I've written the following in response to a few different bloggers saying they appreciated my attitude. While not trying to pat my own back, I wanted to let those interested know a little bit more about why my attitude is this way. I try to follow a few simple rules in my life drawn from my very limited studies of world philosophies and religions. I was raised as a Roman Catholic and even considered becoming a priest, until I discovered girls. After that, the idea of celibacy seemed almost counter to why I was created. But then, evolution also made a lot of sense to me; so with all this confusion, I decided the best thing I could do was look at spirituality as a whole, not just with a narrow, Christian perspective. This proved to be difficult as nearly everyone I knew at the time was a Christian and either didn’t understand or didn’t want to know about any other perspectives.
After a number of years of reading different pieces of literature, everything from a re-read of the Old Testament to L. Ron Hubbards Scientology tomes, I stumbled across the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. A friend had a copy in her bookcase, which I had looked at a number of times without really getting into it. Once I did, however, the Buddhist philosophies really struck a chord with me. I identified with the principles of Karma very strongly. The ideologies of mindfulness and impermanence also hit very deeply. These seemed to be bedrock philosophies for living life. I am not a Buddhist, mind you, just very conscious of the state of play.
Tolerance, patience, honesty and respect are all qualities I admire and try to follow myself. Oh sure, I fall down. We all do. No one is perfect. But I think we are all defined by our struggle to be happy and to lead a good life. I continue to grapple with these concepts everyday and will continue until the day I die. But without that struggle, then I guess I'd just be an apathetic, negative creep...