Change your Attitude, Change your World (Part 1)

I have recently been considering the value of a positive attitude in our daily lives, was inspired by a moment of realization, and took my thoughts and condensed them fit the 140 character twitter model.

"Life is relative, your attitude toward your perspective defines your perceived reality.  Change your attitude, change your world."  

But then I thought about it some more, wanted to take it further, and this post was born.   The crux of my meaning is simply this: We have complete control of how we choose to look at a given situation.  Whether it is a situation at home, or a situation on the world stage, we still choose.   We usually don't recognize it as a conscious choice, but it is.

That is the basis of my tweet, and serves as a solid thesis statement for this series of posts.

Part I:  Change Yourself

Focus on the dot, the box will move
revealing different perspectives.

I have seen this life from a few different vantage points. I spent a significant amount of my adolescence learning how to live.  I made a lot of mistakes, but in return I learned a lot.   However, it was when I became determined to make a major change, and shift my life, that I discovered the true power of one's attitude.

I had reached a deep low, one so deep that I had no desire to continue living.  I was sick.  I had just been diagnosed with Graves Disease, and I felt as though life had no meaning or purpose.   I didn't value my life. I didn't value my friends. I didn't value my family.  I could have easily continued down the 'path of least resistance', and in all likelihood I wouldn't be here to share my story today.

One morning, I awakened and told myself, "I have to change [my life], I can't keep going on this way".  A simple statement, one that is so often made in vain.  In fact, I had said those same words many times before.  However, something was different this time - I meant it from a deeper part of my core. In retrospect, I recognize that as the exact moment when my attitude shifted.   Suddenly, I didn't simply "want" to change, I was already changing.

Everyday I pushed for that change, I'd remind myself that new me was going to do it, I was going to succeed.  My life was changing and I intended to ride that wave as far as it could take me.  It was, in truth, a complete reprogramming of my mind.

Of course, I had the negative thoughts creep in.  The voice in my head would tell me I couldn't succeed - I was a fool for even trying.  "No one can go from being you, to being a productive - let alone successful - member of society", it would say.  However, I ignored that voice, I ignored conventional wisdom, and I pushed myself harder.  I encountered a few setbacks along the way. Powerful setbacks, of a kind which could have easily pushed me back into my old habits. It took strength, but I always found a way to remind myself that I didn't want to change, I was changed!

It didn't come easy, and it didn't come instantly, but it did come. I returned my focus to education, and built my life from there.  I pushed myself to always give my best effort in class, or on the job.  Looking back I can't fathom how I was ever the guy that once inhabited this mind and body.  I didn't change the world, but I changed myself, which in turn changed my world.

The Dissection of Morality

At dinner with colleagues the topic of conversation became one that generally should not be discussed with colleagues - Religion.  During this discussion, after the revelation that we were not all of one accord, this question was posed:  "Without god, how do you explain good people and evil people." This simple question started a stream of consciousness that threatened to turn into a tirade on multiple occasions.  What follows is a best-effort attempt to recap the full response.

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You see, I believe that there is no true good or evil, just decisions and circumstance.  I look at life, sort of like a tree.  Each decision you make, you are choosing a branch on the tree.  The goal is to stay close to the trunk, and climb higher and higher, but inevitably we stray.  Some of us find ourselves hanging onto a limb, dangling where it is so thin it starts to bow.   

Some of us may even start out life out on one of these thin limbs. Regardless of how one gets there, the goal is to get somewhere better - somewhere safer. So, instinctively, we scrap and scrape, steal, kill, whatever is necessary, to climb up from that weakened limb.    

Thus, I contend that we are not good or evil, and that...  Actually, allow me to add a 3rd thing to my list.  It's decisions, circumstance, and the judgement of the beholder.   I contend that we are not inherently good or evil, but are shaped into what is perceived as good and evil by these three things.  

I have control of my decisions, at least I appear to, so that component does lie within me. However it's difficult to fathom decisions being based on anything other than experience or 'taking a stab in the dark'.  So how much of my good/evil ratio truly rests with my own decisions.  I believe a much greater component is the experiences that drove me to that decision, which is where circumstance comes into play.  If I have had a rough life, then I've probably developed a "look out for myself" attitude.  If I grew up with everything being stolen from me, I'm probably watching my back.  If i was born with a silver spoon in my mouth, I'm used to everything being my way - handed to me.  These are of course generalizations, but they suffice to make my point.   

The third component though, is perhaps the most important of all.  "My" good or evil status, is based on your judgement of me as such.  If someone drives drunk and kills a kid, most people will decide they are evil (again generalization) and condemn them as such.  Never mind the fact that this - theoretical - person was also giving thousands to charities, and spent his/her spare time with troubled inner city youth in a Big Brother / Big Sister program.  Those types of facts are rarely considered because one bad decision has already condemned them in the eyes of the public.

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[Image from Vanderbilt University]

Morality is a very gray area, and is only made grayer by notions that we are inherently one or the other.  We are all (not a generalization) inherently both.  Our circumstances, the decisions we make, and 'public opinion' are what puts us into a bucket.  All of us have a story with parts that are unknown - sometimes even to our closest friends.  I strive to consider this at all times, I try to not pass judgement, and I intend to respect the culture of those who live in different societies with different norms.  

I understand that others have different circumstances. Given the same set of choices I have been given, they may have made very different decisions.  Therefore, I must reason that I cannot hold anyone else to my moral code, because it is based purely on my own experiences, my circumstances, and my decisions - something no one else can ever have.

I don't have to think... I only have to do it.

I do not make a habit of basing my philosophical view points on popular music.  In fact I'm pretty sure that in most cases I'd more quickly run away from popular music.  Even if the employed definition of popular is kind of broad.  However, there is one such song that has rang true to me for a very long time.  I grew up in the eighties and nineties, the latter being the period of my adolescence.  During this period there was a very popular band named Nirvana, and they covered a song by - a significantly less popular band - The Meat Puppets.   That song is called Oh Me, and below is the snippet of the lyrics that stand as the point of this post (further down is the video from a random YouTube source, but the lyrics here are the significant part).

I don't have to think
I only have to do it
The results are always perfect
And that's old news

Contemplate that for a moment, and think about how much truth is contained in that simple verse.   To summarize my point I will now point to my own anecdotal example.

Less than one year ago, I was in living in Kentucky and had reached a point of misery with my employer.  So miserable that I was ready to abandon ship.  An opportunity came to do just that, I had only needed to make it through an arguably grueling interview process.  I went through 3 total interviews, the first two were a breeze for me, but the final one caught me on a day when I was sick and not on my game.  I thought about rescheduling, but inevitably decided that would make me look just as bad - if not worse - than just letting sick-me attend this one.   So I went for it... and fell flat on my face.  I stumbled over questions that I should have been easy, and made myself look like a damn fool in the process.  Needless to say, I was passed over for this position.  This position that I had so badly wanted.  The position that would make me happy, and make life so much more enjoyable.   However, life - or fate as some may call it - had a different plan for me, and it would almost immediately start to unveil itself.

A few months earlier, the employer with whom I'd become so miserable, had submitted a proposal to a client.  A proposal on which I'd agreed to list my name, agreeing  to move my family to New England if we were to win.  Within about two weeks of being told that I'd failed my final interview, I was told I was indeed moving, and assuming this new role in Massachusetts.  This was a tremendous change for me, it placed me both in a new business role, and hundreds of miles away from home - the only state I'd known for 38 years. It was stepping way outside of anything close to a "comfort zone", and moreover, it was the one glimmer of hope that I could, once again, find happiness in my - going on nine year - career with this company.

Today, as I walk through downtown Boston on my way to work, I have found that happiness again.   I find this walk to provide me with a daily reminder of the power of fate, because each day I walk past the door of that other company - the very one that passed me over in Kentucky.  I walk past it and smile because life had a different plan, a better plan, and I just didn't know it yet.

Every decision, whether or not it seems significant, has the potential to impact life events - even if the choice is the lesser of two evils (i.e. going to the interview sick vs. asking to reschedule it). However, there is, in my experience, no need to worry and fret over these decisions.  Life has a way of making these things work out. We don't need to think, we only have to do it, the results are always perfect.

In an instant...

Today my mother and my daughter went out for a short walk   When they returned my child presented my wife and I each with a wildflower she'd picked for us.  I struggled, but could not recall the name of the flower I'd picked so many times as a child.  Nevertheless, it invoked a very strong sense of nostalgia for me.  It forced me to think back to all those many years ago when I was growing up.  It prompted me to consider moments spanning nearly two decades of my life.  There, in an instant, they were recaptured, but only to dissipate almost as quickly.

How symbolic must this plant, fleabane, be to me.  Why do violets, dandelions, and for that matter clover, not have the same value to me.  Words cannot truly express how powerful an experience this was. I had memories of loved ones long gone; experiences with friends that I've not spoken to in many years; stepping on chestnut hulls with bare feet; swinging in the backyard on a hammock, where the trees that held it have been cut down for nearly 3 decades; swinging on my swing set, thinking I saw someone out of the corner of my eye, but finding that no one was there; playing in the creek with my cousin; playing in the pool with the same cousin; my grandpa asking me about things I'd drawn; my family gathered on the porch talking for hours on end about "grown up things", and me wishing I understood and could participate.  All of this came, and left, in an instant.

My family is very close, and for that I am thankful.  My mom and dad live next door to the house where his parents lived, and where he grew up.  Behind them the younger of my older brothers, and behind him my aunt.  Within a few hundred yards are two other aunts, and a few member of my more distant family.  When I was a child I would spend much of my time playing between houses.   As for the expression "It Takes a Village", it did, but luckily I had one.

From time to time I do stop and feel a lot of regret, regardless of how I tell myself that there is no need to waste time looking back.  If only I'd understood those conversations on the porch with the grown ups.  If only I had listened to the advice of my family.  If only I'd known then, what I've come to know now.  I'd have played parts of my hand differently for sure.

Don't misunderstand, I love who I've become.  I also know that I would have never become this guy that I am today without the decisions I made, and their respective consequences. Nevertheless, if I had the chance at a do-over, I'd cherish the moments more and embrace my loved ones longer.  I would have asked more questions about the "old days" and listened more to the nuggets of wisdom my grandparents would have loved to share.  Because, if there is nothing else I've learned in life, it is to love and be loved because it can all be over in an instant.

I've started a new blog for posting my philosophical, spiritual, and religious thoughts.   The idea is really two-fold.   First, my primary blog is getting overly crowded with philosophy posts, which is not what I want to do with it.  Second, this gives me an opportunity to focus my thoughts on this subject matter in a constructive way.

If you know me, you already know that I think about this way too much, and I have several different thoughts about life, and more specifically our mortality.  If you don't know me already, then please allow me to introduce myself.

I am a computer software developer turned product manager.  I am married and I have a six year old daughter.  In my adolescence, around 16 years of age, I was baptized.  Soon thereafter I experienced what Christians like to call a "back-slide" and went completely off the rails of Christianity.  When I was in college I majored in computer science and minored in philosophy.  During this time I spent hours reading the works of some brilliant individuals such as Nietzsche, Paine, Aquinas, and more.

Understanding this life is one of the few things in which I have truly conceded failure, however I still continue my search for wisdom, insight, and inspiration.  While I no longer consider myself Christian my protestant upbringing has forced me to be someone who can not rule it out. So I don't really consider myself much of anything, religiously.  I am me, and I simply don't know what lies ahead of this life... if anything.