Forgiveness has no expiration date. It just keeps on giving.

Every long journey begins with the first step. Personal journeys begin with forgiveness.

Why is forgiveness so important? Because it focuses the mind on the future, letting the past go.

Close your eyes. Look inward. Help is there.

Be practical. First and foremost, forgiveness calms and helps the forgiver.

Close your eyes and stop focusing on exterior issues.

Ask important questions.

Who is causing all the problems I live with daily? All. My. Problems.

Here are a few examples:

Others, obviously. My parents. My teachers. My so-called friends. The people who are wrong about everything, who don’t understand me. Foreigners. Red necks. Liberals. Republicans. Muslims. Selfish people. Rich people. Immigrants. Illegals. My boss. My spouse. My brother or sister. My boyfriend/girlfriend. Haters. Shooters. Pushers. Old people. Young people. Homeless beggars. Thieves. Politicians. The President. Congress. The guy who cut me off in traffic this morning. The Supreme Court. Society. Humanity. Booze. Drugs.

Frankly, the list can be exhausting.

But here’s the thing: Exterior forces and people surely can be causing you problems.

Yes. They are. They will be.

How does that help your future?

It doesn’t.

Others may well be causing you problems

But

Others will not be able to solve these problems.

What? How fair is that?

Well, who’s going to help me then? Where do I go for help? I mean if all these people and things are giving me grief, where do I go for satisfaction?

We must take the proverbial first step.

Stop focusing on the exterior world for a moment.

Close your eyes and breathe; journeys begin from within.

Let the pain and the anger go, eaten away by forgiveness.

Stop blaming everybody else for your problems, even if it’s true, because it just doesn’t help.

Work towards understanding pain by stop blaming it on exterior forces and start thinking about the path to follow to move away from it.

What has to happen to make you happier and more satisfied?

You are in charge of your own happiness. Nobody else. You.

Why forgive others if nobody’s going to be able to help?

Because you must acknowledge the main issue:
 
You and only you can create a road to your own personal satisfaction and to begin the journey you must let go of the past.

If you are waiting for somebody else to fix your pain for you, I’ll bet you’re pretty dissatisfied at the results so far. They can anesthetize it (your bartender). They can drown it out (your rock band). They can stimulate you enough to forget it temporarily (your lover). Later you blame them because it doesn’t last. The problem is until you can focus your mind on your own personal solution, long term satisfaction is ephemeral.

That’s not to say you have to do all the work yourself. Far from it.

Read. Listen. Become educated. Work a program. Listen to mentors. Adopt a philosophy or religion. Go about it however you wish. Listen. Adopt. Adapt. Emulate. Work. Lather, rinse, repeat. You won’t know what works until you fail a couple times. But you decide and you agree: I am in charge of my own happiness and personal satisfaction. The moment I stop blaming everybody else for what bugs me, the sooner I can be happy if I can forgive myself along the way for temporary failures.

Now, once you forgive, it doesn’t mean you forget. If you need to move on from a bad relationship, leave an abusive spouse, stop working a job that harms society, or find a more positive living environment, that simply pulls the thorn from your paw. At that point you can stop blaming the thorn for what’s been going on and begin to understand what drove you to misalign yourself. Why or how did I get into this thorny situation? Chalk it up to experience and yes, forgive yourself. Learn from it. Then move on.

That’s important too. Acknowledgement that you are a flawed human being. “I did some questionable things around some questionable people but I’ve moved on, forgiven myself and yes, others too. Now it’s time establish a positive attitude, living situation, friends and loved ones.” It’s never too late to learn from the past and move toward the future. Forgiveness has no expiration date. It just keeps on giving.

Every long journey begins with the first step. Begin your journey with forgiveness. For yourself. For others. Then and only then can you work toward a lifetime of personal achievement and satisfaction.

Give me the middle, that's where both the head and the heart reside.

Read most of the newspaper this morning, including the op ed page. Much of this week's front section's news centers around the horrific shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston. This lone act of violence now dominates our national and local news cycles and serves to polarize (further polarize?) out nation's leaders and pundits. Hopefully reasonable people can approach regrettable events, such as this one, with hope and understanding that our nation is not defined by the acts of lunatics who so lack a basic moral compass that they kill without conscience. This isn't a statement. It's the opposite. It's a vacuum. A very painful vacuum lacking ideas or ideals. This lunatic has nothing to give, nothing to say, nothing to share. He is nothing. But his actions, which cause pain and grief, trigger opinions. Opinions and actions which now try to retroactively un-cause it from happening. What went wrong? What should be done? Whose to blame? Thus the news cycle's maw opens for its weekly feeding.

This is not the first lone wolf, nihilistic mass killing in recent years. Sandy Hook's elementary school shooting, while sui generis, is compared and contrasted to the Charleston shooting. Each is its own horror and those of us on the sidelines have no way of understanding the pain family members and friends are going through. I am a bit embarrassed to be writing at all since I really don't have the right to comment at all unless or until I suffer something like this myself. That said, I seek only to rebut the nonsense that seems to permeate comment after these events. All generalizations are false and each of these perpetrators tends to have a unique disconnect which allows them to open the door to destruction, both personal and general. Some are obviously mentally bent, some morally bankrupt and others motivated by political and religious misinterpretations. It seems last week's shooter was nothing more than a moron with a gun. It is true he seems to have been motivated by a hatred for black people and considered himself a white supremacist but realistically he drooled in his photos. Mass murder is not now nor will it ever be laudable for anybody for any reason. Those who execute it are terminally confused and well, stupid. Perhaps I am embarrassed to be from the South (when related to this idiot) and deny this moron's motivations because they are so anathema to any enlightened human's value system. I can't see anybody actually taking anything this guy believed seriously but there it is. The horrible loss of life focuses us on the perpetration of evil. We must react.

So I concede the point. There will have to be a reaction. The most vocal reactions come from the right and from the left. These are most newsworthy. Let's step off with the left foot first. Is this is a hate crime? Is this an act of terror? The President responds by wanting more law(s). He bemoans his lack of power to restrict gun ownership. The kind of very restrictive laws they have in Chicago that work so well to prevent gun violence, right? How's that working? Laws are only as good as the will of the people to follow them. The prohibition of murder by law isn't stopping murder, is it? The prohibition of illegal drugs by law isn't stopping it, is it? But beyond the fact that the country is chock a block with literally millions of guns already and the only effective way of controlling them is to give the government rights to control citizens beyond common sense, is the history of our country. We are a country founded by revolutionaries who took up arms against an unjust government, which was run by a despot who didn't care about the rights of citizens. Our citizens, to this day, still don't absolutely trust government to not act in just the best interest's of government. Read a little about Huey Long some time if you think this country is far removed from despotism. Individuals want protection. Sometimes from intruders. Sometimes from a government run amok. Is it likely in our enlightened society? No. But anything isn't until it is. Or it is until it isn't. Paranoia is a side effect of basic distrust of what government is capable of. It fuels nuts and there are quite a few of them. Should crazy paranoid people wield weapons? Probably not. Would we be better off if such people didn't have easy access to plentiful dangerous weapons? Yes. So that's the President's point right? Give me the power the restrict gun ownership. But the reality is such laws are unlikely in this country and when they are passed in communities, they work about as well as passing laws against using drugs. People find a way if they aren't law abiding citizens and they feel the need. Their need will be met. Besides, the fool could have taken lessons with a Japanese Katana and done the deed more quietly and with even more gruesome results.

I read the op-ed page about the right's response being something about we should arm everybody and those in church could have defended themselves and the guy wasn't a racist, he was attacking our religious freedoms, or something. Bizarro stuff. If anything, worse than the left's approach, which is at least seeking some semblance of a solution. The real "beauty" of guns is they preponderantly kill their owners and the owner's families, friends and acquaintances. The chance that a gun will actually be used to defend somebody from an attack is incredibly small. Guns kill their owners and owner's family members by suicide, accident, and rage. Every week in the United States a gun is discharged by a child to kill another child in play, a loading accident kills a family member, a father kills himself (including my own), a drunken husband kills his wife or vice versa because they are upset. Neighbors kill neighbors. People have fist fights in bars and somebody goes gets a gun to escalate the violence and kills somebody. Hunting accidents kill by mistake. Road rage fueled gun owners kill strangers who drive aggressively. Guns provide instant power to kill and let's face it, they whack more thumbs than nails. To own a gun is to be instantly less safe from violence.

But...

Illegal drugs are bad. Most uses of people-shooter guns (pistols, assault rifles, etc.) other than practice and shooting for thrills and kicks, turns out bad for the owner and their family. But they ain't going away any time soon.

The bottom line is, in America, with our culture and our history, we want to keep our guns and we don't trust government enough to give them up. Bigger government with more control is not today's solution for this problem. Period.

But...

The fool who murdered those people in church WAS a racist. He was an idiot racist. However his small mind was polluted by the internet or other racists can be studied and maybe we'll learn something, but I doubt it. I'd like a simple solution to people who lack understanding or who have a broken brain, but I'm afraid we will mourn this act and soon others after it. We are a country of 319 million pretty decent people who go about their daily business without recourse to senseless killing. While horrific, this act was an aberration of the norm, not indicative of it.

But I do have an opinion (and two elbows):

I inhabit the middle. In the middle we tolerate responsible gun ownership and we prosecute illegal uses of weapons, not ownership of weapons. We blame the idiot user, not the gun. And again, owning a gun likely will end in tragedy for the owner and his family. But people still buy guns.

In the middle we understand the motivation behind progressives who want to restrict gun ownership and in time, with reason, some of that is likely to occur. Gradually and with compromise. We believe that there are actually racists in the world and their actions are offensive and when they occur we will speak out and when necessary get up and march for individual rights and freedoms guaranteed by the constitution. For all citizens.

What happened last week was the lone act of an idiot. There is little or nothing that can be done in a free society to track, restrict or prevent idiocy. 

But where there is cause, there can be effect.

I am from the South. I studied in a school in the 1950s in rural North Louisiana with a text book that subscribed to the idea that the Klan and the Knights of the White Camellia were heroes during reconstruction. Today I believe southern pride is taken as knee-jerk racism. I can't help if it is or it isn't, that's how its perceived. That the rebel battle flag is about as benign as painting on black face and putting on a minstrel show.

I am in the middle and I think to honor the dead in an historic African American church, the dead who were murdered by a racist idiot, the rebel battle flag needs to be retired from the statehouse in Columbia, South Carolina. To honor those individual lives lost. To honor those black South Carolineans who suffered prior to the war between the states and those who have suffered since, up to and including this act of stupidity. To show this idiot that no, blacks aren't taking over our country, they are joining it as equal citizens and while we respect our forefathers and their contribution to the south, that INCLUDES our black brothers and sisters who suffered before, during after the war and continue to this day to suffer from those who perceive them as different or inferior. It would only be symbolic but it would be a very minor achievement and honor for those fallen dead at the hands of a racist idiot.

That's from the middle, where the heart and the head reside.

Who or what is in control of your life?

Who or what is in control of your life? You? God of Jehovah? Jesus? Allah? People? Chaos? Fear? Love? The Law? The Bible? The Koran? Situational ethics? The theory of relativity? Politicians? Judges/ Juries? Mom & Dad? Secular Humanism? Twitter?

I’ll posit something. I’ve said it before. After satisfying needs for water, food, shelter, procreation, security, health, love, praise and More (I’ll defer to Samuel Gompers here), people want control. Absent control they want comfort, recreation and entertainment. Most have an easier time obtaining recreation and entertainment and abandon most attempts for control. Using alcohol and drugs obviates the desire for control. Rationalization soothes lack of control. Lower your expectations. Monks will tell you feed the spirit and seek enlightenment. You don’t need to, or can't control the physical world. Concentrate on the metaphysical. Meditate. Grow your spirit. I like it. Which of course let’s the Chinese take over, more actively seeking physical control.

But let’s take a look at “desidero, decideras, deciderat:” 

[what I want, what you want and what we want] based on a spiritual person’s persona (qi (chi), weltanschuung)

Positive control = Balance = harmony (give and take)

non desidero, …as, …at:

Negative control = Unbalanced = disharmony (take and take)

Example of non balanced leading to balanced leading to non balanced:

Places of employment, struggle for control:

Company establishes a business. Following market forces and sound economic principles, it expands. Hires more workers. Grows, hires more workers, the cycle continues. The workers achieve water, food and shelter, which can be purchased with wages, which (failing spending it all on drugs, gambling, etc) lead to temporary satisfaction. Later they get health insurance, vacation, retirement, holidays, etc. Once these necessities are satisfied we finally get to “control” and who has it. First we get various concerns. Some workers are retained, even promoted. Others are furloughed, discharged even. Where are the rules? Why is all this happening? Rumors are Debbie and the boss really like each other and Debbie got a raise. The boss fired Dave because he didn’t like him. Eventually they feel powerless and frustrated. They compare their work situations with others. They realize they could have it better. They organize, form a union and periodically negotiate. We want more. Pay. Benefits. And we want to reduce management’s control so there’s no subjectivity any more.

Unions want printed rules. A book of them. A rule for everything. A remedy for infractions. Wages spelled out. Seniority rewarded. The tacit goal is to remove management’s prerogatives. Once the contract refers to the book of rules, there is no need for management, other than to challenge when rote adherence to written rules produces unsatisfactory results, which it often does. All generalisations are false sooner or later. All rules lead to unsatisfactory results, for everybody and then the union, which requested the book of rules, gets to intercede now as the arbiter of rules. Failing to follow the rules by management also makes the union challenge management. Second guessers always have the benefit of hindsight. Removing management’s prerogative removes management’s intelligence. Somewhere between no rules and all subjective management to nothing but rules with no intelligence there is balance and harmony. I have worked in and experienced both situations. Too much management subjectivity reduces everybody’s morale, including the supervisors who have to carry out discriminatory practices based on emotions, preconceptions and poor judgment. Everybody gets mad, makes mistakes has errors of judgment. That’s when a union can step in to remedy management’s errors. The sweet spot here is some intelligence based on knowledge, experience, and common sense and a basic set of written rules and guidelines. The balance requires supervisors of workers who have experienced both being a worker and a supervisor. Too little management intelligence (a rule for everything with no need for knowledge, experience or common sense) leads to retention of sub mediocre employees and promotion based on longevity. Long term valued employees make one stupid mistake and are terminated and replaced with new hires. Products and services suffer. When the balance is way out of control, companies go under. The needs of the employees are all met save that of a work place to go to. An unbalanced situation over a long term will eventually lead to a sudden crash. Something that is until it isn’t.

Example of struggle for power based on democratic freedom:

Gradually our country has undergone a dramatic political shift away from long held ideals and morality based on religion and tradition. A lot of it is healthy. Fifty to a hundred years ago it was Judeo/Christian God and country (mostly Christian). The Bible, Mom, the flag and apple pie. To question those ideals was both anti-American and immoral. Ethics and morality were paramount in leaders, both political and social. Or was it? As society got more and more open and information became more and more readily available, hypocrisy was identified as a byproduct of strict morality. These rules, while “just,” became inconvenient. Kids turned on to drugs and burned the flag, refusing to serve if they felt the situation wasn’t right. President Kennedy was a good father and husband when he wasn’t cheating with Marilyn Monroe or Judith Exner. President Clinton didn’t have sex with that woman, depending on how you defined sex or “is” or perhaps woman. Situational ethics overcame religious and moral imperatives. You didn’t need to serve your country or forgive your leaders as much as shrug your shoulders. A thing “is” until it isn’t any more. Three years ago our President, Barack Obama opposed same sex marriage. Today he doesn’t. Something is until it isn’t. Some of this is obviously healthy. What was whispered in the shadows is now more open and above board. Religion or lack of it isn’t the deciding factor for a job, an appointment or an association, outside of church. Or at least that’s the general idea. Merit counts. The color of your skin, the sex of your employee, their origin, nationality or religious preference shouldn’t decide associations, employment or appointments. Persons with disabilities struggled for equality for decades. Most would agree they’ve achieved a higher level of recognition and equality, at least under the law. Now (2015) sexual preference and orientation has the nation’s attention with the President leading the way with his recent flip-flop. Men should marry men and woman should marry women, if they choose to. Nothing’s wrong with it, right? Uh, anymore. Shrug your shoulders. A thing is a thing until it isn’t a thing. Then it’s something else. In relative terms that is.

Will this movement toward situational ethics and intelligent tolerance of (fill in the blank): murder (euthanasia), lying (Clinton and just about everybody else), divorce (a majority of the time), children born out of wedlock (a majority of the time), false gods (wealth, power, lust), and pleasures of the flesh over power of the spirit eventually lead to an out of balance situation? Are there no absolutes? Do we need no spiritual guidance? No religion? No commandments? But of course many gay people are religious, Republican (as an example of relativism, at least a few) and believe in the power of the spirit over lust. Not all power and wealth is used in a self-serving manner (see Bill and Melinda Gates). And many prelates are coke sniffing hypocrites and priests pedophiles. So? Does’t this mean everything is relative? There are no absolutes? What do we use as guidance?

Can secular humanism replace the ten commandments? It can if it’s codified? Society through politics = law. Then you get to choose whether you obey the law or not? Doesn’t the minority have a voice?

Let’s pass a law that prevents people from discriminating against gay people. Since society can’t recognize religion, as there are too many of them, laws will trump scripture, or perceived scripture. Don’t want to sell them a cake because you don’t like gay marriage? Too bad. Pay a fine. Face a lawsuit. Let’s codify morality. We know what’s right, right? Let’s have a book of rules that show everybody how to live. We don’t or can’t need a Bible or a Koran (separate religion). We have society’s rules which, of course, are subject to variance and interpretation depending on who is in power at the time. That’s situational of course. But follow your society’s laws, or don’t, depending on the situation?

Final posit:    Democracy is and always has been situational and subject to interpretation. If you want to avoid immoral or unethical behavior, you will be confused by statutory fiat. My old friend Sam Lang, who spent a lifetime serving the law gave me some free advice: Do what you think is right. Obey the law. It is after all, the law. But in the final analysis, do what you think is right. When right and legal are mutually exclusive, do what’s right. I have never received better advice from anyone. The harder question is: what can you always believe in, no matter what?

Who or what is in control of your life?