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Journal

Elections

A lot of Americans will be disappointed in the next few days. Growing up in South America when democracy meant dictatorship, and watching every single election go the wrong way for decades, I’d like to remind everyone that we are more than our government. 

Vote your conscience, yet form your conscience by reading and dialoguing, not by what the government does.

Invest your time to go out to the polls, but invest your emotional energy into your personal relationships instead. No politician deserves the power to take away your joy.

The good candidate is not God. The bad candidate is not the devil. Place your worship where it is due.

Remember that the world does not move in 4-year, discreet cycles; everything is connected in a continuous way. Trump’s America will elect his successor. Obama’s America elected Trump. We are all trying to figure things out along the way.

Your joy belongs to you. Keep it close and do not give it away.

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Journal

A Full-Time Job

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Minding your own business is a full-time job.

Working on your own shortcomings is a full-time job.

Focus on bettering yourself and being the person you want to be. There’s no time for anything else.

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Journal

Regrets

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I have found that if you give all you do your best, you’ll have fewer regrets in life.

Knowing that you did all you could have done removes the what-if-I-had-done-more brain worm.

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Journal

Boundaries

Roller coasters are fun because of the rails.

Boundaries create true freedom.

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Journal

Centralization

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The more we centralize decision-making, the less those on the edges will identify with the decisions.

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Journal

Cats

What are cats so tired of?

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Journal

Death

I think we are shocked at the inevitability of death because we are hard-wired for eternity.

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Journal

Analogies

All analogies break down eventually.

Analogies are like roads: you can stick with them, but eventually they end, or they will get too bumpy to be useful.

Roads also separate neighborhoods and countries, which eventually lead to them being markers of inequality and dissimilarity.

Which in turn are opposites of analogy.

Even analogies for analogy break down.

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Journal

On lives mattering

Some don’t care about you, whether you live or die.

They may not know you exist.

They may know you exist, but not know you enough to care.

They may know you exist, but hate your guts.

In their world, your life doesn’t matter.

Having someone matter to you means their existence has an impact on your life.

When does someone’s existence impact you? When you care about them.

How can you care about them? By getting to know them.

How do you get to know them? By spending time with them.

Time. The one currency you can’t get more of, and of which with every minute that passes you have less.

Giving your time to someone is the way to get to know them, and as a result caring about them. And if you care, their existence impact you, making them matter.

Lives matter when you give of yourself to them.

So reach out personally to someone whose life may not matter to some. Reach out personally to someone whose life may not matter to you – yet.

And maybe one day we’ll agree the measure of lives mattering is that they just…

do.