Love and fear

Many decades ago, after much thought, I concluded that two extreme feelings in life are love and fear and all other feelings or emotions are combinations of the two extremes. Love creates, fear destroys. Some religions call love a god and fear a devil.

I distinguish healthy from unhealthy fear. Unhealthy fear is a fear of something that is perceived as threatening our being, not our life, but our being which may seem like a life threat. Examples are fear of not being accepted, of being ridiculed, being unloved, ignored etc. usually by a person or persons close to us. Healthy fear is a fear of something that does threaten our life; for example, fear of being run over by an oncoming truck as it is happening.

Unhealthy fear prevents us from experiencing and trusting true love, the life force that fuels our true potential. The unhealthy fear is usually a result of negative life experiences, commonly in early life, when we were not yet fully developed emotionally and thus not able to lovingly deal with that experience or situation. We then resort to whatever behaviors help us make it through such experience. 

And most of the time we make it physically through, but emotionally scarred. What remains, though, are those fear-triggered behaviors that worked then, but prove to be unnecessary and harmful later on in life when we are capable to overcome the triggers by relying on love. Those behaviors and attitudes prevent us from using love to deal with situations in life. They create misery for us and usually also for those around us.

As much as one may wish, one can not eliminate unhealthy fear by thinking about it. What works is re-experiencing the situations that created fear-based responses in the first place and coming through them now, fully equipped and capable of healthy, constructive, love-based responses. We unlearn the harmful behaviors and thus remove them from our arsenal. We learn how to respond in a healthy way, healthy for us and for those around us. The unhealthy fears vanish as a result.

Thoughts on this sixth day of January, 2018

Three thoughts have been occupying my mind today:

women I made love with
environment and children
police are workers too

What's going on? Well, about this time 50 years ago I had my first experience of sexual intimacy with a women. That made me think of all the women I experienced (physical) love making with and I started innocently making a list of their names. When the list was finished (I kept it and looked at it over and over, sort of shocked) I started feeling ashamed because the list was quite long (I did some research and found out that it was many times longer than the average). I felt ashamed because I evidently went through life "scoring" without much loving, without really committing myself to a loving relationship. What also made me go through this was the fact that at this advanced age of mine I believe I found a loving woman (and she found me) with whom things are different giving me a hope that I too can commit to a loving relationship that lasts.

Then I saw a part of a documentary about the changing environment and humans' impact on that change. One of the central themes was, as usual, the grief about what sort of a world we are leaving for our descendants. While it is true that we are having an impact on the environment that may lead to our extinction or at least to leaving the world to our descendants that will be by far more difficult to live in than our own, that process is a natural one since we too are part of the nature and are not needed as such for life in general to continue. What's more, does life need to continue? Will it continue? Should it continue? Also, if we do not want our children to have hard time, then why just not have children at all?

I also saw for the umpteenth time some images of some demonstrators somewhere being beaten up by police or security force. And it occurred to me once more how sad it is to see people, who for all practical purposes should be on the same "side" of the issue, fight each other as if their interests are somehow in contradiction. How easy it is for us to be mislead about things that are really important and to follow some false prophets.

So, that's what was on my mind today.

Life goes on

Four years ago, in June 2013, I retired from my job and from my profession and left US a month later. I had lived there since 1976 with a 16 month break in 1982/83. Now I live in Berlin, Germany. Many ask me how I feel about having left and whether or not I wish to return. Well, I feel good about having left and do not wish to return to the States and do not even miss it; although, I miss my friends. How come?

It must be because I lived a full life, had a great career, married five times in the States, lived in 4 different states, traveled in all but the New England states, experienced life fully. Occasionally I reminisce about some of my experiences and I feel joy that I had them, never wishing to repeat them at all.

I remember my first step outside of the airport in Austin, TX, late at night in July, 1976, a young kid in a brand new place feeling that Texas muggy heat. Not much was known to me about the US outside of the movies and books -- it was all new. For the first few weeks I wanted to return home so badly until one day I looked up into the skies and saw clouds. Those clouds looked just the same as they looked at home. Then that evening I looked up at the Moon -- still the same Moon. I started to melt.

Then I dived into the American experience full speed. I loved it, I loved Austin, I loved Texas, I loved listening to country music, going to .

I found a girlfriend who lived on Nueces Street and drove her 65 Rambler with a hole in the floor (she called the car Ramblerett). She was beautiful, smart, fun, I will never forget those beautiful long legs and many, many hours spent in her poor-student apartment with no air conditioning, skin to skin. (I must tell a secret here, she was my teacher during my orientation months in Austin. Oh well, I never said I was perfect.)

She introduced me to Willie and Waylon, The Eagles, Freddy Fender, Johnny Cash, Simon and Garfunkel, Emmy Lou, Bonnie Raitt, and many more; took me to Broken Spoke, Split Rail, World Armadillo Headquarters to dance, bowling in some bowling alley on Lamar street, Barton Sprigs to swim and play frisbee (and have my first joints). I made friends with some of her friends (Luis, his wife and baby girl come to mind).

I had a huge number of wonderful experiences, those experiences were uniquely beautiful and could not be repeated. I did not miss a beat. There is much more to tell.

Inserts and the like

I have been torn between posting thoughts on my blogs and Facebook. Recently and regrettably Facebook has been winning. But now it's time for the blog. so, here it goes.

Most of you occasionally find inserts in your newspaper or receive them directly by post with a bunch of advertising in them. Many of you, I surmise, dutifully examine them for any "deals" that may be hidden in there. I don't and I actually strongly dislike receiving them and even detest their existence. Here's why.

I suspect that the advertisers' motivation for using inserts is to gain sales. Nothing particularly wrong with that as a concept. Every business's existence depends on selling what they produce. So, what's wrong with inserts? And here I will venture to answer this question without doing any research and base it all on my observations, common sense, and stuff I learned during my graduate study in business.

Many are susceptible to being nudged into wanting stuff they really do not need just because it is a "good deal." I believe advertisers know this and tailor the ads with that in mind. To me that is very unethical.

Then there is the rest of us. What is wrong there is that in the first place I did not ask to receive the inserts and am forced to deal with them one way or another (time, etc).

Then, lots of resources (paper, paint, storage, distribution, printing machines, and a lot of other direct and indirect investment) are invested in the insert I get only for me to make no use for it. Thus, they are wasted.

Next, my labor is exchanged for something I do not want and do not use. How so? Someone pays for the insert I get? Who? Well, it is I who pays for it (with money I got in exchange for my past labor) if I eventually use the advertiser's product and pay the regular price not taking advantage of the "deals" in the insert.

Bottom line is that I resent inserts.

Windows 10 and the external sound card

After resisting for a long time and checking all the compatibility issues, I decided to finally upgrade my laptop to Windows 10. It all went rather smoothly. Everything worked, except ...

I have this external sound card, the "8-CHANNEL 3D USB 2.0 EXTERNAL 7.1 SURROUND SOUND BOX W/DIGITAL OUTPUT, USB-SND8."

When the upgrade was finally all done, the sounds came just from the laptop's regular speakers. No problem, I said, just need to assign my card as the default sound device and things will be fine again. Well, not exactly, since Windows 10 threw in a new thing. Soooo ...

I found the sound setup dialog and made sure that the external sound card was set as the default, but now there was no sound at all. I immediately checked all the connections, the device was on, everything looked as it should, but no sound. I went to the manufacturer's website and found out that this device was not (yet, I suppose) compatible with Windows 10. Great, I said to myself and started looking for another USB sound card. 

But then something told me to investigate a bit more and, after trying all I knew how, I did the following. I marked the USB speakers in the sound setup dialog, clicked on "Properties" and (eventually) "Levels." 

Sure enough the little Speakers and Line and Microphone speaker icons were all marked with a "No-no" sign. I unchecked them all and it all now worked fine.
 
I thought this might be of use to somebody else out there.