Elaborations: Openness and honesty

 Pietro Aretino said “I love you, and because I love you, I would sooner have you hate me for telling you the truth than adore me for telling you lies.”

Mark Twain said "If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything."

First off, notice that almost everyone says the two words together, "Openness and honesty".  People aren't being redundant, but many people mistake them as being synonyms; they're actually different words with distinct meanings.

When I talk about honesty, that simply means telling the truth.  And, of course since this isn't a court of law, "telling the truth" automatically means nothing but the truth; slipping in a lie makes the entire statement a lie.  And the truth is only exactly what happened; if you catch a 3 foot fish and you tell people you caught a 4 foot fish, that's not the truth, thus it's a lie.  Many people make the distinction of white lies, or fibbing (I don't really hear that one anymore), or bending the truth.  I understand the idea that telling people it was a 4 foot fish doesn't hurt anyone, but lying is a slippery slope that gets steeper the further you go.  If it's not the truth, it's a lie.

Golly Jiminy, how could you possibly not believe me when I say
it wasn't me who told them chocolate covered grass hoppers were delicious?

Lying, to me, is one of the worst things you can do, aside from the obvious things like hurting other people.  If I find the fish and realize it was only 3 feet long, and I realize you're willing to lie about something so petty, why should I believe you when you tell me it wasn't you who broke the vase?  Why should I believe you when you tell me you're not drinking?  Why should your significant other believe you when you tell them you love them?  When you do something "wrong", you have to own up to it and face the consequences of your choices, lying about it is cowardly, immature, and it goes against God's will.  But, that's a talk for a different subject.

I also want to make the distinction between lying and being wrong.  If you truly thought the fish was four feet, then you weren't lying, you were just wrong.  Lying is knowing one thing and conveying a different thought than what you know.  The slippery slope here is, when you start lying to yourself; when you do that, then you start believing yourself and what started as a lie has turned into what you know and isn't a "lie" anymore per say, but it's still just as destructive.  Just don't lie to anyone, especially yourself, and you'll be all set.

When I say openness, I'm referring to being able to talk freely about yourself; i.e. you  have no secrets.  Now, lines begin to blur when you start talking about volunteering information.  Walking up to a complete stranger and saying "Hey, I like your boobs," is open, sure, but it's also rude.  That woman probably doesn't care what you think about her, so making a statement that's so personal is uncalled for.  Now, if she asked you what you thought, then be open about it.  It doesn't hurt to make sure they know what they're asking for; "Are you sure you want my opinion, will you be upset me with if I tell you something you don't want to hear?"  This also applies to inquiries about your past.  If you did something bad in your past and someone asks you about it, tell them, don't be ashamed.  You can express you'd rather not talk about it if it's a particularly emotional subject and/or the person asking isn't that close to you; but for your family, your best friend, your significant other, you need to talk to them.

Sometimes your feelings on something, your past choices/mistakes, or your personality might get you in trouble.  There are countless jokes by enumerable comedians regarding how to answer the deadly question a wife asks her husband "Does this dress make me look fat."  Everyone will tell you to not answer the question, tell a lie, redirect the conversation.  Some people will say lies are needed because the truth hurts sometimes; I believe this might only be true because we haven't been raised on how to properly handle the truth and maybe because we've been fed lies most of our lives, we can't handle the truth some times.

No honey, it's your 50 inch waist on that 5 foot frame that makes you look fat

If we are raised from the beginning to take people's opinion with a grain a salt and to be honest with ourselves, hurtful opinions won't matter and hurtful facts won't be a surprise.

Of course, you combine these two together.  When you're being open, don't make stuff up; if you don't want to be open, it's better to just not be open than to act like you're being open but tell a lie.  But when it comes to the people who matter the most to you, don't hold anything back and don't make anything up.  And most importantly, be honest with yourself.

Elaborations: serving

The most obvious reason for saying to serve others is the religion behind it.  I hope your religion is a choice, not a blind following; and I hope you follow your religion emphatically.  More than that though, I hope your greatest source of happiness comes from serving others.  Some may argue this may not be possible without some sort of religious beliefs, without some degree of believing there is something out there greater than you.

Going back to one of my main responsibilities as your father, it's my duty to give you the tools to help you be the happiest you can be; I believe the richest form of happiness comes from serving others, seeing someone else get what they want, even in the face of you not getting what you want.  I want you to get true joy when someone else is blessed, even if you were hoping to get that very blessing.  I want you to be happy for someone who "wins," even if you feel like they don't deserve it.  I myself fail frequently at that last one, but I'm never jealous.

I'm glad you got the job instead of me... even though you spend half
the day in the bathroom doing Idon'twanttoknow what.

Someone may argue that having this mentality is actually selfish; if your main source of happiness is making other people happy, then you're not making others happy for altruistic reasons, you're just making yourself happy, which just happens to also make others happy.  One retort to that may be, "Who cares;" other people are happy, does it really matter the reason behind it?  I'll leave the philosophizing up to the philosophers, but I will say this: one way to test if you're doing it for the right reasons or not is to make sure you're not doing anything to make sure someone else knows what you've done.  Do you gain just as much happiness regardless if the other person knows you did the good deed or not?  Are you trying to make sure the other person knows it was you?  Saying things like, "Hey, did you see I cleaned your room for you without you telling me to," might point to you actually being selfish in your actions.  But, if you don't say anything and someone asks you, "Hey, did you clean my room," then you can say yes, or you can even be coy about it and let them wonder.  Happiness should come from seeing other people being happy, not you knowing that they know you did it.

I do fear you truly will be this way.  The reason I fear this is because I know that, when your main source of happiness comes from others being happy, that also means when others are unhappy, you're unhappy; and when you're the source of said unhappiness, that just really tears you up.  The problem is, sometimes you have no control over whether your actions will upset someone else or not.

As a child, there's a good chance you ended up doing something for myself or for your mom (that you did out of 100% love for no other reason than because you wanted to bring joy to someone else) that you probably shouldn't have.  Maybe you took your mother's purse and cut decorative holes in it because you thought it was pretty; of course you just ruined your mother's purse, but it was OK because you didn't know any better and you had good intentions.  As you've gotten older, you now know better for the most part, but you'll always do things that will inadvertently upset someone; sometimes it'll be out of the blue ("I didn't know I wasn't suppose to put that in the dish washer"), sometimes it'll go against your intentions ("That program was suppose to make your computer run faster... sorry I formatted your hard drive").  Sometimes though... sometimes other people will get upset when it's completely out of your control; they take something you did the wrong way, maybe they read into something you say, finding meaning where there was none.  Maybe you'll ask if someone has picked up the mail for today so you'll know whether you should go check or not, but they read into it and feel like you're pointing out their laziness (of which there may be none) so now you've upset them, all from a very innocent inquiry.

We seem to live in a world where we say, "It doesn't hurt to ask," but I can assure you it does. More often than not, the chance of becoming the source of negativity in someone else is not worth the knowledge gained.  But, that's because my main source of happiness is others' happiness, so being the source of others' negativity is more painful to me than the average person.  We also seem to live in a world where this concept seems so very foreign, even though almost every single religion, of which at least 80% of the world believes in some form of a higher power, teaches this way of living, that this would just be yet another trait that you feel distances yourself from others.

So, I believe the greatest happiness you can experience is in making other people happy, but I also know it can be a great source of unhappiness.

Elaborations: Self esteem and confidence

You may have heard me talk about my lack of self esteem.  I truly do believe I'm an idiot; I fail at far too many things to ever consider myself even an average person.  I regularly tick people off without even trying; when I was in middle school and early high school, I came to the realization that if I could figure out a way to get paid by upsetting people, I'd be rich.  I'd be exceptionally unhappy, but the money would flow because I seem to have a knack for upsetting people.  There's really nothing I excel at, except for the aforementioned putting people in a negative mood.  But somehow I have confidence, quite the conundrum I know.

Maybe I'm using the wrong words, I'm not sure.  The fact is, I am astutely aware of my numerous failures, and what I'm not currently aware of, I know I'll be made aware of shortly.  And, any deficiencies I may forget about will quickly be brought back to my attention.  I know what my abilities are, what I'm horrible at and what I'm not quite as bad at (my abilities range from bad to not as bad).  But, this knowledge gives me confidence; somehow, for some reason, I don't have a "problem" with my inadequacies.  I've chosen to be who I am (for the most part), so I realize if any bad stuff comes my way it's because of my choices.  Well, anything that's within my control; sometimes people are just jerks.

But that's where the confidence thing comes in.  If crap comes your way, it was either because of something you chose to do (perhaps it was a poor choice, or a thoughtless choice, but a choice none-the-less), or because someone else is just being stupid.  If it was because of the former reason, then you need to take your lickings; you reap what you sow, every action has a re-action.  If someone else is just being a jerk, well, that's their prerogative.  You need to have candid insight to know when you've brought the crap on yourself.

Now, even if you believe the bad stuff you're getting is unjust, that you didn't bring it on yourself, that doesn't mean that you should necessarily keep doing it; but you don't exactly have to sacrifice who you are either.  I have this problem of asking awkward questions of people, questions that any normal person would take offensively, as if I'm insulting them.  Let's say someone does something that's generally thought of as "stupid."  I might ask them why they did it.  The mere inquiry is, to most people, calling their intelligence into question; if I were ask "Hey, why did you stack all those plates on top of those cups... which were already stacked on top of those bowls," I may as well have asked "Wow, how stupid are you?  Does your idiocy know no bounds?"

Pisa ain't got nothin' on me

It doesn't matter the words I choose, the tone of my voice, when I ask the question, how my body is moving when I ask, or the context in which I ask, it is, apparently, an insulting inquiry by its very nature.  I truly just want some insight into their thought processes, it helps me understand them better as a person, which helps me interact with them better; there's absolutely no insult, judgement, or negative thought behind it.  But, after a few years I realized, that's just how people are.  So I learned to, generally, stop asking and accept that I'm just not going to get to know people as well as I'd like to; getting to know people better isn't worth the negativity I've introduced into this world.  I'm still the same person, I still want to get to know people, I just won't get the chance.  The point is, even though I don't agree with the fact that asking a simple question causes so much hostility, it doesn't change the fact that it does, so I have to decide if my gained knowledge is worth the bad stuff on a case-by-case basis.

So, even though I have this horrible lack of skill of interacting with people, knowing that fact gives me confidence.  If I wanted to, I could learn to be a little more tactful in my interactions, but I truly believe taking the honest, open, direct route is the way we should be as people, even though no one else believes that.  I don't have a problem with my inability to successfully interact with people; I've chosen to be this way because I believe this is how everyone should be, I can't control the fact that no one else does either.

Your mother... she really doesn't like this aspect of me.  Whereas I don't see what's wrong with being honest with yourself about your own deficiencies, she feels like I'm too hard on myself.  I personally believe if you're not honest with yourself about inadequacies, you'll never improve yourself.

Elaborations: putting others first

Let me be clear on this, I believe we should always always always put others before ourselves.  This practice is obvious and widely accepted in a few places:
Let others go through a door first (especially while you hold it for them)

After you my good man

If you've been waiting in a line and you know your needs will take a long time to be met while you know the person behind you will only take a minute (this isn't as common as it should be, but it's not rare)
Letting someone else have the last of something you want (again, not as common as it should be, but still a regular occurrence)

Hey, I'm just grabbing it to give it to you

There are others, those are just a few examples.  But, I'm talking about true sacrifice here, not just putting others wants above your wants, but putting their needs above your needs.  I'm also talking about the little things, the day to day things.

Let's say you're sitting in a room with someone and they're hot, but you're fine; if they turn on the fan, they'll be comfortable, but you'll be cold.  Someone is going to be uncomfortable, someone is going to be comfortable, I'm saying it should be you who's uncomfortable... every time.  I'm not saying it's "wrong" to mention to your friend that their comfort would mean your discomfort; I'm not saying it's "wrong" to civilly come to a middle ground.  I'm saying, wouldn't you like it if someone else let you have exactly what you want without sacrificing anything?  Then you need to provide that to other people.  Now if that other person just got up and turned the fan on, I say "Deal with it."  If they ask you ahead of time, it's up to you; you can tell them it's fine knowing full well you'll be cold, but you're not lying because them being comfortable is more important to you, it brings you more satisfaction, than you not being cold.  Or you could speak up and mention you'd be cold and the two of you can come to an agreement.

Now let's say you're on the other side of the couch; let's say you're the one who's hot and the other person seems perfectly comfortable and isn't changing anything themselves.  It's a delicate balance, and one you must approach on a case-by-case basis, part of the equation being how well you know the other person, part of the equation being how truly uncomfortable are you.  DEFINITELY do not just turn the fan on without asking first, even if it's in your own house.  But, should you ask or should you just "deal with it"?  As I said, there's nothing wrong with asking, but I think it takes a bigger person, a more mature person, a more caring person to deal with it.

Or, let's say you just finished a T-ball game and someone brought a cooler of drinks for all of you to enjoy.  This cooler contains all kinds of drinks; various flavors of soda, bottles of water, various flavors of juice, etc.  I want you to be the last person to get a drink, unless there's someone else doing the same thing.  Now, that might mean that you don't get exactly what you want, but if that's true, then that means someone is not going to get exactly what they want, so it should be you.  Why?  Because you want to get what you want, so you need to extend that sentiment to other people, and the way to ensure that is to be sure that everyone else gets what they want before you do.  Of course, if there's only one of something, then everyone is going to get the same thing; and if you're sure there's enough for everyone, then it doesn't matter if you're first or last.

The hard part is doing this sort of thing in the face of someone who's a jerk, to put someone's wants above yours, even though they've always been selfish.

Now, this isn't to say you're spineless.  This is a conscious choice you make, this is you realizing that you get more enjoyment out of knowing someone is 100% getting their way than the amount of joy you'd get if you came to a mutual agreement.  This is you doing your best to NOT be the source of any negativity.

Fears

I suppose next I should list the things I worry most about you becoming.  As you should know by now, you weren't exactly planned... and if you didn't know that, SURPRISE.

Your mom didn't want any more kids because she was finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel; five more years and it was just going to be her and me really getting to enjoy our marriage.  Most marriages have a few years where the couple can enjoy the relationship; we didn't.  We'll be celebrating our 19th anniversary when you leave for college, maybe even more if you go to college while staying at home, so it'll be 19 years when it'll just be her and me for the very first time.  She had fulfilled her biological "need" for procreation, she had more than done her part for the species in providing a replacement for her, and she had done a fine job raising them.  She was done.

It's a parent's societal obligation to give their children the tools to be productive members of society.  This can be achieved by passing on a sense of work ethic, by teaching them good etiquette and manners, by teaching the importance of responsibility and how their actions affect others, and other things.  It's their moral obligation to give them the tools to be happy people.  This can be achieved by instilling a sense of confidence, by teaching them how to positively handle negativity thrown at them while at the same time not requiring acceptance from others, by teaching them to enjoy the simple/free things in life, and other things.  I didn't want children anymore because I realized I'm "broken".  I've got some whacked senses of how things should be; but I truly believe this is how things should be, so I stick to my guns.  I'm "old fashioned", even when compared to people my age and older, so I believe in values that simply don't apply anymore.  I had been saying  for about 8 years before you were born, "If I ever have a kid, he's either going to end up like me and I would never want to hurt any human being that badly, or they'll end up like most kids his age, in which case I would want to kill him."

I look around at the world, and I feel like I missed my time; I sometimes joke that I'm actually a time traveling experiment, that some scientists from the distant future traveled into our past (which is way in the past for them), stole a newborn baby, and brought him to Clewiston, Florida circa 1977 just to see if there actually is a difference in people as the ages roll on or if it's just how societies change.  I fear I'm going to instill in you the things that drive me to believe I don't belong here.  And that'll just be compounded as time rolls on.

I want to you understand the importance in humility and putting others before yourself, but we're smack dab in the middle of the self entitlement movement, so I'd just be setting you up for being a rug for people to abuse.  I want you to understand the incredible importance of real human connection and interaction, but we're smack dab in the middle of the Global Village where people would rather text each other instead of call; where people would rather call each other than walk down the street and be in each other's presence, so I would just set you up for feeling empty because you would draw your sense of fulfillment from a source that isn't there anymore or is nearing exhaustion at the very least.

I'm fearful I'll:

• Instill in you the desire to always put others before you
• Instill in you the humility to believe you don't deserve anything but the confidence to always try your best and the self-seeking candor to know when you haven't done your best
• Make your primary source of happiness be in serving other people and making others happy
• Instill in you a sense of openness and honesty the likes of which have no place in this society
• Teach you to be childish but mature

I may make posts further down the road to add to these.  Sure, I could come back and just edit this post, but I feel that goes against the nature of the purpose of this blog as well as the nature of blogs in general.

You may look at some of those points and think "But that's a good thing right, I mean aren't we called by God to blah blah blah?"  Sure, that's why I posses many, if not all, of those traits; I believe that's how people should be, I believe having those traits will equal the most happiness for people.  The problem is, unless everyone, or at least most people, is that way, those who are that way are going to be taken advantage of.  Do I hope you'll have these traits, sure, but not to the level I have them, not in this world; I would not be meeting my obligation of a parent to give you the tools to be the happiest you can be.  Yes, I believe this is how people should be, but I know better, and because I know better, I should teach better.

A-#1

Watch your thoughts, they become words.
Watch your words, they become actions.
Watch your actions, they become habits.
Watch your habits, they become your character.
Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.

I'm not sure if she does anymore, but your mother had a poster with this quote in her classroom.  I believe this is the most important thing I can ever teach you:

Know who you are and choose who to be.

This requires a very keen observational skill which you then have to be able to use on yourself.  It seems very few people on this planet have this skill in general (which is probably why such shows like Psych, House M.D., Monk, and others are so popular, they center around a character like none other which is essentially a person who is hyper aware of their surroundings), and even fewer use this skill on themselves.

You're not really a psychic are you         You actually are an OCD freak...
You just have keen observation skills          And you have keen observations skills

Too often I see or hear about people not seeing someone's actions as who they are, or their personality or character.  Whereas everyone makes mistakes, either in a moment of weakness or just in a moment of thoughtlessness, at some point a repetition of those actions indicates a character defining trait.  A repetition of action is the definition of habit.  I might make a slight edit to the aforementioned quote, something along the lines of indicating that actions aren't always based on words; you can do something without saying anything, but actions are still rooted in thought.  At least, they should be.

Every action you take needs to have been "observed" first.  That is to say, a thought pops in your head, you need to observe that thought and decide if that's something you actually want to act on.  The vast majority of people act without thinking.  Now, I'm making the distinction here of using the term "observing" in lieu of "thinking"; thinking is a form of thought, thoughts can happen without your intervention:
Let's say you're in a store and you see a watch that is super cool, so naturally you want it;
You've got some money saved up, but it's not enough to pay for it;
The thought of just putting the watch in your pocket and walking away may just pop in there (much like the Stay Puft Marshmallow man did);
If you didn't "observe" this thought, you would end up stealing (which I know by now I've told you not to), but most people do observe this thought and decide against it, or some people decide to go through with it.  Very few people steal without "thinking" about it.
The point is, when I say observe your thoughts, that's when most people say "think about what you're doing."

Sorry Venkman, I guess I wasn't observing my thoughts.

Now I know, especially when you're young (I love the 're contraction, it could mean "you are" or "you were", so I'm relatively safe from knowing if you'll read this when you're younger or older), you're going to have a ton of observe-less/thoughtless actions; by the time you're a 10 or so, your observational abilities will be essentially ineffective.  You could intend to observe every single one of your thoughts, but it's just not going to happen.  Such is childhood.  Bill Cosby jokingly called it "Brain Damage."

This ties directly into the Golden Rule; in order to treat others as you would want to be treated, you have to be mindful of your actions, as well as what you want.  In order to know what you want, you have to know yourself.  And you need to do this with every action you take.  Most people will apply the Golden Rule in major places like seeing someone in need on the side of the street.  But I'm saying you need to apply that to every aspect of your life.
You find yourself at a cross walk and you have the right-of-way, so you start to cross;
A car comes up and wants to turn right, but since you have the right-of-way, he has to wait for you;
You need to observe that the driver is waiting on you, put yourself in the driver's shoes and think, "What would make me happy if I were that driver."
Hopefully you'll come to the conclusion along the lines of hurrying up across the street instead of taking your time, because you would appreciate it you were driving your car waiting on someone crossing the street and they hurried up.  Now, are there going to be situations where hurrying up isn't going to be the outcome?  Sure, maybe you're helping an elderly person across the street; maybe you're hauling a ton of stuff and hurrying up would be painful.  The point is, you observed your surroundings and saw an interaction between yourself and someone else; you thought about what you would like if you were in the other person's situation which requires knowing yourself; you consciously acted on those observations.

The Debut

I always told myself I wouldn't blog, of course that was when blogging was more of a fad.  So not only did the hipster part of me not want to join the masses, more fundamentally I knew I had nothing important to say, at least to anyone that would care.  However, now there is someone that may or may not care, but with the possibility that he may want to know me a little better, I don't want to potentially rob him of that.

This Blog is for Isaac Shaun Powell, my son.

Other people may read this, but I wouldn't be surprised if the only hit I ever see this blog getting is maybe from my wife.  I want him to know who I was, through recanting of my past; how that past influenced me to become the person I am today, before he really gets to know who I am; and maybe provide a little insight into who I became/why I do whatever it is I did that drove him to read this.  This also serves the purpose of giving him something in case something happens to me; I've seen too many movies where a parent leaves something behind for their child and how great that seems.  Well, in order to do that, the parent had to prepare.

If my wife is reading this, you're probably going to read things you don't like.  I'm going to talk about my idiosyncrasies, many of which I know you think are stupid; heck, I think they're stupid but I also believe this is how people should be, so this is how I've chosen to be.  You're probably going to read things and think "Why doesn't/didn't he talk to me about this?"  Maybe I did once and I didn't like the outcome of the conversation so I figure why talk about it again; maybe I'm confident that talking about such things would achieve nothing other than angst in you, and thus myself.  I'm probably going to say things that you're going to take as me complaining about you or saying there's something you need to change about yourself; I'm only going to say this here (since this is really for Isaac): I have never asked you to change and I truly don't think I ever will.

This is my personal "Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen", dedicated to my son.