Stephen C. Sanders January 3, 9:25am
Engines get rebuild after say 100,000 miles or extreme damage, so why not rebuild our most prized possession, ourselves.
In many ways my life from my earliest memories has been a journey akin to what early navigators must have experienced as they set out in their windblown sailing ships in search of new lands and riches. From my earliest years, I was raised to understand that I was unique in that my family were holocaust survivors. While perhaps many children were raised to trust society, institutions and their elders, I was raised to question, think critically and look for the thing that simply felt wrong. The questions I’m left with today is, what happens when I find the flaws?
Am I expected to repair the flawed system? Do I need to document the problem in my audit or report? For every single flaw that I find in today’s society, what is my role? We all take part in this grand dance that we preform on our only little wing of the world-wide stage. Today, more than ever, we all take part in this complex line dance, where most of us are simply watching what the people in front of us are doing and carefully copy their movements. When we do this, we fit in, when we fail, we know that we must try harder. Yet what does the course look like to those who realize that their thoughts and actions will never fit in?
We grow up thinking, that we don’t want what others want. We develop our own unique perspective on what it means to set a goal and choose a path. While we do understand that we are connected with others in our family as well as society, we do not always comprehend the full meaning of phrases such as marching to the beat of your own drummer. Our uniqueness we feel is something that exists within us in great abundance, yet is not so common in others. We get labeled as trouble makers or rebels or as people who simply will not listen to reason. As we set about on our various projects and goals, we do so for some very nebulous reasons that are uniquely our own. With each and every endeavor, we choose to carefully create our own template as we trail-blaze a path to achieve our own specific goals. Is it tedious, is it time consuming, maybe maybe not, however it’s all we really know.
All these thoughts and so many more are what come to mind as those who do things, as I do things are caught looking at life from the sidelines thinking; how would I go about this, if I were really trying to accomplish the things that others do, and continue to do. So, as perhaps my readers have begun to accept, before we can attempt to build brand new perspectives for our 2023 new self we must first slowly and tediously tear down the previous versions of ourselves, they may have even become obsolete. As we go about this we will find many things we wish to keep and other things we deliberately choose to upgrade. We will tell us ourselves, this characteristic in others is bad, but on me it looks good! Or i this feature of mine is actually a flaw, but in my philosophical outlook, this is actually a beneficial feature?
Deciding what to keep as opposed to what to scrap, will be one of the huge challenges of our 2023 rebuild. Will will begin to listen to that voice that tells us that we really should not be pushing so hard to accomplish this specific goal? Would we be better off accepting complacency in this particular area of life which we always believed we should be using all our skills and resources to fight against? As we sit there staring at the complexity of our psycho-social engine, will we simply dis-engage believing the task a head is way too complex?
The answers are out there for us to discover. There are thousands upon thousands of self-help books and premixed solutions out there for us to use guidelines. Yet why would we even contemplate seeking guidance elsewhere? These people, these voices, these thoughts, words, ideas- do not have our life engines in their hands. The innerspring mechanisms that make us tick are unknown to them, right? How can they understand the complexity of our desires, hopes and goals? Is it possible for any single soul to attempt to aid, assist or rescue any single soul other than themselves? Will our seekings ever point us in the direction of some sort of universal cookie cutting tool, that will repair whatever it is that may be flawed in us in the first place?
With all these questions, still remaining unanswered, we must somehow reel in our universal outlook to finally realize that not everything that works for you, will work for me. While you may have a fully complete set of tools that will always be readily available in the exact spot where you left them the last time you needed them; I will always have to firstly hunt down my own set of tools and will often need to repurchase something I already own, merely because all of my belongings are in such a state of chaos and disarray. I tell myself it’s always going to be like this and that it will never change, yet I also know that this will likely be the starting point of the day one of my 2023 soul rebuild.
Goal: Day one:
1) Get the tools I need to start my rebuild.
2) Remove and repair or replace the uppermost funnel or gasket, which is impeding airflow of fresh ideas into the main combustion chamber.
3) Make sure that there are no kinks or leaks in the main fuel line of belief that it can be done, leading from your psyche into every nook and cranny of your brain where the visions of your future happiness take form. Untwist, repair or splice in more strait-away sections of this important fuel line as needed.
4) Test your newly rebuilt psycho-social engine in three ways to make sure it’s functioning properly:
A) Contact at least one of the three people who are thinking about right now.
B) Set up a social gathering that includes at least two other people for today, tomorrow or this week.
C) Accomplish at least three of the things that you are telling yourself that you must do today and check them off the list that you have just made in your mind.
D) Check in with yourself tomorrow to start another section of your your 2023 rebuild.
E) Continue to use your inner dialogue as a means to educate others, when in truth you are actually focusing on your own growth.
Stephen C. Sanders January 3, 9:25am
