Awareness, Part I

I'd like to think sometimes that, underneath this smothering fog of ignorance, I am aware. Everyday, I question and challenge and mull things over. I can't help it. I don't know if that is being raised in a family of academics or because, if you take things at just face value, the world is a ridiculous place. So I try actively to remain aware. Why is this happening? Who does things like that? Can we avoid this? Can we do this better?

So begs the question: Am I aware of myself? Can I turn these same questions and ask them of myself? The answer is, believe it or not, I do. Each and every day, I struggle with who I have become and what are the choices I have made to get to this point? Is my current situation (at all times, not just today) a result of a vengeful God more than ready to smite me at every turn for my sins or is it a consequence of a long trail of bad decisions? Either option is enough to leave me tossing and turning all night.

Starting with the former- am I currently paying for a life of sin and inequity? If so, what sins and by who's standards have I sinned? Have I lived a life of erroneous moral relativism or have I, by Judeo-Christian standards led a life of a heathen? Am I paying today for questioning my God yesterday or your God last week? Living in, what despite the best intentions of our Founding Fathers to ensure this country to be a secular nation, is a Christian country, am I to be held to the sins and standards of a Christian God? Or as a Jew, am I held to the laws of the Torah? Or as a person, am I held to the arbitrary belief system of whomever I am interacting with at the time? I honestly struggle with the answer.

As for the latter, this bears the asking, Did I think it was a sin when I made the conscious decision to act on my impulses? Or sins notwithstanding, did I just plain make a bad decision? Did that dollar I spent on a cup of coffee earlier turn out to be the dollar I needed to put in the parking meter that I failed to do that earned me the ticket that cost me hundreds of dollars and hours of grief later on? Did I violate no law but thumbed my nose at a social more that isolated me from the people I would need later? Did I take the last muffin without enough consideration as to whether you were saving it for someone else? Was that concert really more important than that class? Most importantly, if I had the chance to go back and do it again, have I sufficiently learned my lesson enough to do differently the second time around?

Yeah, I think about these things alot and it scares me. I have made ALOT of bad decisions. As my friend said to me the other day, "Am I paying today for transgressions I made twenty years ago?" Perhaps.

But here is my defense.

I have no recourse to change the past. What I can do is make right on the present and strive to be a better me tomorrow. Because, let's be honest- right now, I kinda suck. Krishnamurti said the awakening of intelligence is knowing your limitations. My uncle said that "If I learn from half my mistakes, I will be a wise man." So today I will find strength in the very fact that being aware of my flaws makes me a better person today-so long as I aim to do something about them. That, is the key.

I am fortunate to have a handful of friends who are not afraid to call me out on my bullshit, and who are secure enough to take it when I do the same. I have one or two who, through long late night phone calls or text messaging conversations, help me by holding themselves up to the same unwaveringly honest light and talking long through the night on all that our flaws reveal about ourselves, our upbringing, our mental states and our environments.

"This guy called me a dick today at Walmart. Oh my God, am I a dick?"

"Yeah, bro. You kinda are. I mean, I love ya and all, but you do come across quite dickish alot."

"I don't mean to be."

"C'mon man. Yeah you do. You revel in it."

"You think so?"

"Absolutely."

"Why do you think that? Do you think I'm a dick?"

"Sometimes. But I understand why you're a dick. Hey, I'm a dick too. And to be truthful, I enjoy being a dick probably more than you do sometimes."

"Well, why do you think it is that we so enjoy being such dicks all the time? I mean, I don't think it's really helping our cause."

"I don't know. But we seriously need to tone down the overt dickishness in our day-to-day actions."

"No shit. Do you think that's why God is smiting us all the time?"

"No, I think God smotes us all the time because God is a dick."

"So aren't we then acting in God's image by being dicks?"

"Yes, but unfortunately, we aren't technically allowed to just go around smiting other people."

"I know. It's really unfair. It'd be cool though if we could. I would totally have a list. If I could smote people tomorrow, I already know who I would smote."

"See? That's exactly why you're a dick. What I need to figure out now is why I keep getting smote."

"Why? Ten minutes ago, you called God a dick. You're coming down on my ass for hypothetically wanting to smote people and you called God a dick. I don't really think you have a lot of room to talk. "

"True. True."

I am lucky that have friends who understand my irreverence and are open enough to have these discussions and I like that about myself that I allow myself to break down my actions and intentions to try and understand why I do the stupid things I do. I like it about myself that I am willing to ask myself these hard questions and try to address these things on a regular basis. I sincerely hope you have that same willingness and ability to hold yourself under the microscope and diagnose your own flaws and then, have the same wonderful circle of friends who are honest enough with themselves and others to be able to hold up the mirror as well.

I am a deeply flawed person who has made a lot of bad decisions in my lifetime and somehow how, I feel much better today for saying that.