#kelsk’s kreed

[kelskskreed]

As the post states, it begins. I enjoy talking about a great many subjects. I like to look outside the box and play devils advocate. As time goes I will post many delights of my choosing. However, if there is a particular subject you would like to discuss reach out to me. Adventures abound!

This is not a place for hate. It is for intelligent discussion. Not everyone will agree and that’s ok. It’s not to say this way or that way is correct. It is to open your mind to how others view the world around them. Maybe you will learn something of yourself. Maybe I will of myself.

-Kelsk 🍻

[kelskskreed]

While most people cling to what they’ve heard, few analyze a situation to determine facts, fewer still can accept facts that are different from their own points of view.

Who we point the finger at shows much of our perceptive abilities.

- Kelsk 🍻

[kelskskreed]

This is one of the first examples of when I became aware of the truth as a young lad. Therefore, I feel it’s pertinent that this be the first “Kreed”.

Perspective is the mighty force that guides how we act. We see the world through the windows of our own eyes. We don’t often place ourselves behind the eyes of others, nor does the average have the curiosity to know what their view is like. Upon self realization of perspective I began to look at the world differently. All is never what it seems.

Perhaps, as it happened for myself, this will be the example that leads to your own discoveries. Perhaps you have been on this adventure all along.

- Kelsk 🍻

[kelskskreed]

The wiser one becomes, the easier it is to tell the type of person before you in any given situation. People give suttle clues about themselves in everything they do.

To know when your words will fall on deaf ears is truly wise. To know when to hold back, because the one before you cannot handle what you have left to say, is wise truly.

The unspoken; the silence of the wise, the wisdom to hold ones tongue, and the foresight to move forward in the best manner.

- Kelsk 🍻

“Silence is true wisdom’s best reply.”

— Euripides, Unidentified Plays, Fragment 977

[kelskskreed]

While there is much to take from this, we must not make love so insignificant so easily.

Love is not a chance encounter. The chance encounter is more about the level of compatibility with your personality. Let’s look at the fact that people can be in great depths of love and still not have many interests in common. We can also look at the fact that opposites attract. Love itself is something that is built by choice. Someone we once loved can still be hated as time moves forward.

We can look at chance as well. Chances can be increased or decreased. You will not find someone as compatible as you should like staring at tumblr everyday. In fact, social media decreases your encounters and creates false perceptions of people. You have to take the core of your interests and go to a common place, actual or virtual, to increase your chances of encountering what you seek. Beyond that, you must actually communicate with each other about your future goals and desires.

Love is what you make of it. If you sit and ponder that there may be someone better because you have yet to encounter them, you are doing a disservice to yourself and your partner. In fact, if you are wondering such things, it is likely you are not in love in the first place. More over, you likely lusted and pressed forward. You must desire to build your love mutually. It is in this way you will be truly happy in love.

- Kelsk 🍻

“How can you say you love one person when there are ten thousand people in the world that you would love more if you ever meet them? But you’ll never meet them. All right, so we do the best we can. Granted. But we must still realize that love is just the result of a chance encounter.”

— Charles Bukowski (via qvotable)

[kelskskreed]

This can be applied to most any aspect of ones life. Whatever the mountain you must climb, you should do it for yourself. It should be for your own goal. It should be for your own view. If it isn’t, then it is wasted.

Humans are egocentric. If you climb the mountain to say, “look at me”, you will only be judged. Beyond that, it would be saddening that you climbed your mountain only to look down upon those around you.

When you reach the top and look down upon others, it should be only to help them up. For that will fill you with much more.

- Kelsk 🍻

Climb the mountain so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.

[kelskskreed]

This is an absolute truth! These days, society has whittled away at protocol for beginning relationships. This has led to many unhappy marriages.

In days past, one would spend many months dating another before moving forward to the physical side of relationships. Usually, the sex was withheld until married. In this way, you become friends before moving forward with marriage.

These days, it’s often in the first or second “date” couples begin engaging in sex. This drastically changes the dynamic of the relationship. This also would not be a problem, but people do not stick to intelligence at this point. Instead, lust takes over the rationalization of compatability. In this way, friendship is set aside.

Another issue is that society has brought sex to a point where there needs to be no bond. It’s no different than going to dinner with someone. It used to be something that was shared only with someone you had already established a relationship with and decided to marry.

What all this means, is that society forgot how to build a quality relationship. Those issues don’t have to be issues. In fact, they would not be an issue if couples would build a friendship as they moved forward as was the custom.

The key to building a good relationship is communication. You must know your partner. What do they want out of life, where are they headed, and what do they want out of you? These are things all friends know about each other. If you don’t know these things about your friends, they are in fact not friends but acquaintances. We are treating significant others as acquaintances. You would not marry an acquaintance and hope you are compatible enough. These are things society has forgotten as it shifted toward sex as foremost priority.

- Kelsk 🍻

“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

[kelskskreed]

Beyond the simplicity of this truth, look to the why.

Why are you following what everyone else is doing. Is it really what you want?

Why haven’t you asked yourself that question before? Have You been living through others?

Why is everyone else following each other in the first place? Is that really who you are too?

Why does everyone else think that’s the right direction? What’s the right direction for you?

- Kelsk 🍻

Remind yourself that you don’t have to do what everyone else is doing.

[kelskskreed]

The truth is most don’t care to hear. They will listen and perhaps tell a story of similarities, but nothing more. They will often take the conversation in their own direction after listening.

Humans are egocentric. Everyone of us, myself included. Some, however, cannot recognize when someone is reaching out. Therefore they never stop viewing things from their own perspective. This is why they cannot hear you. How they judged the conversation, chose not to hear, and moved forward is subjective.

It is up to you to determine who is hearing and reach to them. The ones that hear are the ones to hold dear.

- Kelsk 🍻

anyone can listen few can really hear

[kelskskreed]

Quality over quantity is something that is struggled with for many. Popular society is to have many “friends”.

A friend should be much deeper than what you find in popular society. Friends are people who have their own thoughts and opinions. They share common interests with you. They love you at times and hate you at times. Theirs is a bond that goes on because they are connected to you though countless hours of conversation. They will be honest to you even when you might get your feeling hurt.

What friends are not are those who would pull you down, steal from you, climb over you for their own desires, or tell you what you want to hear for fear of hurting you.

“Friendship” is the essence of any relationship. Your parents are friends that discipline, teach, and take care of you. Your spouse is a friend that you have sexual relations with and build a family with. Friends are mutual partners of one degree or another.

Finally, understand that a friend does not have to be a part of every aspect of your life. They don’t have to enjoy all things you do. They don’t have to have the same life goals as you. All they need is to be true to you and you to them.

“I don’t need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.”

— Plutarch (via thebuddhistmind)

[kelskskreed]

This is so simple yet should be so obvious. If we think we already know, we believe ourselves wise, and therefore not ignorant. That is the most ignorant.

We must always understand that we do not know everything. That we are, in fact, ignorant to one degree or another. With that wall down, we are open to receiving knowledge. With that mindset and the gaining of knowledge we become wise.

- Kelsk 🍻

“To have knowledge one must know the extent of one’s ignorance.”

— Confucius, Analects

[kelskskreed]

This is something so easy for all to get caught in. At various points in our lives we have the desire to be happier and can see a path we believe will bring us such. Yet, with forlorn, we continue our ways never to see the better.

This can simply be fear of change. Most are familiar with this, but few take steps to overcome it.

This can also be something deeper. If we are to change, then we may not be who we believe ourselves to be any longer. We paint images of ourselves within our heads and attempt to maintain them. Seldom do our images match how others see us. Their images are typically simple. Examples are: that person is fun, that person is mean, that person is weird, and, more pertinent, that person is sad or unhappy.

I implore you to leave those self images behind and embrace the necessary change. For when you turn that page, you may find the image on the next to be much more to your liking. All the while we may find that who we thought we were was a mere illusion held in place by our fears. Those outside views of sad or unhappy change in their eyes to happy. They are none the wiser of your internal change/struggle to turn that page.

- Kelsk 🍻

“Man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible.”

— Augustine, Confessions

[kelskskreed]

This is all too true. It is the source of common phrases such as; “Ignorance is bliss,” or “Common sense is a curse not a superpower.”

Everyone has a degree of intellect. Those of us lucky enough to be born with much of it often look down upon those without. This is a failure cast upon humanity by those who think themselves “better.”

Even those of the lowest intellect can teach those of the highest. Those of the highest should only look down upon the lower as they are reaching to pull them up.

Humanity is only made better by the spread of knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is gained through the ability to ascertain via intellect. Wisdom is the experienced intellectuals ability to teach those without knowledge or less intellect.

Never believe you are better than another. While one of your facets may shine bright, another shall be dull.

- Kelsk 🍻

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer, Counsels and Maxims

[kelskskreed]

This couldn’t be farther from the truth. Love concerns feelings/emotions toward another. Respect is how you treat another without regard to your feelings/emotions.

For instance, there are plenty of folks I have worked with whom I despised as people for their various views or personalities. Therefore, there was zero chance of love from me toward them. However, I was able to respect them for how they held themselves within the work environment. I was also able to respect them for their abilities and the heights they attained with those abilities within their career.

Just because two concepts may be construed as similar in nature does not mean they are interchangeable. Just as well, because you choose to fill a void by lying to yourself that respect is the same as love only makes you ignorant. At best you may receive pity. As I have mentioned before, pity is far from love and is, in fact, even farther from respect.

- Kelsk 🍻

“Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.”

— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

[kelskskreed]

Unfortunately, all too often do folk fall into this state of being. I have been in this state before myself. It can be position of weakness and an attempt to feel something (typically a form of love) from others. The problem is what others give is not what it appears. In no way is pity love or encouragement.

When someone shows pity it is because they are looking down on you and seeing that they are above you. They may feel sad for you at best because you have fallen so low. Encouragement to stay the course you’re on does anything but help you get back to a healthy state of being.

If your ship is sinking, who wants to hear; you’ll be ok, at least you’ve made it this far, or things will get better. None of that stops your ship from sinking. That is them standing above you thinking “that’s a pity, I’m going to watch this ship sink.” Once you can see this fact, you can begin to change your state of mind.

The encouragement that comes sans pity is actually positive as YOU have shown progression. That feeling from others will from a point of pride. They shall see you plug the hole in your ship and have a genuine smile from the same viewing platform. They are no longer looking down upon you.

It is once you bring yourself up that you can take pride in yourself and continuing up will be all the easier. Your future happiness is in your hands and yours alone. If you are relying on others to feel good about yourself, you are not living your life. You are living through others.

- Kelsk 🍻

“We do not want to improve ourselves or be bettered, we merely wish to be pitied and encouraged in the course we have chosen.”

— Albert Camus, The Fall

[kelskskreed]

There is something very important society today needs to learn from this. Social media and the internet are not experts to be taken as savants. There are gifted people within sharing their knowledge. However, the fact remains that people blindly follow anything they read or watch as if it was written by God Himself.

We all must take the time to ensure what we are looking at is a reputable fact. To follow blindly is to be controlled by those that would use you for their own gain. Your ignorance will be your downfall.

I challenge you to deal in facts alone for the betterment of all. Do not be dissuaded. Rise to new heights of knowledge.

- Kelsk 🍻

“Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought. In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or engineer. For such or such special knowledge I apply to such or such a savant. But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor the savant to impose his authority upon me.”

— Mikhail Bakunin, God and the State