In bloom

October in Minnesota is not typically the time of year that flowers are thought of.  To think of a cactus flower blooming in Minnesota would be even more unusual.  But the following is a picture of some cactus flowers I took a few years ago in June.

This is a variety of prickly pear that came from Colorado that is hardy in Minnesota.  So far it’s the only variety I’ve had bloom, but it is spectacular!  The flowers only last for a day or so and after that they quickly wither.  I am hoping next summer to see more of them and be able share those with this blog.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about defects and virtues.  One I want to explore has a couple of opposites.  The virtue is perseverance and the defect would be stubbornness or defiance.  I have had an abundance of both sides of this pair in my life.  Picture a person who is being told that for whatever reason that they can’t or shouldn’t do something.  The person receiving the message responds with “watch me!”.  Now this description is one that is left open to good or bad and short or long term.

To give one example of a good long term example that I experienced, I’ll take you back to Grandma’s restaurant in Duluth about 13 years ago.  It was there that I sat with friends and discussed the possibility of a class on addiction and what it would take to bring this class into existence at the college of pharmacy in Minnesota.  Let’s just say for brevity’s sake that my response was “watch me”.  Lo and behold a year later the class came into existence!  This to me was one of many examples in my life where perseverance in the face of difficulties lead to something amazing.

On the complete opposite spectrum is my drug and alcohol addiction.  Again, it’s not the time or place to hash out the details, but there were many episodes of being stubborn and defiant that brought me down to rock bottom.  Likewise there was a great deal of perseverance involved that has kept me sober for 13 years.

Another set of virtue and defect and one that I see the same qualities in.  If they are used for good, the results are astounding.  If used for not so good, they can literally kill a person.

At the current moment I’m faced with a good situation that is fed everyday and is driving me towards another “watch me” moment.  I have not been able to rocket ahead with my plans yet as I have not landed on the winning idea, but I am getting close.  I know that what I’m trying to do is come up with a plan to allow me to make a living helping people.  I don’t see a lot of downside to this other than the obvious fact that at the moment I don’t have a job to support my family while I develop this general idea.

The interesting dilemma I am seeing as I ponder is how this could turn into stubbornness.  Balancing this pair for good is tricky because it is again something that requires perspective.  My own perspective is the positive perseverance side.  A few outsiders I know are not agreeing and thinking I should take the easy way out and just get a good job that pays a crappy wage, that I will likely get bored at and move on from a little older and little more beat up from.  Other friends are curious and see the good.

Ultimately, time will be the judge of whether or not my actions are virtuous or defective.  I’m hoping that like my cactus that’s tough enough to handle the brutal weather Minnesota can throw at it, I am able to thrive and bloom in a seemingly adverse environment where people value safety over serenity. I just watched a show tonight which the title of the episode was “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.”  That’s what I want and that’s what I will get.

Probably should post a few pictures...

I feel a bit of the floodgates opening.  I haven’t written anything that anyone else will possibly read outside of a few emails for over two years.  What that’s effectively done is made me feel like I have to catch up suddenly.  I used to write many posts and include a picture or two.  I suppose I need to stick to that formula since I was actually having people read these posts.  I’m not 100 percent sure how to get people back here reading this blog, but I imagine that there will be some event that helps me to get back to that point.

What’s interesting is the fact that I too feel the need to say what’s on my mind and always have had a need for some outlet of that nature, but looking back at the years I have been doing this times have rapidly changed with regards to how people seem to operate.

Listening to media, reading news stories is fascinating to me and I’m not really interested in picking one side over the other.  I’m not above it or with it or against it or anything for whatever the current outrage happens to be.  China, Trump, celebrities who think they are smarter than they are, clever comedians who make fun of all, PC people, pro-life or pro-choice - pick one or all of them to discuss.  I am Switzerland on these topics.  Often I like to play the devils advocate when really hopped up people talk about these topics, but I do this less and less.  It’s not that I don’t care about any of it,  I just don’t care for the way that these topics are presented typically.

The all or none and us against them presentation is what really fascinates me.  If I’m listening to the radio or watching TV, there is not a single voice that seems to really look at anything with any sort of reason.  This dualistic reasoning fails to work on many topics and it is incredible dividing.  I’m really curious as to what lies behind this push.  My previous post was on balance and how delicate and really subjective it can be.  I come back to one of my favorite quotes of all time.  “There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so”.  Shakespeare hit one out of the park with that.

It’s all about perspective.  Take all the trouble with Hong Kong and China.  Your physical location will dictate your thoughts about this trouble,  history is full of examples of oppression and the oppressed rising up against it.  It’s all perspective though on what makes it good or bad.  Just look at this country.  I wouldn’t be in America or call myself and American if it weren’t for a similar scenario that played out.  To all the British what those first Americans did was treason and absolutely awful.  Probably to a lot of Americans too who were loosing out on business with the British or because there was a war.

To be forced to pick a side and then belittle anyone who thinks otherwise is exactly what happens a thousand times a day on social media, the regular media and in whole counties.  The result of these cold shoulders or snubs or fights can vary with extreme results, but it is all the same.  The most effective way to silence opposition to is to eliminate the opposition, it’s sad but modern history is written by the winners because the losers just don’t exist to tell their side of it.

For some reason this happens on social media, one person blurts out an unpopular view.  A few people express outrage that such a thought even is spoken.  The person recants their statement, apologizes and that side wins.  It’s a mini form of war at least that how I see it.

What can we do to stop it?  That’s where this gets interesting,  I don’t profess to have the solution to end dualistic fights,  but it can start with compassion and empathy for the opposition.  If you try to deeply understand why a person might have such a strong conviction or what drives them to want to fight against the injustice of the day, you may be more likely to have a productive and rational discussion with them.  Realizing that right and wrong in a certain area is subjective based on how you see the same problem is a good start.

Start being responsible for your own actions and stop letting others control your level of happiness.

Balance in life

Things didn’t sort themselves out last night.  It’s not that today was bad, but the revelation of what’s next and what is going to come didn’t happen like I was hoping.  I suppose the time of the year for bursting forth and flowering has past and now it’s time to hunker down and get ready for winter again.

Still not quite ready to publicly or at least admit to this blog in an anonymously public fashion what happened to me and why my life has been so difficult. I do somehow think that it might be helpful for  me - maybe.

For now I want to write out something that has been kicking around in my head for some time,  the idea of balance in life.  Life is a delicate balance.  Look at the name of my blog, toxicity is really a balance.  Too much of any substance can kill.  Anyone who has stayed successfully married knows that the balance between husband and wife is the difference between wedded bliss and divorce.  Sometimes there is a wide balancing point and sometimes it’s razor thin.

Balance of character defects and virtuous attributes is also interesting and it’s what I’ve spent a lot of time chewing on.  For example, procrastination is something every person has dealt with and struggled through at times in life.  Anyone who denies this is just procrastinating telling you the truth!  Some people seem to do better with it than others and use the artificially created pressure to get things done.

Now take patience, no question all of us wish we could be more patient.  In fact there is a saying - patience is a virtue.  The fascinating thought I have carried for a long time is that the differences between these to attributes is razor thin and it depends entirely upon one’s perspective.  Both involve being waiting, both involve putting off of something.  In some ways both involve conscious effort NOT to take action.  The balance point where is where being patient transforms into procrastination.

Often this is something that can only be seen in hindsight, if you are patiently waiting to work on a project for some good reason, that’s fine.  It can quickly change to procrastination thought when the reason you were waiting has happened and now the project can move forward.  If you were patiently  waiting to talk to your child about their behavior (like not eating vegetables) and you make them noodles once again because you say to yourself “now is not the time”, your behavior has quickly changed into procrastination.

It’s such a fine line to cross from virtue to defect that it’s missed and only after the line is crossed do you notice and feel bad about it.

The questions I want to answer about this are numerous.  I see this line with a number of virtue and defect combinations and they are line’s that everyone crosses multiple times in their lives.  The problem I see is that we forget that up until the line is crossed we were displaying good behavior and after we cross it, at some point we forget that we were good and now we only see the bad.  It’s also quite easy for others to see and point out (and less obvious for the person displaying the behavior).

How exactly this knowledge might help someone is also something I haven’t quite ascertained yet.  I sense that this could be helpful in the right setting and may help people who suffer from crushing guilt.  It hopefully would help them see that they are really good people who have just made some error in judgement.  It might help them see that the person who points out their error is probably making that same error ten times more often.

It might also help them to see that while the behavior balance has tipped back towards defect for the time, it’s really not that hard to tip back to virtue, because the underlying virtue is still there.

And now for something completely different...

It’s been seven years since I posted to this blog.  Seven of the most interesting and soul killing years I’ve lived.  I’ve gone from carefree to crushed.  It all started two and a half years ago on a particular day in May that by chance or by choice keeps showing up in my life.

May 19th was the day I was married to my first wife.  It was the day my oldest son was born three years later.  Two years ago it was a day that sent my life down a new path that I don’t entirely like yet.  It was that day that I lost my job and the respect of most people in my life.  I am not sure I want to open the door to that low point in my life at the moment.  I will likely need to sometime.  I feel like it has to be open at some point.  It’s not a secret, but I’m still not sure I can go there with any real purpose yet.

Since that day, my life has taken a series of twists and turns that I couldn’t see coming.  I almost feel that it was like driving a car down the road with your eyes closed.  Imagine having only rumble strips to tell you you were drifting to close to the centerline or the ditch.  Angry drivers honking, tailgating and doing all the nasty things drivers who find someone weaving or driving to slow do.  There have been lots of near misses but luckily no more head on crashes.

I’ve felt so alone at times, that the world has turned its back on me.  I still feel that now, trying to find a new job with a criminal record.  There are days when I want to sit in my own mess and feel sorry for myself.  There are days when I want to scream.  I did everything to myself, I created yet another self destructive implosion and I own every part of it.

Today is the day that I begin to turn this life of crap into something good.  I’ve done it three times so far.  I’ve taken a seemingly horrible thing and transformed it into something I can brag about.  I took a drug addiction and made it into a teaching career at one of the pharmacy schools in the country.  I took a shattered divorced thirty year old and found him a beautifully wife, and stared a new family.

So far I’ve managed to get that pretty girl to agree to hang around.  Pretty much everything else has changed.  Mostly because I had no other choice.  I am proclaiming this moment as the point in time where that tide begins to turn.   How is that going to happen?  Hopefully the morning will give me an answer.