Excel your friends? Or let them excel you?

La Rochefoucauld, the French philosopher, said: “If you want enemies, excel your friends; but if you want friends, let your friends excel you.”

That's a rather interesting piece of advice. One would think there would be more companionship in everyone doing well. Yet there are examples of this philosophy all over the place in life. Whenever people start make something of their life other people decide they don't like the change. They get jealous that their friends are finally starting to have the good life and start trying to drag them back to their old habits and ways of thinking, like the proverbial crabs in a bucket.

People often say they want the best for the people that they care about, but what most of them really mean is that they want those people to have the best possible experience they can have as long as it isn't better than what their own life currently is.

But isn't this kind of backwards? I mean shouldn't we be happy for the people that we care about doing well, regardless of whether or not they are doing better than we are? If not, why do we send our children to school?

The whole point is to instill in our children knowledge that has already been accumulated, so that they can use everything that has been learned up until this point as a springboard for their lives, to propel them further than we were able to go. They can learn from the experiences of others. They do not need to go through the same trial and error that got us to where are today. 

For generations, martial arts students have trained under their teachers until their teachers could teach them no more. And then the students, the ones that stick with it,  become the masters, teaching a whole new generation of students.

Think about it, if I train from age 20 to age 60, I have 40 years of knowledge that I can pass on to others. But during my training I figure out new and better ways to do what has already been done. When I become the master, I am able to teach what I have learned to others in half that time. Those that I teach do the same and with each successive generation there is more knowledge and due to newer better techniques it takes less time to absorb it all, making for more time to learn even newer even better ways.

In martial arts it is the purpose of the master for his students to one day exceed him. One man standing on another man's shoulders can reach places he might otherwise never have been able to go. Shouldn't it be this way in every area of life where there is an instructor and a student? Martial arts, college, philosophy, an office job, family, relationships why should it be different for any of these things?

How does it make you feel when someone that you have taught something exceeds your training and is able to use it to go further in their life and to train that new thing to others? Do you think you should hide or squash your natural talents so as not to make others feel bad?

Do you really know the people you love?

Most of us are constantly surrounded day in and day out by people. The world is full of them.Some we like, some we love, others we despise. The ones we don't like we often tend to know quite a bit about. We frequently make ourselves consciously aware of their likes and dislikes so that we can be avoid being like them.

One would think that we would naturally seek to find out what things those we love like and dislike. But often that is not the case. Oh, it might be, early on in the relationship, when we are struggling to get them to like us, but somewhere along the way that curiosity tends to fade and die out altogether. We find out what we need to know to get them solidly in our lives and then once we do, we move on to other pursuits.

We are constantly hit with all this data, especially from TV and news media about ourselves, how and what to do to take care of ourselves and make us happy. Advertisements focus on our enjoyment of life and how their products will make us feel and look. But, unless it's the holidays, they don't spend much time focused on how what they have to offer will make our families and friends happy.

In all fairness we do have to live with ourselves forever. There is no escaping oneself. But a large part of truly enjoying ones life comes from the happiness we can bring to others. It is joy shared that is joy multiplied.

It has been said that the most powerfully positive magickal word for a person to hear, is their own name.  Now, this is just a guess, but I think you probably know the names of the five closest people in your life. But how often do you use it?

And what about other things that they like and care about?

Make a list of the five people that you are the closest to in your life. Attempt to answer these questions for each of them. No cheating. Do this simply from what you already know about those you care about and love.

What is their favorite color?

When is their birthday?

What is their favorite food? What is their least favorite?

Do they have a favorite drink?

What are their hobbies? What do they do to unwind?

What is one place they have never been but would like to visit?

What are their goals for the future?

What is the average airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?(sorry. j/k couldn't help it)

Knowing yourself as intimately as you do, these should be easy questions to answer about you, but can you answer them as your friends and family would?

Don't worry, not knowing doesn't make you a terrible person. It just gives you the opportunity to learn more about your loved ones. I am not saying that you should spend all day everyday focusing on other people. Having you time is important as well. But don't you think you should spend at least some time showing those that you care about that what they want really matters to you? That they are just as important to you as you are to them?

Are you on an insane trip?

To start things off, today, I'd like us to play a little game of make-believe. It may seem a little silly, but I promise, it is relevant.

First, let's imagine that you and all of the people close to you in your life decide to take a trip together. Now, there are quite a few of you, so you decide to rent a bus. You agree to take turns driving so nobody gets too fatigued to enjoy the journey.

You handle all of the normal life complications like time off and house sitting and all that. You get packed up and start away on this wondrous journey. Everyone is all excited to be going on vacation and there is this huge air of anticipation for all of the fun you are going to have.

At first things seem to be going great. People are getting along together and everyone is having fun. Then you notice something is wrong, but at first you can't quite put your finger on what it is. So, you decide to observe what happens and see if you can figure out what is wrong. After foregoing sleep for a couple of days you finally discover the problem.

You notice some differences in the habits and patterns of the drivers as each one takes their turn. Some are using a road map and others just seem to be taking random turns as if they have no idea where they are going. That doesn't seem to make any sense so you start to pay even closer attention to what is happening.

Each driver, when it is his or her turn, sets off in a completely different direction than the one before. You catch a glimpse at some of the maps and see that one driver is heading to Tijuana, Mexico and another to Las Vegas, Nevada. Two others are going to Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Buffalo, New York.

What would happen at this point? What would you do?

By now, I am sure your logical mind is screaming at the lunacy involved in all this and declaring that this would never ever happen in real life. People would never go on a journey like this without agreeing on their destination or destinations ahead of time. With any large group of people surely more planning would go into the trip to ensure it was actually possible to get where you were going.

That certainly sounds reasonable. Yet, I submit to you this question. Isn't life a journey? Isn't life a journey that you take with all of your friends and loved ones? And aren't most of our lives run pretty much exactly like this insane example?

How much time have you spent planning out where you are going and how you are going to get there? Are your friends and family aware of the direction you are travelling in? It really doesn't matter how much planning you do, if those around you have their own mutually exclusive plans. You will never get anywhere that way because you can't lead every minute of every day. And when it is some other person's turn to lead, they are going to go in their own direction if you don't have a previously agreed upon course to follow.

Essentially, there are three main choices available in life. Go it alone. Be lonely but have total control on your direction and velocity. Endure the insanity above. Or take the time to involve those that you care about in coming up with a plan that enables all of you to move together in the same direction.

Which sounds like a better choice for your life?

Vision. What you see, you create.

Ten years ago I had a vision of what I wanted my future, my now, to look like. And for the most part it does. There are parts that I wish were different, but the things that I was specific about in that vision happened more or less the way I wanted and expected them to.

When I was young it was pretty much just my mom and me against the world. We were dirt poor but I was happy.  But then she met my step-dad and it turned out to be me against the world. He made me pretty unhappy. And even when she did disagree with him, which was often, she submitted to his will in how to treat and raise me.

I decided around the ripe young age of six that I didn't have a family and wasn't going to until I could choose for myself who they were going to be. Fast forward through my teenage years full of frustration and angst. By the time I was in my mid-twenties I had gone through a lot of self empowerment and transformational stuff.

There was this one group of people that I regularly played Dungeons and Dragons and other role-playing games with. Most of them were amenable to my overall philosophy of empowerment and the pursuit to bring positive change to the world. We got along really well and spent a lot of time together. They were all good people. I got this idea in my head that these people should be family and that we should live together, pooling our resources and our debts, over time allowing the former to grow and eliminating the latter.

At the time we all lived in separate apartments. It appalled me the amount of money that was being thrown away every month. None of us owned our own residence and at the rate we were going none of us ever would. We were all separately struggling to survive.

My vision was for the core group, which at the time was four of us, to move into a house together, vastly cutting down on our monthly payments so we could get out of debt and actually own something, while at the same time bringing our message of personal growth and self improvement to the world.

For awhile I was fired up and really motivated and it showed in our results. It took a little over a year. But we did find a house big enough for us to move into. The problems came in that it was not just the four of us. Initially when we moved into the house there were not four but six of us. Things kept fluctuating until at one point there were twelve of us living in the house.

Our other friends had heard about our idea and thought it sounded great. They saw the good in what we were doing and jumped on the bandwagon. They wanted the pay off but they did not want to do the work of bringing the vision fully into reality. For awhile, it became pretty uncomfortable around here. Somehow it was harder to pay our bills with ten or more people working and living here than it was with four. The housing market falling apart did not help at all. The "new" people would not work together here and things were more or less chaos. I almost gave up.

Gradually, people started leaving. And with each person that left it actually got easier and easier to run our household.  Our debts are decreasing. Our secondary mortgage has been paid off.  There is a good chance that in the next year or so we will own our home free and clear. There are six people living in the house now, four core group members and two roommates. Or as I like to say it, four family members and two roommates. As a family we love and support one another. We do our best to make life better and easier for each other.

Over the last ten years a lot of mistakes have been made and a lot has been learned. I have a new vision now that includes the things that I have currently that are not exactly the way I want them and things that I do not have but do want. And this time I have a one year, five year and ten year vision. The shorter goals can be used to more directly focus on ensuring the larger picture turns out the way I want it to.

What does your now look like? Do your results match your vision from ten years ago? What is your vision for the future?

Growing Up

When most people are young and in school we promise each other that we will be great friends forever. Then "life" happens and somehow years later we find that we no longer associate with any of the same people we used to know. What happens to cause this?  To really understand that, you need to understand what it is that drew you together in the first place.

You are naturally drawn toward people that have the same interests as you. You like a lot of the same foods, so you tend to eat together. You like the same styles of music so you jam together with your tunes, either in a band on your stereo or both. You play the same games, watch the same movies and read many of the same books.

The more things you do together, the more you have in common. And the more you have in common, the more you want to do together. You play, live, love, learn and grow together. Over time your experiences together form what seems to be an unbreakable bond.  After awhile, you really can not imagine living without one another.It is usually what happens though.

A couple of people in your group may go off to college in different states. One person may have to go out of town to take care of family. Another may spend 16 hours a day trying to keep a family business running. Soon there is just one or two of you left, reminiscing about what you all used to do together in the old days.

All of the things that you do together and all of the people that do them together become your social circle. I think of each collection of activities and time spent together as the core of a sphere and each person as rotating around that sphere. There are an infinite number of potential spheres as there is an infinite number of potential groupings of people and activities. And the way I see it, when one or more people no longer spend the time in that group doing those activities together, they naturally spin off from that sphere and into another one.

It is technically possible to hold a group together that is physically no longer able to spend as much time together. You can call, write, text,email, video chat, share every little thing you do on Facebook and Twitter and make frequent visits  to one another. But it will never be the same as when you all used to hang out together because there are so many other things going on in each individual life that you do not have the time to share with everybody all the time. Most people say that they will do whatever it takes to keep the relationship going but when it comes right down to doing it, they do not. And that is okay. Yes, it is possible, but generally not worth the time or effort and usually just ends up adding enormous amounts of stress and strain on these relationships.

The time and effort that gets spent trying to keep a person locked into an old social circle prevents you from enjoying the people new and old that are in your social circle and prevents that person from fully enjoying the new sphere that they have spun off into. Do everything you can to spend as much time as possible enjoying life with the people in your sphere. But when circumstances natural or otherwise cause someone to no longer fit in your group, wish them well and let them go. It is nobody's fault. There is nothing wrong with you or them. Sometimes these things just happen. It may seem sad or even unfair at the time, but sometimes room needs to be made for new growth. Not everyone grows at the same time, same rate or even in the same direction, even if we have exactly the same experiences.

And that is why people very seldom remain lifelong friends with their school buddies.

Being an adult

The other night we had some friends over.  And the actions of one led to the damaging of property belonging to the other. The people involved were two different guests who are acquaintances and while not the best of friends, they do generally get along.  It was completely an accident but damage still occurred.

We, the people that own the house, are going to pay for the repairs incurred. Why? Shouldn't the person that took the action that caused the damage be responsible for paying the cost? Yes he should. But ultimately we are responsible for everything that happens under our roof. If we had not invited person A to our home, he would not have been here to damage person B's property. Likewise if person B had not been here, their property would not have been here to damage. We may not have physically done the damage, but we are responsible for setting up the circumstances by which the damage occurred.

I am however somewhat bothered that person A did not at least offer to pay for the damages. He directly took an action that caused the damage and then said he didn't really feel bad about it because he just knocked over an item that should not have been where it was. He is correct that it should not have been there.  But, I just don't get the mind set. If I go to a house belonging to someone else and I knock over or break something, I feel bad about it and immediately offer to make reparations.  It is just common courtesy. Then again, I guess that is just a logical fallacy, that courtesy is at all common.
Part of being a mature responsible adult is owning up to your mistakes and making reparations for any damage caused. If you are not going to take responsibility for what guests do when they are at your home, you should not invite guests into it. And if you are not willing to take responsibility for your actions when you are a guest, you should not be a guest.

We need to have a conversation about this with person A. This is not the first time something like this has happened with this specific person.  In the past he has accidentally damaged something belonging to us and we shrugged it off. This is the first time that he has damaged property belonging to another guest. And the repair may be hundreds of dollars. We can and often will make the choice to shrug off damage done to us. We can not and will not shrug off damage done to the property or self of someone under our care.

He needs to know that we are going to pay for the damage done to our other friend's property because we are fully responsible for anything that happens inside our home. And then he needs to let us know what he intends to do about the fact that he damaged property that was, at least temporarily, under our care. Whether he wants it to be true or not he is fully responsible for every action he takes. If he refuses to accept that responsibility, then perhaps the nature of our relationship with him will need to change. I really do not want to see that happen, but if it must it must.