We exist.

To a friend who posed this question in an email...

We exist because we say we do. In the physical sense, if we decide not to exist, we can end our life. But our decision to exist goes well beyond that. We choose to what extent we will exist. Does staying in your house, locked in your room, disconnected from the world and from other people consitute a real existence? What about being so extroverted that you have no solitary moment to contemplate your own life? Existence is completely in our heads. We exist because we say we exist. The quality of our existence is also in our heads. Even our emotions are our choice... more on this later... right now I have to go meet some other people who exist....

Long lost blog!

I haven't had any comments lately, so I fear the brief sabatical and the fact that my blog is no longer one of the main links on my site have lost me my audience. Is anyone out there? Sigh... Ahh, no matter. I write because I like the sound of my own voice... err... my own keyboard??? well, you know what I mean....

Control over the events of our lives...

This'll be short but I'll expand on it in future blogs. It's really just an answer to a question a friend posed in an email... I hope I get some feedback too...

Life is a series of events. Things happen. Then other things happen. Most of what happens seems outside our control. But is it?

When something occurs, we have a choice to interpret it in one of millions of possible ways. If we choose the interpretation that makes us happy, that connects us with others, that empowers us, that makes us feel like we have value and we belong, then our physical response to that event will reflect all those great feelings. We'll be a more generous, calm, loving human being. This will alter the course of our life. And the next event in the string of events will not be what it might have been. So, in a very real way, we have control over events that may otherwise seem arbitrary.