Tag Archives: intuitive

Alter Ego

dictionary with letter A

Alter ego: (n) a person’s secondary or alternative personalityCould you keep up with two?? Personalities, that is?

Yet I think sometimes we, as human beings, try to maintain an arsenal of personalities under the guise of being diverse, clever, intuitive and powerful.

Actually, there are two philosophies that collide with each other, and as often happens in science, when the two things collide, they cancel each other out.

  • The first philosophy is that we are able to “become all things to all men.”
  • The second one is, “all you have to do is be yourself.”

As always, somewhere between these two monsters lies the frightened child of truth.

If you try to be too varied, people call you wishy-washy, liberal or ill-defined.

Yet if you foolishly go out into the world and try to “be yourself” all the time, you will soon offend others and find yourself alone except for those who hold to your position.

There is a third possibility. “As much as possible, live peaceably with all men.”

I like that one.

Sometimes I find that my personality isn’t suited for the environment, so I just give it the night off. I decide not to be too chatty. I find a lovely corner near the buffet table, sit down and let people find me instead of circulating around, to the annoyance of many and the delight of very few.

Then there are times when there are issues which demand that I stand up for a cause. I have discovered there is really only one cause worth standing up for. Whenever human beings feel like they are advancing their cause by making other people to be less valuable than themselves, I must step in with my personality and object.

Other than that, I have found that letting things just play out normally (and even historically) proves to have sufficient punishment for bad ideas.

I am not always myself–because in some adventures, “me” is not needed.

But I certainly do not try to be so open-minded that my brain cannot close a door to create a sense of privacy.

I try to “live peaceably with all men”–unless they are determined to declare a war on their neighbors.


Abyss

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Abyss: (n.) a deep or seemingly bottomless chasm.

For some reason, this particular scene really got inside me and registered.

Honestly, I watch a lot of things in movies that don’t impact me at all.  This is why I’m not fond of fantasy. I’m not looking for a way to escape reality–I’m looking for a way to make my present situation fantastic.

But when I watched the movie, The Abyss, and I saw the two characters trapped at the bottom of the ocean, needing to cross a large breadth of water to get to safety, knowing that one of them would not be able to achieve the task and would have to be carried, and that the best way to perform that and give the other one the chance was to have that one individual propelled literally as dead weight–it put a chill down my spine.

Obviously, there was great acting. But just the THOUGHT of being willing to die, placing my trust in another person to revive me on the other side, was absolutely horrifying to my spirit. And as I watched the flick, I found myself needing to turn away because the suspense and danger of it rattled me so.

I realized that I could never trust anyone quite that much. First of all, we would have to agree that the worst part of dying is being there for it. What happens after death is beyond our meager comprehension, and before death is just what we call Tuesday.

But to allow yourself to die, hoping that someone has the power to resurrect you, is probably the essence of what we deem faith.

After all, maybe to the angels in heaven, the earth appears to BE an abyss–a deep, dark chasm of misunderstanding. And I guess in some strange way we’re all supposed to die to this life in order to gain new discovery about ourselves and even eternity. But it doesn’t make it any less scary. It doesn’t make it easier to suck your last–trusting that everything’s going to be okay.

People tell me all the time that they’re not afraid to die and they’re “ready to meet Jesus.” I don’t know whether I believe them or not.

I guess I’m ready to meet Jesus, too.  I just wish it was at Starbucks.