Insidious Adaptation

"So then you are choosing to suffer?" "No, I am not choosing to suffer, but I do suffer." "Well, that is a choice is it not? Suffering is about how we interpret, through choice, our environment and the circumstances instances we experience." "I guess" "So then, the suffering you experience is based on choice." "Maybe..." Double-click for suffering.  On an unexpectedly warm autumn day, the air conditioning inside my office is particularly frigid, thus the interaction between extreme heat and extreme cool condenses on any surface flexible with the temperature, my client looks at me with a blank stare. "So, how's your week been?" "Good." He does this. He comes to see me, yet, refuses to willingly give up information. Sometimes I feel like some kind of private investigator, having to snoop around the obvious to get client to subconsciously tell me something to grab on to. "Yea, t...

When I first graduated with my bachelor's degree after seven years of in and out of school, many degree switches, and goal-interfering behaviors, I finally got my first job in my field. Little did I know that first job was going to be working at a group home with adolescent boys whom had a criminal rap sheet larger than grown men I would later work with. The funniest part of the job was that the first time I went in for the interview I had to take a basic math exam, which I failed. My pride interfered with my ability to conduct basic, elementary-level mathematics and budget a grocery ledger. "I'm sorry Mr. Meier, you failed the math test, you are not eligible for hire at this time." The words shook through my body, crumbled my foundation, made me reflect on every other inadequacy that was now exposed. Pain searing through my temples, a throbbing that made me want to lash out at him, the HR guy (whom later became a Facebook friend). I wanted to hurt someone, I wa...

"Well, he needs to do what is asked of him." "He needs to start talking about these things." "He needs to see his situation for what it is." "He cannot just sit there doing nothing." What is it that HE is trying to do? See, as humans we have this ability to communicate with one another, an ability that we take a little too far from time to time. Yes, we have lived a life of experience altering what we see as right and wrong, efficient or not, but it is not the life someone else lived, therefore doing what they need to do for them. I presented on people understanding context recently, for there I refer to the back story being a significant indicator of why or how people did whatever they did. Now however, I want to look at how people interact and try to alter, interfere, change for the better even, the lives of other. Whether you are a parent, a friend, a spouse, a family member, a complete stranger that simply notices the same poor be...

One surprisingly-sunny, late-winter day, as my daughter was figuring out her footing on the edge of a sidewalk, down hill, my apprehensions laid in my will aiding her to stay upright. As she continued to place one awkward foot in front of the other, something shiny caught my eye. I looked past her as she stepped down to safety and made my approach, as though it was placed right here, for me. "Hey, what's this?" A rhetorical question, for as I made my approach and the dim silver shimmer informed me that is in fact currency, a significant currently at that. The mind's ability to determine things quickly, on display here as I discounted the possibility of a penny or nickel, even a quarter was too small, maybe a fifty-cent piece? No, not that either, for it was a little smaller than that. "Ah, it's a silver dollar!" I exclaim to my careless daughter and a wife who was too far ahead to take note of what she might have assumed another piece of garbage I...

I am cancer free, well, at least the lump in my leg isn’t cancerous, or should I say, it wasn't felt to be cancerous. The best part of this all, was that for a few minutes today as I drove to the doctor’s office to pull down my pants for two nurse practitioners, yes, all before 9AM, I had a glimpse of what life could be like if I were to be stricken with a disease that kills its hosts.  Not to be dramatic, but that’s what I do, that’s what anxiety does, for worst case scenarios are the only way my mind knows what to do with information. It happens without effort, like slipping down a slide, for I typically recognize the thought, and move on. This time however, I decided to stay. I stayed on the thought process of what life would look like if I were to truly have cancer and the treatment options and the lifestyle that would then be my lifestyle. My first thought, was, my daughter. For I love her so, however, as much as I love her, and as much as I think I can contribute...

Seeing and feeling the hurt in one's eyes is a gift some say, an empath is what I have read, the ability to connect and feel what another person feels at a heightened level. This, something I have done since childhood, without awareness that other people don't naturally do this, or understand other people in that way. I can look back over the foundation of my own perspective in life and see that I was always adapting to what I perceived other people felt or wanted and therefore led me to being "liked" in many ways. The problem was and still is, is that people only like what is presented without actually liking me. The hardest thing one can do is to understand that other people think and perceive differently than they do. I was always influenced by why certain people did things, why they were able just to be, "cool," and it wasn't something I could just mimic. In high school, I had a friend named Eric, he was popular, and good at sports, and well, ju...