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8.19.2004
Clicking on the picture will open a new window with a larger version See more photos. How one sees the world, relationships and general path of life issues depends a lot on ones concept of love. Is it unconditional or something that has to be earned through deeds? If love is something that always comes as a consequence of your actions you are going to view systems that take advantage of this method as effective. Otherwise if you are accepting of people, things and situations no matter their outcome you are less likely to see witholding of love as a seemly way of going about things. I'm an unconditional love kinda guy myself. I want people to accept me for who I am without alot of prodding and poking. And I don't place demands on my loved ones to earn my affection either. I have theirs and they have mine. I don't really need someene telling me what their requiements are. I'm going to be who I am and that's that. I've never gotten into the habit of chasing after people's acceptance. You see... I've never had to. I can't think of a single person in my circle of friends and family that wants me to be different from who I am. I've had issues with people that have grown up thinking that the definition of love was all about gaining acceptance through acheivement. I once had a friend that joined me on a rare walk around LaFortune park one night. He was successful by most standards. He was fresh out of college and already making over 50K a year at an oil company. But he was unhappy about a number of things in his life. The most important being his inability to find a girlfriend that he could keep for more than a few months. His most serious relationship had dumped him not to much earlier. He didn't really like his job and wasn't to sure what to do about it. He had taken to engaging in risky behaviors as well, driving his car drunk and all that. He needed direction. We had been friends all through high school and I knew where the kinks in our relationship were. He was never happy with himself and was always looking for outside validation for his life. This lead to a deep desire to win at all things even if that meant insulting your friends and cheating on your girlfriends. When it came time to make life choices it was always with one eye one what would earn him the most admiration and money. I tried to offer him some advice about doing more of what made him happy and less about what other people expected of him. I'm not sure if he took my advice or not. We don't hang out. This rare walk occurred years after I had effectively severed our friendship by calling him "petty" on the phone one day. I think I apologized. We had always had a hard time getting along. We looked at the world in two fundamentally different ways. I think I went to one extreme and he went to another. I knew that I didn't have to do anything to win acceptance. I go out of my way to do the things that I want with little regard to what that means in the long run. He however always kept an eye on which path would lead him to a position where he would be admired and accepted. He wanted to successful. I wanted to be content. He acheived goals but never figured out what it was that made him happy. I discovered my own key to happiness but have never gone after material gains. My least favorite conversation is the one the starts "So what are you going to do..." I've get into fights with each of my friends whenever this topic comes up because they don't seem to like my answer: "I don't know... whatever I feel like doing I suppose". I guess I've always been about "being" and less about "doing". This is the path of doom. It leads nowhere but here, right where I am, happy with myself but with very little tangible that I can point to as my accomplishments. But I still have acceptance by the people that matter to me the most, and those that couldn't live with my lifestyle have moved on. You can go on and lead a perfectly happy life always seeking the acceptance of others or society at large, but you'll have to move from one surrogate to another always climbing to another peak, always looking for a taller one. We're all familiar with the story of the driven artist, celebrity, etc who once acheiving their ultimate goal sink into depression. They lived to earn the love that they thought they deserved. In some cases they might learn that they had it all along, and in others they learn that what they seek will never be there. It can be quite a motivator, the quest for love, acceptance and admiration. In many ways this desire drives us in our day to day life, whether its striving to earn God's love through devotion and prayer, earning the opposite sex's attention through financial and material acheivement or earning the respect and admiration of family, parents and loved ones with displays of affection we all seem to be looking for some outside validation to our lives. But like everything else, its all about finding you're own way that works best for you. Oh, and guys, don't ever pull this shit. |
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