Namaste.

Why do I feel like this writing game is turning into a slight sickness?

A minor addiction.

Are there such things as slight sicknesses or minor addictions?

Hazy, hollow disclaimers.

Attempts to downplay.

Smoke screens.

I thought today that maybe it was time to put my words away.

Too revealing??

My old self...

Would have gotten cold feet and withdrawn

Into the safety of the familiar hermit shell.

But today, I slammed the door in the face of this mind bully.

I am stronger than you now.

Every time I plant my foot down in a jog around the lake,

Spend the night alone, in this cottage folded into edge of the woods,

Complete another home improvement project,

I stomp, smash, and squelch those old fears,

I deal with uncertainty.

Get a little more comfortable in my own skin.

Anymore, I don’t worry so much about making mistakes.

That doesn’t mean I am becoming complacent or apathetic.

Quite the opposite, I think, or at least hope.

Last night, I had a wandering talk with an old friend.

This person and I politely agreed to disagree.

We respected our differences,

About our deep-seated beliefs,

On whether or not people can ever really change.

My friend said that people can change their behaviors,

But they can never really change their essence.

Their core.

I thought I could relate to where my friend was coming from in their belief.

I mean an alcoholic is still an alcoholic, even though they stop drinking, right?

Yet, I needed more evidence.

A jury is not likely to deliver a verdict,

Hopefully,

Unless it can be carefully substantiated and supported.

So, until I am presented with undeniable proof,

I will continue to believe that it is possible for people to

Change.

Grow.

Evolve.

Even their interior nucleus hub.

Despite my conviction that people are able to change,

Here's what I don't suggest:

That we should have to forget or even overlook.

If we don't want to.

Forgiveness can mean moving forward without someone.

The change might be too late for you (the forgiver),

But it doesn't have to be too late for the other person (the changer).

It's possible to stand back, watch, and genuniely applaud the change without

Putting yourself back into the mix.

On that thought,

And, with the recent movie release of Eat, Pray, Love,

Which I look forward to watching this week.

I will sleep on my favorite quote.

A paragraph, on page 122, that I dog-eared.

It struck a chord with me, and it continues to resonate.

“The Yogic path is about disentangling the built-in glitches of the human condition, which I’m going to over-simply define here as the heartbreaking inability to sustain contentment. Different schools of thought over the centuries have found different explanations for man’s apparently inherently flawed state. Taoists call in imbalance, Buddhism calls it ignorance, Islam blames our misery on rebellion against God and the Judeo-Christian tradition attributes all our suffering to original sin. Freudians say that unhappiness is the inevitable result of the clash between our natural drives and civilization’s needs. (As my friend Deborah the psychologist explains it: “Desire is the design flaw.”) The Yogis, however, say that human discontentment is a simple case of mistaken identity. We’re miserable because we think that we are mere individuals alone with our fears and flaws and resentments and mortality. We wrongly believe that our limited little egos constitute our whole entire nature. We have failed to recognize our deeper divine character. We don’t realize that, somewhere within us all, there does exist a supreme Self who is eternally at peace.”