C.G.Ayling

Category: General

General Topics

  • on Doing Well

    There is so much happiness to be found through the presence of our children.  I’m a fortunate man to have been been blessed with four such sources of wonder.

    Blessed…

    Blessed is such a difficult concept to comprehend.  If we are blessed, who are we blessed by?  Life is a gift.  I know that beyond any doubt, however I have no knowledge as to its source.  Life isn’t a gift from some all powerful entity, I know that as well – for many reasons I won’t raise now as this post isn’t about dogma.  {Perhaps another time, or perhaps I’ve already touched on it elsewhere in my posted thoughts.}

    So, if we aren’t blessed by some divine entity, then by what are we blessed?

    By our children…

    They are each unique.  They are each wonderful.  They are each frustrating in how they are capable of so much more than their efforts or their insecurities indicate.  Some children take a lot longer to realize how their own actions shape them for the future.  As their parents it is very difficult not to fall into the traps set by a system in which the social hierarchy is based on monetary wealth and inherited acclaim.

    We desperately want our children to do well, but in the context of current times doing well doesn’t mean “do good things“, it means “make a lot of money“.  What a sad state of affairs that two of the most prevalent meanings of “do well” are so mutually exclusive.

    I hope your children do well, by themselves and also by others.  I hope they seek and find happiness, and in their quest they bring happiness to others.  I hope they experience compassion, and freely grant it to others.  I hope they feel your love, and learn to love well.

    After all, aren’t happiness, compassion and love the source of themselves?

    Here’s a final chain of thought to take away.  This isn’t a chain to bind, it is a chain to help set you free.

    Our children are the only things we truly create, for without us they could not be.  Our most profound blessings are our children.  We create our own blessings.

  • on Tricks, with Time

    The most fundamental reward of love given, is how often love is returned.

    I wonder why it takes us so long to learn lessons like this?  Such are the lessons of life, simple lessons some seem destined never to learn at all.  Sadly I think this lack of learning of life’s most fundamental lessons is more widespread now than it ever has been before.

    Why? Because of tricks played with time…

    First, we are tricked into thinking we have no time.  Then we’re tricked into selling what little time we do have, for inadequate reward.  Then, because of the inadequate rewards granted by the second trick, we’re tricked again into taking precious time from those we love and literally giving still more of it to corporations that simply do not care.  We’re tricked into leading such ridiculously “busy” lives we find we lack time to think about the things that really matter.

    Those things we’re tricked into believing we don’t have time to think about aren’t really things at all… they’re people, and living beings, and life, and love, and liberty, and happiness, and truth, and so much more.  They’re the essential things that make life worth living.  Unfortunately not one of them is something which the money we get in inadequate exchange for our precious time will ever allow us to buy.

    Everyone should know the true reward of love given is love returned.  If you’re reading my blog, or my books, or my tweets you already know that without needing anyone to tell you.  You know beyond any doubt that love’s reward is love’s return.

    Now I ask you this question.  What is the reward of money?

    The answer is simple – the reward of money exchanged, is things.

    Too bad those tangible things we receive in exchange for money aren’t any of the things that make life worth living.  Why?  Because only love buys those.

    Perhaps the skeptics might gleefully ask, “But what is the reward of money retained?”  I have an answer for that as well.  It is a hoard. Now there’s a fascinating word – hoard.  Look it up to refresh or fix its meaning in your mind – I think you’ll find hoards are generally rather selfish things. {Generally…}

  • on Intuition

    We spend years learning to suppress our instincts, then more years teaching our children to suppress theirs. Why do we do things we regret?

    Many scientists say we have “intuitions” all the time, however since they are usually wrong and we don’t like admitting we’re wrong even to ourselves, we forget them. They believe that only occasionally are our intuitions proven correct, therefore when that happens we tend to remember and emphasize them.

    I say nonsense.

    I don’t have intuitions often, but when I do I am always very very aware of them, and they are virtually never wrong. Indeed, I think they are never wrong, though sometimes I cannot know whether they would prove true as I listen to my gut and either get out whatever situation invoked them, or entirely avoid whatever it was that raised the hackles on the back of my neck. Unfortunately I sometimes ignore my intuition, which is when regret comes into play.  In an attempt to understand what caused them, I also tend to analyze them afterwards. Seldom do I find definitive answers.

    What do you think? Is intuition arcane nonsense we are better served without, or do we have senses other than the scientifically defined five?

    Personally, I’m inclined toward the latter.  Oh, and yes – I did use the plural, “senses“, not the singular “sixth“.

    We like to simplify things because doing so lends itself to easy understanding. But things are seldom as simple as we make them seem…

  • on Miracles

    It strikes me that most women are fascinated by a baby’s feet.  Women and men are different.  Me?  I’m fascinated by a baby’s hands.  They bring home how miraculous life is.  Perfect little hands, with perfect little fingers, tendons, muscles, and bones.  Tiny little functional replicas of our own.

    With everything that can go wrong, if that a single child in a million is born perfect isn’t a miracle I simply don’t know what is.  Miracles are everywhere, we only need look at any form of life to see them.

  • on Nature’s Lessons

    It has always fascinated me how nurturing little girls are. Playing at being mothers is a skill nobody teaches them, they simply have it. Then they lose that skill about age ten or eleven, or shortly before puberty, and take a dozen years to get it back. Nature is a strange, mysterious, wonderful thing. It teaches us skills we don’t know we have, lets us forget them, to eventually relearn them anew. I wonder if, when the second lesson comes, we learn it as well as nature taught us first time around?

    As for men? Well I’m fifty-six and only {re-}learning to be nurturing now. That lesson feels familiar, somehow.

  • on Ill-Will

    I recently learnt someone I truly despised had died. Many thoughts ran through my mind at this news, not least of which was how we should bear the deceased no ill-will.

    Ill-will…

    Hatred is an emotion that grasps us in a cruel, yet clever grip. It convinces us we are righteous, that it matters, and that we should embrace and sustain it. It twists us until we think that something so wrong as hatred, is somehow something right. Hatred breeds, with the foremost of its offspring being intolerance and spite. Hatred hides in plain sight, wearing its many guises well. Yet once we recognize it those clever concealments soon fall away. You’ll find hatred and its progeny everywhere, from sporting events to religious teachings to political rallies to virulent atheism and most places between.

    Ill-will is everywhere, though it serves nobody well.

    Back to the person who recently died…

    How strange to bear another ill-will right up until the time of their demise, then feel our hatred morph into pity.

    Pity strikes me as a far better emotion than its inverse, from which it sometimes springs. Indeed pity might be kin to compassion, an emotion I hold in high esteem.

    Ill-will takes too much energy to hold as tight as we do. Compassion takes no energy at all, indeed it gives it back.  Release ill-will, and embrace compassion. I think you’ll be relieved when you do. I know I am.

  • on Matters

    Everything I write, is written because it matters. This is true for my books, poems, blog posts, texts, tweets, beliefs, and emails. It all matters to me, the question is what matters to you?

    Do truth, integrity, compassion, understanding, and love matter to you as much as they do to me? Or are those just arcane concepts people wrap with words, but not with thoughts?

    An interesting idea that receives a great deal of attention in literature is the concept of doing wrong for the right reasons. I like interesting concepts because they allow me to weigh them in the balance scales within my mind. I wonder if you have similar scales within yours? You know, those two opposing voices that argue the merits of everything you encounter? Those voices are your inner scale of justice, and they aren’t blind.

    Doing wrong for the right reasons… Is it okay to do something morally repugnant if the end result seems attractive?  Is it okay to do something wrong to get something right? Is it okay to be a little bad to ensure something good?  Let us investigate this by considering three examples.

    Scenarios

    1. You haven’t studied, it is crunch time, and you’re about to fail your final exams. If you fail, your parents will have to pay money they don’t have for you to redo the semester or you’ll have to drop out and take a minimum wage job.  Is it okay to cheat?
    2. Military Intelligence has caught a suspected terrorist, they believe a brutal attack is imminent, but the suspect isn’t talking. Is it okay to torture the suspect?
    3. You know your boss is a liar who has been defrauding the company with something he shrugs off as “creative accounting”, but he promised you a raise if you remain silent, and without the raise you can’t afford to pay your rent. Is it okay to keep quiet?

    Conclusions

    1. It isn’t okay to cheat.
    2. It isn’t okay to torture anyone, for any reason, ever.

    Yes, those little voices in our head can come up with some pretty convincing arguments to justify something we know is wrong.  Indeed, we are able to justify almost anything. However the thing about justifications is that if a matter is truly just, there is never a need to justify it.

    Oh, and lest you think I forgot the conclusion to the third scenario, I didn’t. In actuality that third scenario is the purpose of this entire post.

    It is not okay to keep quiet when you know someone is a liar, a cheater, a thief and worse. Donald Trump is a liar, that isn’t an opinion it is an irrefutable fact. He has  cheated countless people by refusing to pay them. He claims to be billionaire who, by his own admission, does not pay Federal tax.  Your silence in the upcoming election is not okay. Your failure to vote in order to ensure this repugnant lying bigot is kept out of the highest office in the United States is not okay – no matter how you try and justify it to yourself.

    So you’re a dedicated, lifelong Republican?  Who cares? Conformity is the ultimate abdication of personal responsibility.  Just. Don’t. Do. It.

     

  • on Abuse

    Love is a powerful thing.

    Indeed, it is powerful enough to overcome abuse.

    I struggle with that. I don’t understand how anyone can love someone who deliberately injures them, either emotionally or physically. For me this is one of those things it is incredibly difficult to grasp.

    It is also one of those things in which we tend to blame the victims by saying or thinking they choose to remain in an abusive relationship when they should move on. I wonder if they realize they have a choice? If they don’t realize they do, then I’m inclined to think they don’t. If they think they have no choice and we blame them for remaining, instead of showing them they do, then I wonder if we’re adding to their abuse?

    I think we are.

  • on Busy

    We live in a busy world full of things we simply must do.

    But must we?

    I smile as I write that.  Things are not people, they are just things and things don’t care whether they get done or not.  On the other hand people do care.  Yes, many of the things we do, we do for others, but perhaps the others we do them for might prefer the time we spend doing those things be spent on them.

    A parents work is never done…

    You know, I think the world would be a much worse place if parents ever began to feel they have done enough for their children.  However that “enough” relates to giving our children the skills to succeed and the love to feel secure.  It doesn’t mean we give them the clothes off our backs because they lack the ability to get their own once they are grown. That said, we most likely will anyway…

    Some things should change, and some things should not.

  • on Tough Love

    I recently posted this thought on Twitter.

    I wonder why we encourage our children to toughness, not tenderness?

    In loving relationships between adults practicing “tough love” will quickly end such relationships.  With that thought in mind I’m tempted to ask the question “Why is being tough toward our children acceptable?”

    I’m tempted to ask, but instead I’ll explain why I think we tend toward being tough on our children.

    Because we love them and we want them to be successful?

    It sounds so simple, doesn’t it? We think showing our children a hard hand or heart will somehow strengthen them and prepare them for a hard world. But will it? Or will it merely show them how to harden their own hearts?

    The older I get the more I change my view toward the later way of thinking. After the physical necessities of life, the things our children most need from us are love, compassion, and understanding. Perhaps not in that order, but definitely all three of those difficult to define, intangible, yet absolutely crucial emotional elements.

    How does “tough love” fit into any of those elements?

    Should we teach our children discipline? In some ways we must. However, must is not necessarily the same as should.

    The ways in which we must, and should, teach our children discipline are in regard to the physical necessities of life. We must teach them not to be greedy, not only because greed is immoral, but also because greed is unhealthy. If evil has a more accurate name, that name is greed.

    On the emotional scale, we must teach our children to be cautious. We must teach them to be wary. We must teach them to listen to their instincts. We must teach them to always question, most especially the things they are told they may not question.

    And then there is the question of when we should teach our children discipline in the matters of love, compassion, and understanding. I’m sure if I wrack my brain I can contrive some circumstance in which we should discipline our children to not love, to not be compassionate, or to not be understanding. Perhaps I could, however I suspect those circumstances would be precisely as I’ve already described them – contrived.

    Perhaps instead of teaching our children discipline in the emotional elements of life we should teach them to be indiscriminate in the depth of those emotional constructs?

    Unfortunately, in this shallow world where material possessions have assumed paramount importance I don’t know how to begin that lesson. How can I, in good conscience, teach my children to be generous toward those who exhibit greed? I cannot, however I can teach them to not take more than their share, and I try to do that every day.

    Perhaps the essence of tough love is teaching our children to deny themselves the material desires so many mistake for needs?

    Perhaps… is such a good word.