Young people don’t have the wisdom to live life well and the elderly have the wisdom to live life well but not enough time to live life with it. This book should give you, the young, some wisdom to live life well while you have time and energy left to use it.
First thing to know is that adults are just old children. Adults don’t have all the answers magically somehow. They struggle and fail a lot until they figure out how to get through things.
DEDICATED TO MY CHILDREN
Today is May 11, 2016 and I am missing you, my children dearly. I’m 31 and feeling quite miserable. I do not want to see you have to relive my misery or the many billions of others that have had to live due to two things; Life being cruel and not being taught important things about life that can make it a bit less terrible and if you are lucky, amazingly happy instead.
My parents did their best with the knowledge and teachings they were given in their childhood and with the wisdom and experience they gained through living a rough life with periods of happy sprinkled into it. My entire has been a lot of good, bad, and horrifying. Some were stretches of time and some were very small moments in time and everything in-between.
This book and other content associated with it is intended to help you avoid problems before they happen, get through problems that you are in, and live life after problems have happened in your life. You will likely not care about much of this until it is far too late like I did, my parents did, and may generations before them have. Sometimes you just end up learning your lessons the old fashion way by not paying attention to teachings and doing things your own way anyway. It just happens and when it does, that is perfectly normal. You are human and are fallible like everyone that has ever come before you has been.
Even in this tiny portion of writing you should learn some small bits of what life is all about. This book and content associated with it will not all make sense the first time or maybe even the hundredth time you read it and may only make sense until it is too late. Not everything about life is in here either. Some of it you will have to learn on your own and I am sorry that I was not able to prevent you that pain and frustration. Some of the things you won’t agree with and that is also acceptable. You are your own person and not everything works for everyone. Hopefully there will be enough versions for most subjects and topics to fit your way of life. Not everything can fit in this book and associated content either. Some things are just uncharted territory but if you hunt around you can most likely find what you need to know in life. People have been around for a very long time before you, I, and my parents have been. Billions of people have had lifetimes of problems to gain wisdom through experience from. Seek it out if you can’t find it here.
Knowing what to do, doing the things you know are right to do, and understanding why things are the way they are does not remove unhappiness or make life amazing and perfect. The only things that it does is remove some stress and give you a better chance at happiness and contentment. Pain and tragedy still will come at times and there is nothing you can do about it except understand as much as you can about it and accept it as real and unmoveable. Scars will form and after a while you will notice them less and less.
The journey through life is a very bumpy ride. This journey through time will be made with many other people that all are fallible and have their own weaknesses in character and knowledge just as you do.
Understanding can help you cope with reality. Understanding what is, what is coming next, why and how things happen, can make living life a lot less stressful. Fear and stress can be reduced a fair amount by reducing what is unknown to you.
Understanding however does not remove all stress and frustration from life. It only allows you to mitigate it and get the best chance of success and happiness out of life.
“Having a plan doesn’t mean always having control.” “Hope for the best, expect the worst.” You can make great plans if you have a good understanding of a scenario, but that does not mean you have full control of the outcome. In the end, you do your best with the hope of an ideal outcome, and accept the outcome regardless of if it is the best or worst outcome.
It may appear that the people around you happy and succeeding at life and have a lack of problems and fears that you seem to have a great deal of. This isn’t as true as you may think it is.
People have private and public problems. Many people also edit what they allow people to see of themselves. They may have a great deal of fear, depression, and problems that they are not willing to communicate with their words, facial expressions, body language, or actions.
If you judge your insides based on other people’s outsides, you will be making a very bad evaluation of what actually is in reality. Your insides being your thoughts, feelings, and private life, while their outsides being what they are willing to let you know about.
Ideals are great, reality always wins, and perceptions create people’s reality.
Ideals would be the things that we think logically should happen based on things such as virtues, personal beliefs, what society tends to believe is correct to do, what is legal, etc.
Reality however operates on a great deal of other less reasonable things such as irrationality, emotion, differing moral codes, not being able to fight legal battles effectively, and human fallibility in general.
What people perceive in their environments and live’s becomes the reality they feel they understand and how they make decisions while navigating through life.
All humans are fallible. Nobody is an exception. Not you, your family, or me. We have a lot of weaknesses that cause problems. Stress, lack of knowledge, lack of experience, lack of sleep, medical issues, different brain wirings due to DNA, and various other random things that can be quite impossible to avoid. Then you have morality, empathy, emotional, personality, and other various modes of operation differences to contend with.
It is difficult to avoid “becoming your parents”. At least in terms of certain personality traits. You can only know what you can perceive and if all you perceive is your parents and people at school, you are going to absorb those traits.
Parents are people too, with their own hopes, dreams, regrets, problems, and past. They didn’t just suddenly become your parents or old at some point. They got there the same way you will. By living life and experiencing the craziness it has in store for every human.
You learn a lot about relationships such as love, conflict resolution, what is expected in a relationship, and more from your parents. If you only have a mom and dad isn’t around, you can’t absorb the male role model traits. If you only have a dad around, you aren’t going to absorb the female role model traits.
If your parents have terrible relationship traits and in general are not good role models, you are going to absorb bad traits and likely exhibit them when you become an adult and have a relationship of your own.
A person can try to avoid things their parents did that were not what they thought should happen, but a lot of times it is pretty difficult to do. It’s definitely worth trying to become the best you that you can be, but knowing that you are human and that this phenomenon happens can make it a lot less confusing why you are having a difficult time.
This topic isn’t intended to insult your parents. Your parents did the best they could with the knowledge and habits that were passed onto them from their parents and their parents parents, and so on and so forth.
There are so many reasons parents do what they do and in the end, you can only do your best from what you have learned and learn more so that you can be the best you that you can be for yourself, your romantic partner, and children, if you so choose to have them.
Many times if a person was abused they will have a chance of abusing their children as well. That isn’t always the case. Some people will abuse their children even if they were not themselves abused.
It is likely that a person will do what they know how to do and have experienced as normal. Other times, it is just because the person has a personal problem of their own.
Adults are just old children. You might think as a child, teenager, or young adult that at some point you will somehow become a real adult that is fully matured. That doesn’t happen.
There will be 80 yr olds that act immature and do things like gossip, start rumors, physically push each other and start fights, be kind to your face and stab you in the back when you’re not around.
Thinking adults have all the answers may certainly disappoint you when you see that it is definitely not true. Knowing the truth of the subject however, will give you more confidence and allow you to do better in life.
As children the bullies are casual and obvious with their actions and easy to see. They will push you down, call you names, and may beat you up.
As adults the bullies are formal and subtle with their actions and can be hidden from view. They bullying changes to things like using dirty legal tactics, insulted in the media, and murdered.
The difference comes from intensity of motivations, level of power, less energy, and much greater consequences. This leads to much more brutal actions and a more subtle and formal approach.
The older you get, the more experiences you have that can be quite brutal and painful. This gives you a bit of a mental callous and desensitizes you a small bit each time.
Experience gives you an idea of what to expect the next time, reduce problems, get the most out of the next time, and let you know if you just shouldn’t do it again.
Wisdom is important knowledge you can gather by learning from others that have had experiences or by having the experiences yourself. There are many pieces of wisdom you will want to learn from a source instead of learning it through experience.
Your decisions, your outcomes. When you make decision, you definitely have an outcome that depended on that decision. Sometimes the outcomes live with you for the rest of your life and the wisdom you have gained from the experience won’t help you change the outcome or prevent it from happening in the first place.
You’d want to have wisdom to prevent things such as getting a deadly incurable STD, blowing your arm off, going to prison, getting fired, destroying your marriage, losing your family, dying from a preventable accident, or wasting a majority of your life.
MEANING AND PURPOSE OF LIFE
What is the purpose of life? What is the meaning of life? Is there more to life than I’m seeing? The feeling of being adrift, without meaning, aimless, and without purpose can be quite frustrating, disturbing, and at times quite depressing.
The meaning of life is the pursuit of happiness. That’s a meaning that seems to make a lot of sense. Basically, optimize the value of your life.
You likely can’t find a time or person that would have made a decision to do something that they did not feel was the best thing to do at that time with the information they had to work with, even if the decision is something they later regret.
All of reality tends to optimize over time even if it looks like chaos is ruling everything. Violence, greed, and other negative things are lowered as time goes on when looking at time overall.
Positive things are increased as time goes on. There will be spikes of negative, spans of negative, but in the end, the negative and chaos is reduced, and the positive and balance wins out.
Dust settles, particles and pieces come together to form a whole, concepts come together to form bigger and more useful concepts, companies conglomerate, people unionize, etc. etc.
The declaration of independence of the USA contains the phrase, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
The Christian Bible says that people are to do things that glorify God. Doing virtuous things that make us happy seems like it does just that.
There are many ways to pursue happiness, while many are virtuous, many are most certainly not. Some people look for happiness through rape, murder, and do other actions that are detrimental to other people’s lives. Other people get happiness from virtuous acts like helping the less fortunate people in life.
Superficial vs Personable Groups – Not everyone will find virtuous happiness from the same types of things. Two groups are superficial and personable.
Superficial ways can be through accomplishments such as winning an award or achieving a certain level of expertise such as being a professional sports player or professional actor.
Personable ways can be having a good marriage, kids, and do something that benefits humanity in some way.
Most people will pick some from each group. Usually however things tend to lean one way or another for a person. Some people don’t get anything out of winning awards while other people don’t get anything out of romantic relationships or having children. Everyone finds happiness in their own way, and that is perfectly acceptable.
Being happy in a virtuous way and avoiding the things that are detrimental that make us happy, will give you the optimal way to be happy with the least amount of downsides for yourself and other people you interact with in life.
Individual vs Social Hobbies and Interests – There are also two other groups of happiness to consider. Individual and social hobbies and interests. Individual activities such as doing puzzles, writing, playing video games, sewing, etc. Social activities such as playing pool, bowling, mini-golf, playing cards, etc.
Many times there are activities that can be both individual and social. These activities are excellent opportunities to go forge new friendships with people that have similar interests that would otherwise just be strangers.
If you are looking to find other people with similar interests and not hobbies, you can find clubs and organizations that are formed around those interests.
Addictions – There are many things however that are not necessarily virtuous that make people happy but also are not detrimental to other people. Sometimes when those activities are done to excess it will start to affect people you are connected to. Things like excessive substance abuse, gambling, or other addictions.
Addiction in this context can be defined as continuing to indulge in a habit to the extent it is having detrimental and adverse consequences to yourself and those you are connected to in life.
The above is the start of a book I am writing with the main purpose being to help guide my children through life with helpful information that should help them avoid problems, get through problems, and after problems they might encounter in life. The information is intended to give them a well informed view of reality and life in a dynamic way. Other people seem to be helped with the information I have gathered and so will be making this available to everyone as well. Some articles on www.ConceptHut.com already have been written that will be included in the book. Hundreds of pages of the book will be located there. The final book will be available in ebook and paperback/hardback formats.
Please take a look around the website at what is already available, ask for topics that you think should be included in the book, and sign up to be notified about when new articles are posted and when the book will be available in complete form.