Desires...the crutch of living

Take a moment...think of the hardest substances known to man. (Steel, Titanium, Iron, Concrete etc).  Now think of your greatest desires...between your desires and these substances, which ones are harder to break?

For some bizarre reason, as I went to bed last night, the word desire popped into my head and never left me all night long.  I found myself dreaming of things that people have had a desire to have in their lives. To make it simple, I found myself walking around in a futuristic Las Vegas Convention Center.  Surrounded by all of the latest and greatest gadgets, gizmos and what-nots.  As I walk along each aisle, I see things that spark a fire in my "desire furnace".  If you think about it, furnace is the proper descriptive word because a person gets hotter and hotter as they add more desire to their life.

Since everyone is different, I can not assume that I know the real desires of everyone, but I can name a few that the majority of all of us have in common:  Love, health, wealth.  Let's look at these just a little closer:

• Love - The greatest desire of them all.  It has the power to make men doing crazy things, to lead countries to wars and cause people to kill someone when that Love is taken away. Most people will say that taking another person's life is not possible, but if someone caused the death of your love(r), that pain can lead you to kill.  If you doubt it, then look at the law shows and various court cases that mention "A Crime of Passion"...you can't have passion without love!
• Health - Everyone desires health, even the blind man who is deaf and trapped in a wheelchair or hospital bed, wants to stay alive.  People will spend thousands of dollars to be healthy, instead of being happy.  People put their bodies through machines, surgeries, chemicals and endless hours of exercise and diets.  Staying healthy has become a second full time job to many people.  The odd thing...the healthy die young and the junk food eaters die old. (It has to do with the amount of preservatives in the junk food, our organs are preserved from the inside out!)  Do what you want for happiness in your life.
• Wealth - The all mighty currency is the biggest common desire for everyone.  The richest people in the world live to spend, while the poor spend to live.  I remember a saying, "It is easier for a rich man to pass through the eye of a needle than to get into the kingdom of heaven".  That should tell us all something, that the pursuit of wealth can corrupt the soul.  Since you can't take it with you, why have all of it while you are here...sounds like the Star Trek civilization is the proper way to go...no money, everyone does things to better themselves and society.

I have desires for love, health and wealth, but I try my best to keep those desires in check because I rather live happy than in the constant pursuit of desires.  If you are always in the pursuit of desires, then life just seems to slip through your fingers.  We are not here that long and it seems like many people are in a race to the finish.  It's a competition to be "a big boy with big boy toys".  Those toys do bring happiness...while they are new, in style or the fad...but soon will gather dust and dirt like every toy we had when we were kids.

Drive by your neighborhood elementary school and see how happy all of the little kids are to be there.  Their lives at that time are not full of desires, other than recess,candy, holidays, games, candy and summertime.  They have no worries other than being picked on by the class bully, or what icky food is going to be served for lunch.  It's only when they get older and we adults start filling their heads with desires which quickly replaces the cute little dreams of what they want to be.

On average, each person has at least 10 unique desires that become the foundation of the pile.  As time goes on, smaller desires are placed on top of the pile and the pile grows higher and higher.  As with any large mass, you need a support structure to maintain that pile from falling.  This is when you start to find other things to support that pile...your crutches.  You tell yourself that you can hold off on "this" to get "that", which will lead to "those".  "Those" is a stepping stone to "them" and will lead to "there".  So you want "this" but you end up with "that, those, them" when all along "this" has fallen further down the pile of desires.  As it falls, you realize that you need more support, in comes another crutch.

If you have ever hurt your leg and needed to be on crutches to get around, you know the pain and the fear associated with making one wrong move on those crutches.  We have no choice but to use the crutch because we want to heal and remove the pain.  Once the pain is gone, the crutch is not thrown away, but put away in the closet because we think it will be needed again.

It is fine to have desires in your life, just make sure that you can manage those desires, otherwise you will live your life on crutches.  If you find that your life is full of crutches already, take the time to evaluate where you are at this time in your life.  Do you really need "this", can you settle for "that"...before you know it, you have removed "those" from the pile and made it a little easier to achieve "this" desire.

 

Nightmare...

I awake this morning feeling very disturbed from a series of dreams I had last night.  Each time I woke up, I would say "WTF" and hope to dream of something more pleasant, but I didn't.  This is my attempt at trying to remember some of the things I seen in the dream:

I was a network administrator given the task of networking for the first time a large complex of building and structures for a new development that seemed to stretch for several square miles.  Working in the temporary Data Center with the engineers and subcontractors on the physical layout of the wiring schema.  From the blueprints that I was viewing, I knew where I would have to make connections, run trays, install wires under raised floors and use the proper shielded cables.  Everything seemed to be in order and the project moved along on time and on budget.

At one point I needed to go out to an area under construction and resolve an issue with my team on the placement of wires.  As I approached the area, I noticed a few signs around the area that just had names shown with numbers on the signs as well.  I approached the OK-95, NY-01 and NO-05 area to talk about the placement of network cables.  I could see three fellow team members that appeared to be disturbed and refused to work in the area.  I walked up to the members and had a conversation with them but there was no audio of the discussion.  I knew that something was preventing them from doing their job and I had to resolve the issue.

I ended my discussion with the three members and walked all three out of the construction area and accepted their resignations.  In order to get the job completed, I had to find replacements.  I was not successful at finding replacements and had to work on the area myself.  As I gathered my tools, I noticed a reflection in a window of the construction area.  The reflection reminded me of something but at the time, I did not pay attention.  I was more concerned with completing the task at hand.

With blueprints in hand and my tools over my shoulder, started down the path to the work site.  At this point, many days had gone by because there was now a few more structures being built.  But there was something very odd about these various structures along the path...nobody was working on them but I could tell them were not done.  None of the structures appeared to be complete, however the blueprints were saying that they were complete.  I walked through areas: CC-40 through CC-45, PH-41, OK-95, CHS-95 and then finally arrived at HT-10.  As I walked through the areas, a feeling was coming over me or absolute dispair, anger, pain and sadness...yet I still did not know what it was I was walking through.

I arrived to my distination and completed my task of wiring for the network.  With all of my tools in my hands and a sense of happiness for being done, I quickly headed back to the Data Center.  As I approached the Center, I noticed a sign indicating that the data center was moved to it's new location up the hill.  I headed up the hill and found the data center with nobody around.  I walked in and located my new office.  As I was setting up my office, a few people walked by and they just looked at me with tears in their eyes.  I tried to find out what was wrong but they quickly left...matter of fact, everyone was leaving.  I just could not understand.

As I placed personal items around my new office, I again noticed a reflection in the window, but this time, I did not ignore the reflection.  I turned to the window and looked out over the area down the hill from the Data Center.  To my shock and horror, I finally noticed in full detail what I had just finish networking.  It was the largest museum in the world...but it was no normal museum, it was a musuem of death and destruction. As I looked in total horror I realized what those coded signs represented around the area:  Concentration Camps (CC), Pearl Harbor(PH), Oklahoma City(OK), Columbine High School(CHS), New York(NY), New Orleans(NO) and Haiti(HT).  Each area was a complete recreation of the carnage and chaos of those locations.  But there were other areas in the distance as far as the eye could see, it seemed to go on forever.

Standing there in total shock, I looked to the left of the area to see a very large sign that read "Coming Soon" with construction workers standing under the sign, reading newspapers and drawing blueprints.

I never wanted to dream a dream like that ever again!!!!

Regrets of life or life with regrets...

I was once told that if you reach the end of your life and the things that you think of the most is regrets, then there is a good chance that you really did not live.  I can only assume that in some form or fashion, everyone has something that they regret in their past or present.

Do I have regrets?  Yes, I have plenty of regrets and it hurts to think about them so much.  Do I think that I have reached the end of my life?  No, because I have no clue what the future holds for me, and there is no chance that I would do something stupid to shorten my life.  So why am I thinking about the regrets of my life?  If I knew the answer to that questiion, I guess I would be laying in bed right now instead of typing my thoughts into this computer.

To be fair to those that may read this posting, I am not going to give details because I don't regret the "life experiences", but I may regret the end results of those experiences.  I know that I have specific categories that my regrets fall within and I can say that they are spiritual, love, business and friendship.  Most of my regrets span multiple categories because of the people and issues involved, but only a few deal with one category.

You will notice that I did not say family, because I do not regret my family at all, because they are my blood and I love them all equally and eternally.  There may be times when we do not speak to each for several days, weeks, months and even years; but my heart loves each and every single blood family member.

Let's start with spiritual.  There was a very special time in my life when I was a teenager and attended church regularly.  The day in which I freely walked to the alter and accepted the Lord as my savior was an amazing day in my life.  There are no words that can describe the emotions and physical feelings that I felt when the spirit of the Lord entered my soul.  But I can describe the emotions and feelings that I felt and feel for the years that I have been considered as a "back-slider".  I know the correct things to do to regain those feelings, and I pray that I have the time to sort my life out and move back in the right direction.  I know I should not wait, and the longer I wait, the longer I stay away from eternally happiness.  So there is a regret.

Regrets in and of love.  Regrets of the heart are always so painful for everyone.  What is that old saying, "it is better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all"  (or something like that).  I can understand the statement but sometimes I think it is better to have never loved, but a broken heart is so painful.  Although many will say that each time you get a broken heart, it mends and that which does not kill you, only makes you stronger.  I cannot agree with that because I have been in love for many years, but my heart still aches for the love that is portrayed in movies.  I was watching a movie earlier that I have seen several times and by the end of the movie I have tears in my eyes because I share the heartache of the actor.  Since I can feel that ache, then I assume that I have felt that love/warmth previously and now that I don't, that is why I have tears in my eyes and an ache in my heart.  Will I ever get that feeling back in my life...I don't know because all relationships are on a two-way street.  I have been on that street for many years, and at times I see a light ahead traveling towards me, but the light never seems to come to me.

Regrets in business.  This one is too easy because I don't regret leaving that job, but I do regret what that job took from me.  The stresses that I felt have impacted me mentally, physically and emotionally.  The emotional aspect triggered memories of my youth and made my mental state a major challenge.  While the emotional and mental stress kept building higher, my physical health dropped lower and lower.  Dropped so low that while returning from a waste-of-time business trip, I had a heart event on the plane at 30K feet in the air.  Upon landing, I spent 4 days in the Intensive Care Unit in Salt Lake City, UT.  Strangers all around me, and nobody at all that I can trust with my life and pain.  Doctors coming and going for one day and then being told that I need a pacemaker.  Crack my chest open and mess with my wounded heart.  I had two major emotions going through me at the same time...total anger and total fear.  I had only a matter of minutes to decide if I was going to allow a strange doctorr that I never seen before to mess with my already hurting heart.  I told them no, and requested that they contact my cardiologist back home.  Thankfully, my doctor said no and told them to patch me up and get me home.  It took a lot of strength to get on that plane to fly home.  My regret was letting work take over my life and made me do and say things I should have never done.

Regrets of friendships.  This one is unique because to me, every person that I call a friend, has earned that title from me...even though they may not see me in the same manner.  I have nothing negative to say about any of my friends, because they are each incredible in their own way.  I just regret that each has their own life and it is so hard to spend quality time with each of them as we did many years ago.  My friends have always been a great source of strength for me because it gives me the chance to be there for that friend.  I try my best to not live in the past, but the past was a much happier time for me.

I guess overall, I truly have a lot of regrets, and I regret that nearly each night as I lay in bed...those regrets begin to surface in my mind.  I work the issue of the regret through in my mind and I have to realize that there is nothing that I can do about the regret.  There is nothing to do about some of the regrets so I move those to the back of my mind and just let it float around back there and develop it's own tumorous regret.

There is one thing that I can say...with all of these regrets...at least I haven't turned to hard liquor or drugs to numb the pain of life.  I guess since I have regrets...I have lived a life.