#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]

This is a fact too few ever come to know. I took quite awhile to learn it myself. It was finding that someone that lead me to learning this truth, but it doesn’t have to take so long for you.

Anger can often consume us as we look at the past and blind us to our future. When you find that someone, and begin to believe this truth, the anger dissipates. It is then you actually might wish the best for those in your past. In such actions you will find a freedom of the soul. These things will only serve to uplift yourself and those around you.

I challenge you to be better than myself and find this truth now. Find it before the anger fully consumes you and that someone walks by. They may be right next to you, but blinded by anger you may not see.

- Kelsk 🍻

“One day you’ll find someone that chooses you and continues to choose you everyday. And that’s when you’ll be thankful everything happened the way that it did.”

[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]

We are all taught to stand strong like a mountain and face adversity, to steel ourselves for the future, or to build pillars to hold our mental fortitude up. These things are all necessary to protect ourselves from outside threats.

The only question is, where is the sponge? You see, we have an enemy from within us that can destroy us. As has been said, it is anger. Anger is like water. It gets into the cracks and erodes our mountain, corrodes out steeling, and fills us up until our pillars are flooded. Patience is the sponge that allows us to soak up and remove the water that is our anger.

Patience manifests itself in many ways to apply to many situations. Many cannot find patience as anger fills them and consumes your thoughts. If one is at this point, they must look outside of themselves. Look to the hand that brings the sponge. Someone or some event will happen and there will be a moment when you realize the water within you. That person or event is the hand. Take the sponge and learn patience.

- Kelsk 🍻

Anger is the cause of pain in hell.

There is nothing that can make an angry person happy.

There is no vice like hatred.

The mind does not find peace when hatred lives in the heart.

Anger and hatred have no other function but to harm.

I shall remove the fuel of that foe, anger, for it has no other goal than to cause harm.

One should cultivate instead, patience, in many ways.

Master Santideva

From The Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life, the Bodhicaryavatara

[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 couldn’t be farther from the truth. Being a patriot means defending your iron gated plot of land from those who would change your plot to their own perceptions.

It is the invaders who come to change your plot that are conceited, arrogant, and egotistical.

This misconception is what leads to people in today’s society putting down our militaries. Having lived the military life, I have lived being put down due to these misconceptions. Understand that people join the military for a plethora of reasons. Most are patriots to one degree or another, but rarely are they conceited, arrogant, or egotistical.

Those who would start wars and call it patriotism have forever been the bane of patriotism. It sound like a good thing when it’s in the name of patriotism, but people do not think beyond what they are told. They do not know what patriotism is, because they are told to go to war IS patriotism. They are unable to see it for the farce it is. Defending ones nation is patriotic. To invade another without just reason is conceited, arrogant, and egotistical.

- Kelsk 🍻

“Conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of patriotism…. Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot consider themselves nobler, better, grander, more intelligent than those living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others.”

— Emma Goldman, “What is Patriotism?”

[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