Blog entry for:

of thinking was all about good and bad, win or loss. a day was good for all sorts of reasons, but NEVER, EVER because i woke up and **got** to face another day. living in such a binary manner, limited what opportunities i had each day and when all is said and done, labeling my feelings or the sum total of events in my daily life as “good or bad” prevented me from growing into the person i have always wanted to be. i know there are those in my life who just cannot accept that each day is just that, a day to do my best to live it to the fullest, using recovery as the means to live it to the best of my ability. i know that this binary view of the world was taught to me from my culture and social pressures, after all, a man is “defined” by his successes and diminished by his “failures.”
learning to get out of the box of what i was hammered into me from the time immemorial, i have had to find the ways and means to detach what i am feeling from a conscious judgement of the “value” of that feeling. anger and sadness are not “bad” feelings. joy and contentment are no better feelings than any of the others. as i walk through each day, discarding those value judgements, i am better prepared to see what is really going on, internally and externally. my choices are no longer limited because i am attempting to “change” what i am feeling or to avoid failure. i am no longer constrained to a life that each choice i make limits my possibilities.
looking at the world, outside of this binary shell, i can wonder at the insanity of others, and yes even judge them. i can evaluate what they are demonstrating and decide for myself if it is something i wish to implement in my own life. the nature of that decision is not based on the relative value of worth, but on whether or not i think that it will further my journey towards being that sort of person i never thought i could be. it comes down to this simple question: will this new thing increase or decrease my opportunities to get what i desire. that desire is not necessarily based in the material world. as i may be seeking greater enlightenment, fitness or stability. i can say this, in all honesty, whitewashing my past, just because it is past, will never further my journey. accepting who and where i have been, without judging it as good or bad, will allow me to be more than i was yesterday.

∞ DT ∞