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Everyone is special, not special
Everyone has that capacity for something great, a dream inside of them that transcends beyond them as a person. Everyone has that potential, capacity, that’s what’s not special. But not everyone lives to bring that potential, dream to life, to bring it into existence, a reality, living it out, going through the difficulty, challenge, perseverance, impossibility, belief… that’s what makes the person that does do it, “special”.
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Tribeless
Stuck in the inbetween of half-hearted efforts, last-ditch dreams, and a reality that is incompatible with our idealism. Competition versus compassion, two values incongruent and contradictory, at odds with each other. Why does one exist at the expense of the other? Compassion is not a core value in our competition driven world. We glorify determination, ambition and drive. While compassion, understanding and caring will leave you in the dust, trampled by the go-getters and high-achievers. We celebrate the winners and only the winners can win. The second-placers, “losers” get a purple heart for wearing their heart on their sleeves.
I have something to say about that, let’s fight for compassion, let’s beat competition. But there isn’t a tribe for us, where “losers” want to play, but regulated to the bench, bound to play by the rules we don’t accept. I say play the game, play by the rules, but play the hidden game, the higher order, play the game so that compassion wins playing by their rules. Beat them at their own game, but compassion prevails.
Be Tribeless with me, where competition is not the enemy of compassion. Let’s use compassion to drive our competition and our competition to fulfill our compassion.
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To give and receive
Someone once asked me, how do you know when you’re ready to have kids…
I think when you’re a child of a parent, as a baby you have to learn to Receive Unconditional Love – with the most basic of necessities, feeding, changing diapers, bathing, holding, affection, attention. As you continue to grow and as a child, you receive teachings, communication, discipline and attention in different ways. And it continues on as you grow up into young adulthood and for as long as you have a parent that nurtures and supports you.
Then as an adult, when you get into a relationship, you learn how to Give and Receive Conditional Love – straight forward, you love someone because they love you and they love you because you love them. It’s a give and take of attributes each person sees as love from the other person. But also forging Conditional Love through difficult times, learning lessons on communication, desires, needs, selfishness, disagreements. Two different lives coming together as one to try to move together but as individuals.
Then when this couple have a child, the parent learns about Giving Unconditional Love – coming back full circle they close the loop. They now know what it means to give unconditionally. There is no great reward for changing diapers, nothing in return for feeding and burping a baby, it’s such a one-sided demand the baby requires all the attention, affection and nurturing but it comes naturally. The parent “loves” it, the work, the time, giving everything they have to this small helpless being. And they’ll need all that time of bonding to help carry them through the difficult times as the child grows older, and that’s when unconditional love shows its true strength, endurance and infinite perseverance.
This pathway isn’t perfect and no one has gone through it with the greatest teacher or as the best student or reached each paradigm as a complete person. You’ll never be ready to have kids, no one is ever ready but I told them, I think if you can at least see or understand those are the landmarks for each stage then it’s at least helpful to know where you trying to go.
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The ones closest to you
The family, the most basic social unit, the essence of a group made of individuals and individuals making a group.
It should be so simple, so easy. The family isn’t so big, compared to a school, organization, company, city, state, country, world. The family is made up of people that theoretically love each other, care for each other. They know each other so well. Learn how to communicate and learn from each other.
Yet it isn’t so easy, it isn’t so simple, it isn’t perfect. Many family’s have difficulties. From external forces pushing in on them causing stress, like jobs. school, finances, debt, friends, politics. To internal struggles like doubt, fear, inadequacy, insecurity, expectations, failures, defensiveness, anger. To interpersonal struggles like resentment, bitterness, jealousy, miscommunication, loneliness, disconnect, being confrontational, passivity. Even at the family level, it’s sometimes difficult to “love” each other, embrace and respect each other’s individualism but also be together, move as one, and forgive each other in grace and compassion.
And we wonder why we as a society as a whole can’t seem to get along or work together when even at the most basic level of a family it’s not easy but there are so many things we need to learn from our family dynamics, overcoming and persevering our own interpersonal and relational struggles.
What we can take away is persevering in love. That love prevails. Knowing that we love each other is what can get us through those difficult moments. That whatever hurt was caused by our family member, neglect or alienation that they’re inflicting, it was at some point in their life caused on them, that they’re still feeling the remnants of. There is no better person to understand with compassion, empathy and grace than the person closest to you, but there is also no one you can inflict the greatest pain on than the person closest to you.
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All for One <> One for All
The “All for One” people don’t see things the way “One for All” people do. They are almost polar opposites. They come at solutions with a completely different mindset, strategy, guiding principle and moral value. To the point they villainize each other.
“All for One” people see “One for All” people as not compassionate, cold, selfish people that only care about themselves and results, and have no concern about other people’s struggles. “One for All” people see “All for One” people as irrational, soft people that only care about others people’s feelings to make decisions which results in subjectivity and relativism but don’t actually know how to implement meaningful change.
While we’re so busy destroying and flaming each other because each side believes they only way is their way, the real secret, the real super power is knowing that we need both, we need each other. We cannot operate as a society, community, family without each other’s way of seeing things. Each side needs to value and respect the other side’s viewpoint, knowing that it’s a blindspot on their own side. Then using the other side’s viewpoint as a compass and trying to create a solution using their own strengths to get to the same place together. Everyone agrees, that people need help and support but they also need to take responsibility and ownership. But we become polarized when we think it’s either/or and there is only one way.
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Grace is Given
Sometimes you can feel so alone and nobody cares. Nobody understands you, what you’ve been through, how difficult it’s been. It’s not that people don’t care or don’t want to help you. They don’t know how, what to say, what to do, how to help. You’re right they don’t understand and can’t possibly know what you’ve been through. They don’t have the experience, insight or wisdom to give you the words you need to hear. They’re barely keeping their own lives together, have their own problems to deal with, their emotional, social, intellectual and psychological limitations are already at capacity with their own lives. And they’re also just looking for a place to find refuge, because they’re feeling alone, like nobody cares, nobody understands them, what they’ve been through and how difficult it’s been. They just need some grace and understanding, the kind that we’re looking for.
Sometimes the grace and understanding needed is the grace that needs to be given. That’s how we bring grace into existence, and what you give will come back to you.
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All for One ≠ One for All
I believe people think of the solution to social problems in one of two mindsets. I use the motto to categorize the two, “All for One” and “One for All”.
All for One – Is the mindset we should all move as one, together, and make change as a movement, to impact the greatest social change and fastest progress. The driving principle is social awareness, compassion and empathy. “Fairness” is the moral standard, no one should feel less than or greater than the person next to them. And hence the mission tends to be trying to eliminate inadequacy and inequality, with the action statement to help each other and balancing extremes of unfairness or inequality at either end.
One for All – Is the mindset that controllable, meaningful change mostly happens at a personal, individual level. With a premise that trying to change someone’s mind is difficult and challenging and the most efficient use of energy and time is to focus on self-improving yourself first. Another premise is that, sometimes the group does not have your best interest in mind, maybe your circle of friends are bad influences or your immediate family has a depressed and victimized mindset. But say you want to go to college and improve your circumstances, you’ll need to almost ignore or maybe sometimes cut off these influences just so that you could get yourself better. And at the same time, you, yourself wouldn’t be able to help them “get better’ because you don’t have the experience or wisdom to help them when you’re just learning how to improve yourself, but they’re also not at a place to hear you, change their mindset or even listen to your advice.
The true “One for All” mindset is that once you can learn the improvement, development skills, and get to a certain place in life, you would be able to share that with the people around you, indirectly or directly, organically or organizationally. But also that really only the people ready, willing and want to hear it would listen and a lot of the time that’s not for everyone at that particular time. Everyone is at a different place in their own particular journey. That is how One moves for All. For example, when a person pulls themselves out of destitution to run a business, doesn’t have to be a big corporation to make a difference, a small business now employing a dozen people, that’s a dozen family’s living in homes, 36-48 people eating meals, 24 children going to college. And these family’s can support other small businesses and community by using their products and services. Or when someone who’s overcome struggles and an impoverished mentality, they come back to directly give back to their community, with education, mentorship, support.
But I think a lot of the times, people in the “One for All” mindset get stuck in a “One for One” mentality and forget or don’t know how to transition to “One for All”. They’ve been in that mindset for so long, the lonely grind of just pushing themselves to get better, cutting off anyone around them that doesn’t help them get better or might pull them down. Maybe scared of falling back, failing, losing it all.