Your wants and desires are YOUR expectations.
I hear/read a lot of overly romantic suggestions around expectations.
From my experiences, expectations are not most people problem.
Most people problem not expectations, it is lack of acceptance.
Whatever you do that fulfills a desire, do THAT in order to fulfill THAT desire. Whatever you do that does not fulfill a desire, DO NOT expect it to. Accept it as what it does.
We are more Our desires than We are Our fulfillments.
We are more Our wants than Our needs, fulfilled or neglected.
There are a ton of things a person could write about turning 45 on that clock of years one has spent foraging this spinning fireball covered in water and rock.
OWL share with YOU 3…
ONE) You’re Going To Have Regrets, Live With Them
I have heard people suggest that age makes you regret things you did not do. My experience is that you will regret things you did just as much as what you did not do. Regret is a function of imagination and if you have a healthy enough imagination, every scenario you have ever encountered will be remixed in that mental studio of yours.
Get used to it.
Do not let it become a drag. Learn to be appreciative of what you actually did do, and whatever occurred afterwards, good or bad, be grateful for those lessons and experiences.
TWO) Love Harder.
First off, Love should be a two way street, or we should not consider it “Love”.
However, whatever other rules we have, our next rule should be to spread it as far as we can.
Mean world syndrome or not, Earth is a really rough place. You’re going to need allies.
Family– and friends so close they prove that water can be thicker than blood– are more valuable than most business connects.
We do not win by getting over, we win by empowering our people to feel free to be empowered.
THREE) 50 years not a long time.
To somebody in they 20s, Life still feels like a motion blur(and it still feels like that at 45 most days), but you can cover a lot of ground in one Lifetime, and still not really get anywhere.
I’m almost half a century years on this earth. I can understand a Lifetime better than a “generation”. 50 years is NOT a lot of time. MOST of us will not have accomplished what we sought out to accomplish in that time. But we can still accomplish what seems like an immense amount of work.
When I was a toddler, HipHop was a nationally burgeoning sound, USA was meddling with Middle Eastern sovereignty, usa was in a cold war with Russia(USSR), and usa was selling propaganda about China’s economic prowess. That’s 40 years ago…how much has really changed???
We believe that social media sells us free speech.
While it does not, or at least has not, most of us believe it should.
We believe it should.
We believe that free speech is just as much a commodity as choice. Or, no choice, since that is what these platforms actually sell.
No choice seems dystopian. And yet, despite what those of us socialized in these united states have been spoon fed, we are constantly purchasing “no choice” branded as convenience.
Algorithms. This decade’s buzzword. Algorithms. Computer programs attached to interfaces that choose what we see based on past consumption patterns. We believe that we are creating content. We believe that we are providing value.
What we believe is belied by this beast’s true nature.
Many of us still believe a company’s objective is to flip money. To secure a return of investment. I no longer believe this. Corporations, like nations, like governments, have an existentialist position. That is, they exist, and they wish to continue to exist. This need to exist is precarious for pure profits.
Content creation, free speech, and other illusions are sold to us. We are told we have a “platform”. Is that what we have?
It seems to me, that we only have a needle in our arms draining us of valuable Life blood. Ideas fused with electromagnetic designs. Bright screens hold us like gnats to a porch light. And how much of this free speech has changed our reality? How much has societal abuse waned?
Not much at all, really.
With all this “wokeness’ abounding, we would think school shootings would have simmered down.
With all this “wokeness” abounding, we would think police killings would have simmered down.
With all this “wokeness” abounding, we would think Black pregnant WOMEN would have less fatal pregnancies.
But muthaphukkkin’ alas…
Voting is not enough to determine fairness of opportunity. Neither are diversity plays. Not that diversity is limiting, but in these united states, diversity tends to be limited to race, sex, sexual orientation, and gender(or lack thereof). There is a tendency to overlook similarities of representative class, however.
Y’all’s Daddy obeezy might be darker skinned(skint) than george w. bush, but they both are harvard graduates(source). There are 8 former us presidents with harvard degrees. Only other university that can boast of graduating a number of us presidents is yale, and even they have to share george w.
In last 33 years, only joe biden has been elected to office of us president without an ivy league degree(source). None of those elected in that time is without a degree. Whether a person with a degree is eligible to run is of little significance if numbers show that they have more of a chance of picking winning lottery numbers.
Who can win in a democracy matters more than who can run, and even more than who can vote. Representation along class has to have just as much significance in a nation like usa due to its worship of money and level of financial disparity. These same dynamics exist for ideas about who can get rich.
Who can play and who can actually win also matter in what is being referred to as a free market. Capital and access to capital play a much bigger role than most other factors including first mover advantages. All capital is social in my thinking, so it is important to note how much ones network increases their ability to secure large sums of monies, flip that money, and most importantly, stay afloat during downturns or bad decision making.
Programmed crowd thought or forced celebrity lottery…
WHY you are connected to a person is more important than WHO you are connected to. HOW you are connected to a person is more important than WHO you are connected to.
nature of words not enough to define machinations of people, tho…
I absolutely believe that success on these platforms as a curator demands damn near 176% ownership of posts. That means making posts look like they came from YOU.
This can look like:
1) RTs without actually adding “RT” or clicking RT button
2) adding logo watermarks to images(even though YOU didn’t hire that photographer or take that picture
3) Not including links to actual source.
While all of these actions have something questionable, it is this last one, not citing sources, that disturbs me most.
Every barber shop and beauty salon from Maine to Mexican borders got a system of vetting information. It starts with:
Was YOU there???
Did YOU see it???
Who was there???
Who YOU hear it from???
Who or what institution YOU get information from MATTERS.
If they do not show YOU or link YOU to their source in some shape form or fashion, it should be immediately tagged as:
1) Bullshyt,
2) Propaganda, or
3)Fake News.
Thank YOU. This has been another OWL’s Asylum public service announcement. For more, hit that Follow button.