that I have scarcely questioned since I was a very little boy...or rather I have, but everything I know tells me and my conscience only ever gives me one answer to that question...

To forgive...

The only question I have as an adult is why do people resist this matter of conscience so strongly? How does it serve them? How does it serve us? And how does it get so interwoven with almost all of the most serious matters of uplifting good that is done in the world and its absence so conspicuous in all of the most serious evil done in the world?

But what it all boils down to is are we going to get lost in the darkness?

Or are we going to search and fumble for the light?

I nor anyone can be drug into the light, as Plato suggested in his Allegory of the Cave...

But we can find our way out of the cave, if we seek out light from shadows...

And that light comes with a clear heart, I think...

Hopefully, today is a day of clarity for me...God knows I need it:):)...

Love,
Ben