I am Lost to the Empathetic Perspective

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Someone asked me to write about my perspective on how our very large online meditation group has evolved in the past couple of years…we are in the midst of a great physical and social divide all over the world. He did not offer a reason for the request or an opinion of his own. From my point of view, the request seemed a pointless task because so many writers and videographers are already reacting publicly about the COVID lockdowns. I mean, who wants to read or watch another one? Then I thought maybe my meditating brother just thought I should start filling my blog again with something meaningful to me. I know I need to write for my own journey to make sense when I look back on it. What I want to remember about these times is that people like him care for people like me even when we live hundreds or more miles apart. It took a while to wrap my clouded and jaded head around it, but he is who I want to open a conversation about. Empathetic people like him are all around. Just look. Someone is out there picking up on those of us that may not realize how beat up we seem. You might be one of those massively sensitive watchers. For you, for my friend, for all of the people that found a way to connect during times when we were not allowed to step foot in a public space, it is worth the energy to write. It has taken me a year to realize that his request could just have been about healing and self-analysis…for my own sake. But it took me no time at all after starting to write to believe that there is no good reason to wait this long to openly appreciate people who are so seemingly naturally motivated to help the rest of us.

In the past couple of years, during the COVID pandemic and lockdown, I have lost my husband, my mother, my second mother and uncle who helped raise us Oklahoma brats of single mothers-lost two jobs and was forced to move to a new home and put my graduate school program on hold. I didn’t post one word of any of this on social media. I did not speak to a therapist. I did not call anyone to talk or cry about it. But I will say it now, without detail or elaboration on my feelings of fear and helplessness, I still have many days of private crying. I have had dozens of these entire-day sessions, honestly. And most of them are completely Merlot-free. I don’t know how I could afford to medicate with wine every day because, as I mentioned, the jobs keep slipping through my fingers. I am not feeling biased when I say that it is not me, it’s them. And so that brings me to perspective…and why I believe my friend asked me to write.

I got a little addicted to Tik Tok while I was between jobs and because I have spent so much time alone in my house. Right away I found that real people, professionals and non-professionals have a large voice in psychology on the platform. So, now I spend some time on it when I am looking for that help that I never ask for. And today my feed brought me exactly what you and I needed to hear today. I could not tell you who it was. She is lost in my scrolling now, but she said that even though she had not reached out to anyone and was not being “a good friend”, people reached out to her to ask her to do simple things with them in the moment like offering to take a walk with her when she went and leaving groceries at her door because they knew she was eating from the Costco sample displays this week. They didn’t offer advice or talk down to her. None of them she mentioned said a word other than to let her know she had a community and a clan. She said that she is still too down to offer herself to anyone, but they knew she needed them, and they just came to her when she had no idea it was apparently time to ask.

How could we know, hypothetically speaking, that we look like we crept from out of a rockslide unless we see through the eyes of the empathetic people around us because, instead, we are looking into that cracked mirror that went down that slide with us…for years or a lifetime. This is nothing new. Everyone who has a voice in psychology or coaching, counseling, public speaking, are all talking about personal perspectives that do not match what the external world may be seeing in us. I am here to say one thing about this, and I will not drag the point any further. I am in no position to prejudge anyone in their agendas. However, everyone has a looking glass built upon their own life experiences. The empaths do not hold that up to us. Literally, figuratively, they just do not-not those people that have a natural motivation to help others. People that honestly want the best for us because we happen to be in their space whether they know us well or not are the ones to take perspective from. These are the people who have come out of the woodwork during this pandemic. These people are teaching the rest of us and re-creating the communities we have lost since we became more about industry than community. I will belabor it no more than that.

I have listened to the hardships of people with the burden of empathy. It is not easy for them to take on so much and to lose energy to be available and open to other people. Heroes have the most challenging lives. If you are one of these persons full of empathy and drained of all the energy people have needed from you over the past 22 months, I hope it is alright that we need you. I hope we can learn somehow to feel more like you. I believe a new community can come from all this. I hope we can breathe air together again soon and all the helpers can have some relief and the rest of us can offer something to the world in return. I hope we can all find closeness because you taught us.

Internet Marketing Challenges

Is it a waste of time to pursue internet marketing if you are naïve to the marketing business? After all, any business has start-up costs, i.e. investing in ads, inventory, coaching. Any business start-up should expect to spend a lot of money on itself in the hopes that it can funnel traffic from the local and even international sources available. But if you don’t know what you are doing, the internet is a very intimidating outlet for sales ads. Put your money on the wrong product or on ads in the wrong website and you may as well have cooked those bills in your stir fry.

So, lately I have spent a massive amount of time learning about internet marketing with a specific company that hires affiliates. The fees to become an affiliate are exorbitant. The coaching is substantial, but the niche is not exactly where my interests lie. This particular company has a very narrow focus on business classes and coaching events. So, even though my niche is very different, I figured that I could learn something about their marketing techniques and maybe use them in my own arena. But, at level 6 of 21 I have already paid more than I wanted to invest and I am suddenly being harassed to death by two coaches in the business.

I was really disappointed to see threatening emails after I became stuck on a section that I can’t get past unless I fork out more money. I got emails like, “If you don’t email me back I will send you to another coach and you will have to restart your learning sections and pay for them again.” My reply was simply, “Wow”. She did a 180 on me. I received another email from that first coach and she said, “Well if you buy the $2,500 package from your other coach, let me know because I should have your sign-up for that.”

Pretty fishy. I was immediately disconcerted. I have decided not to pursue the rest of the sections that I purchased but have not completed. What’s the point in hearing what could be more of the same but invite more pressure to purchase the lifetime affiliate membership? That isn’t what I was hoping to get from the program. The sections have become almost solely about becoming their affiliate with a little bit of marketing technique sprinkled in the videos. Instead, I’ll write in the blog that I’ve left to rot for two weeks because I was so busy with that program. I feel I am better serving people when I write here.

So, my question now is, have I wasted my time? Am I falling out too soon? No, I don’t believe I wasted time because I did learn some things about internet marketing avenues that I was not aware of. I’m grateful for that information. It was worth the money just for that. Should I have given up so soon? No. I think that I dropped off at the right time. I am motivated to pursue ad space and emails for my own potential clients. I feel more comfortable now building my own website and response emails. I can invest in my own niche and feel like it has been worth every second of my time.

After all, time is all we really have. And our time is money, isn’t it? So, if you’ve read this far, thank you for that and if you take anything substantial away from my latest experience, I would say that any amount of education and research is worth time and money spent. If you are serious about your pursuits, know your niche. Use the vast amount of information on the internet to learn as much as you can. Sometimes the paid learning is just the best way to do it. Don’t do nothing, though. Do something every day. Learn something every time. Be positive and expect you will make mistakes and find faulty information but you will also find some useful intelligence. Be a leader in what you love to do. Teach others when you can.

And best of all luck to all of you who want to better your position in business and society.

What has Love got to do With it?

I want to talk here about modern human nature. We won’t find this article useful if there is no one who will argue against my point. I want someone to tell me that I am wrong because I want to be.

There is a region of disassociation in our modern minds. A disconnection between our deeply trusting selves and the ever more crowded communities in which we live. This disconnect, this loss of trust and the resultant abandonment of altruism is seeping like a plague through humanity at a viral pace. Not everyone is at war with inner peace. But most of us are.

Many of us have parents that were forced to take us from our cribs and leave us for most of each day with other people to care for our diapers, nurture us, feed us, keep us alive. This means our own mothers were not there for us so that we could learn to trust that most important soul, the one who we grew to know in her womb. This isn’t our mothers’ faults. This is our society’s fault. And as a result, with each generation children grow up with a faulty sense of trust, companionship, or even identity in some cases.

Self-help coaches are rampant on the internet. They are all offering to fix our emotional problems…our addictions, our misconceptions, our self-loathing, our laziness, our anger. And they are making money from emotional miswirings that began in our cribs.

The world is getting crowded. We crab and dodge the crowds, looking down (at our phones), avoid paper books, read 300-word news on the web and think that we know what is going on in the world. This world is chaotic! How can we be productive and motivated with so much distraction? How many people can be offering paid training in writing for money? How many ways can the competing news channels report on the same subject? How much can there really be out there?

I like the phrase, “Go to the mountain.” It may not mean much to most of us. Let’s face it. How many of us even touch the dirt with our bare hands, much less sacrifice the rigor to scale to a decent place of quiet in the physical world?

But that mountain is much more than a rocky hill. The mountain that we go to is right inside our minds. And what is inside our minds is also tapping away at our cells. And what happens at the cellular level is the difference between our body being a Porsche or a Pinto. Those of us that are confused and chronically exhausted by life and relationships have been experiencing a lack of life-preparation since infancy. Some of us are coddled, kept from the world, taught to be afraid of it. Some of us are thrown into it too soon. All of us are inundated by the vast technological brain decoys floating in and around us.

Many of us don’t know how to love.

In our modern world, we cannot reach the mountain without defining our motivations. We should be determined to follow through on predetermined tasks. We need the will to wake up in the morning, keep a routine, and absolutely must make time to love ourselves. We must be altruistic. We have the right to have everything that we desire, and to fear nothing as long as we live in love and peace. We are to be responsible for ourselves, our children, and every single person that needs us. We have the energy to give our lives meaning, focus, and to lessen our complexities.

The disconnect is not inevitable. That technology that we are experiencing can also be plugged into for meditation and education. If we use an app to meditate and appreciate ourselves, sacrificing even a few minutes to find clarity and calm from the raging storm of incoming notifications, voices, emails, calls, texts, messages, etc. Then that app will give us relief. Give a few seconds of appreciation for the soothing bells on your headphones.

If you set aside time for your computer to educate yourself, then turn off the networking sites and shut out the email notifications for that time. Make intelligent use of the massive amounts of information that we have on the internet. Make a purchase from a local store, and find a new recipe. Take a new online course. Write an article or journal. Then get away from the computer.

Go outside and take a walk. Call a family member or a friend. Walk into a local market or café and meet someone new. Smile at someone you don’t know. Tell the cashier that her hair is magnificent today. Make someone feel your energy and let them feel your love. Trust people to be human. The computer, while articles like this (thank you! if you have read this far) can be compelling, is not a companion.

And, my friends, nothing in this big world is anything to us like another human being. Let’s not confuse our need for closeness with the pictures we see on our screens. We can live in love and love with hope. It will never kill us to “kill” everyone else with our kindness.

Is Geography Truly a Science?

My background and degree are held in the field of geographic information sciences, which is a structured venue to analyze spatial data. It is a science that lends itself to all scientific fields of study. I have to admit that I am still considered a novice, but I have run a few research experiments on phenomena having to do with human and physical aspects that can be drawn into geographical questions. I have studied clay samples from areas inside the united states and Ecuador. I have studied ancient human bone from the black belt river regions in Alabama. If I wanted to ask questions regarding geographical impact, I believe that I can. This brief and general discussion comes up in my field because I am currently finishing a graduate degree in geography. And we have to ask, as new as this field may be, whether this science can legitimately claim to be a science.

In my humble opinion, geography is easily a science because it is a field that changes constantly due to influences from social structure and physical phenomenon both natural and unnatural, the latter coming from cultural influences affecting the terrain to the climate. The earth is a highly unstable, complex and organic organism of immense size and importance to all life upon it. What humans plant, how many animals are on the planet, how water us manipulated, how many forests remain untouched, and the toxicity that is introduced by chemical products and byproducts are some of the habitual human influences brought upon the earth to tame it. The study of geography is not specifically geology, sociology, or anthropology but it has been enlivened by these other scientific realms because of theirs and other spatially-related discoveries.

Hypotheses are made about what to expect from the earth’s behaviors based upon what discoveries are made in the science of geology. The terrain of the earth and all its strata throughout history are still bringing new questions about for geographers to then hypothesize about. Sociology is a study that questions human relationships, changes in intelligence and behaviors, and sparks movements toward bettering the communities and common thought. This helps to determine the effects of human consumption and use of the earth and its resources. Anthropology picks apart the human cultural structures and differences and formulates decisive answers and continually argues the reasoning behind cultural economy and mindsets on the planet. This helps geographers in their quest to make science out of the impacts of cultural thought on this planet and even the processes that formulated the sciences in the first place.

Geography is the science that brings some geological, sociological, and anthropological questions into the open forum of planetary, terrestrial, and climate manipulation. Geographers ultimately make their own hypotheses based on these other, more targeted sciences.

If you have an opposing opinion or would like to elaborate on this question, I invite you to open a discussion. I would be honored to have any input from everyone out there with any interest in this.

I Ended up a Vegan

Last night I had a fantastic adventure on my sofa.

Picture a low-lit evening light. I was wafting in the soft comfort of leather as I lay there, having an amply wonderful conversation with my husband while we waited for Netflix to load our latest find. Yes, it was going to be a rare opportunity to enjoy the company of my darling man because we didn’t expect to give much interest to the documentary that we had chosen to watch.

The documentary started with its dramatic introductions promising to inoculate the viewer with unheard-of revelations of a naïve cheese addict. This guy decided to do a documentary on the horrid lies that the American Heart Association and the American Diabetes Association have been telling us about what we should have in our diets. And the abhorrent and lethal detriment to our health that the inclusion of meats in our diets bears on us all. If you haven’t already watched this documentary, “What the Heath?”, maybe you should prepare yourself for an epiphany. I didn’t expect one. But I had one.

I shouldn’t go into the details of this documentary much further than this because I would just hate to be a dirty spoiler and I would never be able to do justice to this guy’s discoveries of the disgusting capitalist organizations from which most of us depend on and admire for health advice. I will just say that instead of having a wonderful time catching up with my dear husband, we sat instead in awe and personal violation as we watched the truths uncovered by this lone explorer of human health and the offerings of his professional interviewees.

As I sat with my feet upon the lap of my husband with my hand covering my mouth in disbelief, I absolutely and unquestionably became, at the mid-moments of this film, a solid and true vegan.

At the heart of my soul, I have been nothing for most of my life but a carnivore. The “Adkins” diet was my absolute favorite go-to and a great excuse to pursue my dreams of following my carnivorous avenues to the death. But, a few years back, I absolved myself for the sake of health due to documentaries like “Food Matters” to eat a ton of vegetables with my meats and cheeses and eggs. But I never knew what meat could do to a human body until this lone ranger introduced this documentary. This one documentary changed everything! And, I swear I will never again eat a piece of flesh, or an egg, or cheese, or any sort of dairy, or even fish….and especially never chicken again in my life. I threw every piece of meat, every ounce of butter, every bit of beef broth and bacon fat into the bursting garbage can after measuring the utter stupidity that I have suffered for most of my life.

You must understand, I am an analyst. I weigh every decision with precision. For me, everything has a balance. But this? Of this there is no doubt. There is no reason on this earth that I should kill myself, to be in pain every day, to suffer from current debilitations or future diseases. I am finished with suffering. I am finished making excuses that give me that special clearance to invite such anguishing toxins into my body. And, so, I have suddenly become the thing that I never thought that I would become. I am now, and forever will be, a vegan.

Let the health begin.

Is Success as Easy as They Make it Look?

I recently caught this image floating around on Facebook or Twitter…or what ever other social network I had landed on at the time. I thought this comparison was striking. Things that tell such truths tend to rudely pique my interest.

I make it a rule to give success advice a good piece of my attention. I mean, I may be in the toddler league here, but I really don’t have it figured out in the realm of absolute conquest of brilliance and popularity. And I want to cry on the chests of these inspirational brave-hearts when I read what they divulge about their early struggles.

 

 

*Image credit to http://www.joshmiller.com

Because seriously, who doesn’t want to learn how to climb out of the rabbit hole and grab life like a boss?

But that isn’t what this post that I found was about. The suggestions were just too simple for me to accept by list alone. So, I broke it down…a lot. But I will save you the nausea of reading all of the details. I will toss you the good cuts instead.

So, I focused on this unsuccessful guy to the right of the image and did some soul-searching. I told myself that none of the stuff that this unsuccessful bloke is doing is on me. Right? Like we don’t lie to ourselves every single day.

 

 

I don’t horde data…much. I only get angry…inside. I know what I want to be…uh well that one got me. I do keep a journal…but sometimes only hit the pages once a year.

I went across the rest of this depressing list and my stomach dropped in revelation. We can say that we 100% adhere to a rule of behavior that works, but honestly, do we?

 

 

Look now at the list of successful behaviors in the image. This guy has got it together. He does everything right. He does right by everyone. He shares. He communicates. He is motivated and he makes planning look like a cake walk. Who does any of this 100% of the time? Again, let’s be honest.

This is the reality. None of us are going to get anywhere with anything without a plan. We do need lists. We should work hard. We need to know what we want. And we can not push people out of our way to reach a goal just to stand alone when we tackle it.

We do have to share. We do have to be motivated. We have to look at our fears as the reason to stick a hand into Pandora’s box so we can learn how to be stronger, smarter, more fearless.

Tell me now. Whom do you know that has perfected such things?

First, none of us will get anywhere prancing around like peacocks, mowing through people for our accomplishments and resting on those stolen laurels. And, no one of us will get anywhere if we don’t get off our tails and work for a thing. Lastly, no one ever got on top by lying to themselves.

 

So, here it is. After I analyzed that image to shreds, I really broke it down to this one, simple statement:

The foremost and toughest task we face is that we have to be honest about where our weaknesses lie. Only then can we build the mesh to make those failings become our strengths.

Yeah, I got only that from all of those list bullets in the image. Maybe that is why I am still hanging out in the toddler field.

I welcome your thoughts, comments, arguments, or advice!

Take care, my friends!

-Tanya

 

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I think that being human begs of us the responsibility to communicate with love and patience for all others. I feel that being human and being intelligent animals means that we are absolutely responsible for our own welfare and the welfare of others just the same. We are a unit, all of us. Or…we should be. We naturally want to be. Or…we should want that.

So, why the intentional tragedies? Why do humans cause other humans, other animals, other life forms to suffer? Why do so many of us watch the hate happen with such cold hearts…perusing by a Facebook video of young kids beating each other up while some adult videoed this madness for several minutes of suffering, laughing along with it, chiding the kid getting beaten, posting this for thousands of people to run across. And shamelessly owning up to the apparent inhumanity of it.

Am I mistaken in disapproving of the violence in our nature? Violence is part of our nature. Yes. But is it what we inherently label as humane to be violent to any species of animal, especially our own? Is it really okay to let a “human” emotion allow us the permission to violently hurt others either emotionally or physically, or both? Come on. We are talking about intentional actions here.

I have many very personal stories that I may share on this blog if anyone needs to know that someone has been there…that I have been through something similar. For now I will leave this off at the question I first asked.

Why do human beings cause tragedies for others, for themselves, for any reason? What is it that we can talk about that makes sense of any of it? What are your personal stories? Or, at least what are your thoughts? How have you been able to keep a level head when there was a tragedy or mishap in your life?

If you don’t have any thoughts on this, then I would love to know how you share your love. How do you give? What is your advice to those among us whom have been dragged deep into the rabbit hole of despair over acts of human hatred?

Live in peace my friends,

Tanya

My Why

There are so few things in life that excite me now more than happy children, writing for no good reason, and completing a challenging art project. I have fallen out of love with relationship love, and fallen in love with strangers. I have walked a line between fire and lava with two ex-husbands, now…a line which I continue to struggle to balance on. But young’in’s laughing-that’s pleasure to the soul. Kids and animals are the innocents that yet survive the turmoils of our tainted, but lovely Earth. They are what I most like to write about and to draw.

I don’t at all mean to sound like a dreary darling. I can’t begin to tell you how much I long to see the changes that our human condition brings about every few years. We endure so much. We love so much. And for the most part, have loads of compassion. I know men in their 20’s living happily as busters on the streets of New Orleans, hopping trains to get somewhere else, coming back when tourism is heavier, carrying a dog or two along with them…and better food for the dog than the majority of us feed our own at home. This guy sitting on French Street with that big, happy dog by his side would give you a sandwich before he would eat one if he knew you might be hungry too. So many of us are like this if we know just a little bit of suffering.

There are a whole lot of people out there growing up with the misfortune of having an easy and care-free life. Those kids don’t know suffering. So, they haven’t learned much compassion. What a shame. What would they ever write or draw about? And why would they ever think of how lovely a happy child can sound?

The reason that I write is so that I can spark conversation from the yet-existing soul searchers in the world whom are still in love with love, who hate art, read when they have to, but come across something like this. Because interest and humanity is heavy in our hearts. We all want to learn something good from one-another. And what better way to strike a note than to write?