Ok, so here is something that’s been bothering me for a little while now. The other day I was having a conversation with a close friend of mine. It turned out to be quite the intellectual conversation if I do say so myself. My good friend who I will call Mitchell happened to disagree with something I had written in a previous article. Now I’m all for good conversation and constructive criticism so I asked him what was on his mind. In my article called “Memories” I talked a little bit about fate and destiny, I mentioned how I like to call these things just plain old luck of the draw. The disagreement began. Mitchell argued the point with me that in my situation luck nor fate nor destiny had anything to do with the outcome of events in my life. He argued that I had chosen my situation and I was the only one to blame for the consequences I was suffering. Now I didn’t disagree with that at all, I realize I made my own choices and I am dealing with the respective consequences, but the discussion went deeper than that. Mitchell argued that everything that happens to us in our lives is product of our own choices and I concur, to an extent. I posed a scenario to Mitchell, a scenario which I will pose to you now.
A man is walking down a path he has walked down many times before. Along this path he must walk past a short section of overhanging cliff. There have never before been any sort of dangerous circumstances associated with this cliff or anywhere else along the entire path. Though on this day things were different, something happened. A large piece of rock from the overhanging cliff above breaks off and lands on the man, he is paralyzed from the neck down.
Ok, so that’s the scenario. Now because Mitchell had told me he believed everything in life was product of our own choices I had to ask him to explain to me how this man chose to become paralyzed. Now obviously he didn’t directly choose to become paralyzed, but he did choose to take that walk. At this point in the conversation I partially agreed with Mitchell’s theory of choices, but not entirely. I told Mitchell I agreed to the fact that the man made the choice to take his walk, but my real question was deeper than that. I wanted to know what Mitchell thought could have made that rock fall at that exact moment in time. Now of coarse a rock can’t choose to fall but I was to find out that there were many scientific answers to that question such as erosion and wind and temperature. Mitchell explained to me how all of the perfect weather conditions combined could have absolutely caused that rock to fall. I agreed with him but I wanted more. I asked him what he thought made those weather conditions perfect on that day. Now, we argued pointlessly about this for a few more minutes and came to the conclusion that there probably wasn’t an answer to this question without beginning to discuss the realm of spirituality, so we let it be, for now. There was a method behind all of my madness, I said to Mitchell “Think about this man laying in his hospital bed knowing that he will never walk again, knowing that he will never be able to enjoy the things he used to enjoy. Don’t you think there will be emotions inside of him that wonder why did this happen, or who did this to him?” Mitchell promptly replied “Of coarse there will be.” I reached deep into the confines of my brain and posed my final question thinking that I would stump him with this one. “Who does this man blame for what happened to him, or how does he get closure without knowing why?” I have to say I was somewhat enlightened by Mitchell’s response. “He has to realize that no body is to blame for what happened to him and that even though he made the choice to take that walk there was probably nothing he could have done otherwise. He has to accept the things that have happened to him and he has to move on with his life in a new way, and that’s just a choice he has to make.” There it was, he was absolutely right, in the end it did come down to choices.
For myself and Mitchell this conversation was probably just a waste of forty minutes but by posting it here I hope that maybe it will enlighten somebody in the way it enlightened me. Our lives do revolve around the choices we make and that’s really good news for us because it means we’re in control. We have the final say in the things that happen to us. Although we might not be able to choose the situations we sometimes find our selves entangled in, we defiantly choose what we’re going to do about them. So the next time you’re in a real down and out situation try not to worry about how you got there and just remember it’s your choice that can get you out.
Jesse Roulette
Making Choices One at a Time
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Monsters and Goblins
Last week I was having quite a bit of trouble sleeping. As soon as I shut the lights off and closed my eyes I was wide awake rolling around like a six foot crocodile in a death roll. After three long sleepless nights I was fed up. I sat myself down and tried to think about what it was that was keeping me up at night. Now I know things have been a little upside down in my life lately and of coarse those kinds of things one can lose sleep over, but was that really the root of my torture? As I pondered about home remedies or prescription medications for sleep aid a thought crossed my all ready under functioning and oh so tired brain. “I don’t want to sleep.” What? “I’m tired but I don’t want to go to sleep.” What? This unusual epiphany caused a sort of chain reaction inside my head. I asked myself “why wouldn’t I want to sleep at night?” I also thought about what keeps other people up at night. I began to think about children and I began to think about when I was a child and how some children don’t sleep easy when they have thoughts of monsters in the closet or goblins under the bed. Obviously it’s not the monsters or the goblins literally keeping the kids up at night, it’s the fear of them.
Fear can keep us awake for many hours on end. As we grow older we shed our childish fears of monsters and goblins, right? Or do they simply take on another form. The monsters and goblins we all feared from our childhood no longer hide in our closets or under our beds. As we grow older they move into an even scarier place, our heads. They transform themselves into our thoughts and ideas. Our thoughts and worries of what tomorrow might bring or what our futures might hold in store for us. I don’t know about you but as for myself I am much more afraid of something inside of my head then something inside of my closet. So, it came to my attention that I never really did let go of my childish fears of monsters and goblins, those fears simply manifested themselves in a different way. I realized that I am just as afraid of those monsters now as I was when I was six years old, if not even more terrified. Being a man of action I decided it was time to end this fear once and for all, after all it was the fear that was keeping me up at night and by this point I desperately needed a good nights sleep. As I tried hard to think of a way to conquer my newly discovered fear of metaphorical monsters I wondered if fear was actually that bad. If it wasn’t for fear how would any of us be able to make decisions in our lives? Yes it is true, fear can be debilitating in some ways such as my lack of time spent in dreamland. Fear can also help us. Fear makes us understand that the decisions we make on daily basis actually matter and can make a difference in our lives. If we weren’t afraid of the monsters in our thoughts what kind of people would we be? I don’t want to know the answer to that question. So after reviewing all the new information I had just gathered I decided I wasn’t going to destroy my monsters thus destroying my fear, I was just going to put them in a safer place, back in the closet. Far enough away to get some sleep but close enough to keep me on my toes.
Jesse Roulette
Traping monsters One at a Time
Fear can keep us awake for many hours on end. As we grow older we shed our childish fears of monsters and goblins, right? Or do they simply take on another form. The monsters and goblins we all feared from our childhood no longer hide in our closets or under our beds. As we grow older they move into an even scarier place, our heads. They transform themselves into our thoughts and ideas. Our thoughts and worries of what tomorrow might bring or what our futures might hold in store for us. I don’t know about you but as for myself I am much more afraid of something inside of my head then something inside of my closet. So, it came to my attention that I never really did let go of my childish fears of monsters and goblins, those fears simply manifested themselves in a different way. I realized that I am just as afraid of those monsters now as I was when I was six years old, if not even more terrified. Being a man of action I decided it was time to end this fear once and for all, after all it was the fear that was keeping me up at night and by this point I desperately needed a good nights sleep. As I tried hard to think of a way to conquer my newly discovered fear of metaphorical monsters I wondered if fear was actually that bad. If it wasn’t for fear how would any of us be able to make decisions in our lives? Yes it is true, fear can be debilitating in some ways such as my lack of time spent in dreamland. Fear can also help us. Fear makes us understand that the decisions we make on daily basis actually matter and can make a difference in our lives. If we weren’t afraid of the monsters in our thoughts what kind of people would we be? I don’t want to know the answer to that question. So after reviewing all the new information I had just gathered I decided I wasn’t going to destroy my monsters thus destroying my fear, I was just going to put them in a safer place, back in the closet. Far enough away to get some sleep but close enough to keep me on my toes.
Jesse Roulette
Traping monsters One at a Time
Friday, April 25, 2008
"Suck it up!"
How often do you find yourself disappointed? That's a question worth asking yourself. When I ask myself how often I am disappointed I'm usually surprised with my own answer. I find myself disappointed fairly often to tell you the truth. Sometimes when I feel disappointed I find myself sulking and moping around like a young child who didn't get the toy he wanted for Christmas. Is this productive? No not really. Does this make me feel good about myself? No not really. Do I feel better after moping for a day or two then I would have if I were to have simply "Sucked it up" as they say? No probably not.
Lets talk about "Sucking it up". I'm sure you have all heard the term before, maybe you were complaining about a bad day at work, or maybe you had to get up off the couch to do something and you decided to whine about it a little bit and somebody blurts out those three powerfully motivational words, "suck it up!". I'm not sure there is anyone out there who likes to be told to "suck it up", I know I don't like it. When somebody tells me to "suck it up" I assume that they are implying that they think I'm lazy or I am complaining to much, or that I'm not working as hard as they think I should be and of coarse no body likes to be told any of those things. So then why is it when someone tells us to "suck it up" we usually do, and we usually do it without hesitation. How can those three little words hold so much motivational power? Although nobody likes to be told to "suck it up" I think deep down inside of us we all want to be told to, just so we can prove that we can. I'm not to sure if there is a legal definition of the term "suck it up" but if there was I think it would look something like this.
"Suck it up!": The action of metaphorically sucking up ones limitations. To lay aside all excuses and predispositions and simply get on with the task at hand, be it a mental, physical, or emotional task.
Well, when you put it that way its not so bad is it? You might be asking by this point "what the hell does this have to with disappointment?" well I'm getting there. Disappointment is only a byproduct of expectation. We get disappointed only when something we expect to happen doesn't. We get disappointed when people promise us things and don't deliver, also expectation. Before we can ask ourselves why are we disappointed, we have to ask ourselves what is it that we expected. If we know what we expected and we know that we didn't get what we expected we can expect to be disappointed. Sound complicated? Take a look at your life as you live it right now. Are you disappointed frequently and often wonder why? Well wonder no more, its your expectations. I'm not saying that your expectations are to high, maybe they are just not in the right place. If somebody promises me something should I expect them to deliver? Of coarse we should, it wouldn't be a promise if we couldn't expect a delivery, but something we should also expect is the possibility of being let down. Just because we have total and complete faith in somebody or something that doesn't mean we can expect the same results every single time, especially when we are talking about people and human nature. Expecting things from a machine such as a computer is one thing, but expecting things from other humans is whole other ball game. Its human nature to change, constant change in life is something unavoidable if a person wants to grow. If something is changing all the time how can we expect the same results all the time? We can't and that's just a fact. So if you're tired of feeling disappointed and let down might I suggest taking a close look at your expectations in life. Like I said earlier, we don't have to stop trusting or expecting things from the people we love. We just have to expect the unexpected, and expect that no matter how reliable something is in your life, things change. So in the end of all this next time you feel disappointed and don't know why just "suck it up" and try to take another look at those expectations.
Jesse Roulette
Expecting things One at a Time
Lets talk about "Sucking it up". I'm sure you have all heard the term before, maybe you were complaining about a bad day at work, or maybe you had to get up off the couch to do something and you decided to whine about it a little bit and somebody blurts out those three powerfully motivational words, "suck it up!". I'm not sure there is anyone out there who likes to be told to "suck it up", I know I don't like it. When somebody tells me to "suck it up" I assume that they are implying that they think I'm lazy or I am complaining to much, or that I'm not working as hard as they think I should be and of coarse no body likes to be told any of those things. So then why is it when someone tells us to "suck it up" we usually do, and we usually do it without hesitation. How can those three little words hold so much motivational power? Although nobody likes to be told to "suck it up" I think deep down inside of us we all want to be told to, just so we can prove that we can. I'm not to sure if there is a legal definition of the term "suck it up" but if there was I think it would look something like this.
"Suck it up!": The action of metaphorically sucking up ones limitations. To lay aside all excuses and predispositions and simply get on with the task at hand, be it a mental, physical, or emotional task.
Well, when you put it that way its not so bad is it? You might be asking by this point "what the hell does this have to with disappointment?" well I'm getting there. Disappointment is only a byproduct of expectation. We get disappointed only when something we expect to happen doesn't. We get disappointed when people promise us things and don't deliver, also expectation. Before we can ask ourselves why are we disappointed, we have to ask ourselves what is it that we expected. If we know what we expected and we know that we didn't get what we expected we can expect to be disappointed. Sound complicated? Take a look at your life as you live it right now. Are you disappointed frequently and often wonder why? Well wonder no more, its your expectations. I'm not saying that your expectations are to high, maybe they are just not in the right place. If somebody promises me something should I expect them to deliver? Of coarse we should, it wouldn't be a promise if we couldn't expect a delivery, but something we should also expect is the possibility of being let down. Just because we have total and complete faith in somebody or something that doesn't mean we can expect the same results every single time, especially when we are talking about people and human nature. Expecting things from a machine such as a computer is one thing, but expecting things from other humans is whole other ball game. Its human nature to change, constant change in life is something unavoidable if a person wants to grow. If something is changing all the time how can we expect the same results all the time? We can't and that's just a fact. So if you're tired of feeling disappointed and let down might I suggest taking a close look at your expectations in life. Like I said earlier, we don't have to stop trusting or expecting things from the people we love. We just have to expect the unexpected, and expect that no matter how reliable something is in your life, things change. So in the end of all this next time you feel disappointed and don't know why just "suck it up" and try to take another look at those expectations.
Jesse Roulette
Expecting things One at a Time
Memories
It was a sunny afternoon mid July and the feeling was just right, love was in the air. She sat on a bench across from me glowing beautifully in the afternoon sun. As I walked over I slid the ring out of my pocket trying to hide it from her view. My sweaty hands made the tiny golden band slippery and hard to hold on to. I sat down next to her, shaking and obviously nervous, she asked me if I was OK. "Molly, will you marry me?". The next few seconds of my life felt like an eternity... finally... "Yes". At this moment my heart filled with a feeling I had rarely felt before, it filled with love, excitement, joy, strength, courage, hope, and most importantly happiness.
Moments like this don't happen very often in our lives unfortunately, but when they do happen it is truly special and we should always allow ourselves to cherish these moments.
This event took place in my life almost two years ago. Here I am now in front of my computer screen poking away at my keyboard, alone, tired, sad, and the slightest bit bitter. Needless to say we never got married and that was probably for the best. I've spent a lot of time lately wondering where it all went wrong, but as i think about it more and more I realize that nothing at all went "wrong" things just didn't go as I had expected. I'm sure that what happened to me was exactly what was supposed to happen to me at this point in my life. Some people say its fate, some people say its destiny, some people say its god's plan, I say its luck of the draw. Some of us are lucky and some of us aren't. You can call it an unfortunate coincidence if you want to. I don't care what the hell you call it the point and the most important thing is that no matter what happens to us in our lives there is always something to learn.
For some of us the old cliche still holds true "Its better to have loved and lost then to have never loved at all" and for some of us it doesn't. I like to think of a separation as a time of renewal, a time to think back and remember the happiness of being in love and use that memory to fuel my passion for life and fuel my future ventures and my hope for eventually finding the right person to share my life with. So lets always remember our good times in life and try to avoid the bitterness that often is so easy to hold on to.
Jesse Roulette
Remembering things One at a Time
Moments like this don't happen very often in our lives unfortunately, but when they do happen it is truly special and we should always allow ourselves to cherish these moments.
This event took place in my life almost two years ago. Here I am now in front of my computer screen poking away at my keyboard, alone, tired, sad, and the slightest bit bitter. Needless to say we never got married and that was probably for the best. I've spent a lot of time lately wondering where it all went wrong, but as i think about it more and more I realize that nothing at all went "wrong" things just didn't go as I had expected. I'm sure that what happened to me was exactly what was supposed to happen to me at this point in my life. Some people say its fate, some people say its destiny, some people say its god's plan, I say its luck of the draw. Some of us are lucky and some of us aren't. You can call it an unfortunate coincidence if you want to. I don't care what the hell you call it the point and the most important thing is that no matter what happens to us in our lives there is always something to learn.
For some of us the old cliche still holds true "Its better to have loved and lost then to have never loved at all" and for some of us it doesn't. I like to think of a separation as a time of renewal, a time to think back and remember the happiness of being in love and use that memory to fuel my passion for life and fuel my future ventures and my hope for eventually finding the right person to share my life with. So lets always remember our good times in life and try to avoid the bitterness that often is so easy to hold on to.
Jesse Roulette
Remembering things One at a Time
What is Motivation?
What is motivation? Is it what helps us all get out of the bed in the morning? Is it what gets us all to work on time? What if we lost our motivation somewhere down the line? How do we get it back? Unfortunately I don't have the answer to that question yet and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone. Maybe by the end of this post we can learn something together, and maybe just maybe have an answer to that question.
I envy those people who wake up in the morning and feel fresh and cheery. Its been a long time since I felt that way, and I'm about ready to get that feeling back. I'm writing this post in the hopes that I can pinpoint exactly where I lost my motivation. I guess I figure if I know where I lost it I'll know where to find it, but is that really the answer? We all want to be able to say we're happy with our lives and we enjoy the start of every day but the truth is that a lot of us can't say that. Is that fair? Who cheated us out of that blissful sensation? Could we have done it to ourselves? No, that can't be it, or can it?
Motivation seems to come in two forms. There is regular old motivation which can come in the form of a movie we saw, or a song we heard, or even a special person we met somewhere along the line, but this type of motivation never seems to last that long, and its a little hard to come by isn't it? The other form of motivation is called self motivation and its even harder to come by, at least for some of us, well at least for me anyways. I've spent a lot of time thinking about where I left my motivation, or where I may have lost it and how to find it again. At the end of all my pointless recollecting I realized something. I didn't lose my motivation and it wasn't taken from me, I simply put it away and I chose not to see or use it anymore. It wasn't a conscious choice but it was still a choice. This is a choice that is inside of all of us and its up to us and only us to make this choice. We can wait for some amazing life changing event to come along and motivate us or we can say to hell with it and put aside the sorrow or the pity or the shame or whatever the hell it is we hid our motivation behind and take it back with a vengeance. Lets forget about why or where we hid our motivation and focus on the fact that its still there and its still ours and nobody not even yourself can take it away from you. So the next time you or someone you know "loses" there motivation think about it and take a another look a little closer to home.
Jesse Roulette
Hopefully motivating One at a Time.
I envy those people who wake up in the morning and feel fresh and cheery. Its been a long time since I felt that way, and I'm about ready to get that feeling back. I'm writing this post in the hopes that I can pinpoint exactly where I lost my motivation. I guess I figure if I know where I lost it I'll know where to find it, but is that really the answer? We all want to be able to say we're happy with our lives and we enjoy the start of every day but the truth is that a lot of us can't say that. Is that fair? Who cheated us out of that blissful sensation? Could we have done it to ourselves? No, that can't be it, or can it?
Motivation seems to come in two forms. There is regular old motivation which can come in the form of a movie we saw, or a song we heard, or even a special person we met somewhere along the line, but this type of motivation never seems to last that long, and its a little hard to come by isn't it? The other form of motivation is called self motivation and its even harder to come by, at least for some of us, well at least for me anyways. I've spent a lot of time thinking about where I left my motivation, or where I may have lost it and how to find it again. At the end of all my pointless recollecting I realized something. I didn't lose my motivation and it wasn't taken from me, I simply put it away and I chose not to see or use it anymore. It wasn't a conscious choice but it was still a choice. This is a choice that is inside of all of us and its up to us and only us to make this choice. We can wait for some amazing life changing event to come along and motivate us or we can say to hell with it and put aside the sorrow or the pity or the shame or whatever the hell it is we hid our motivation behind and take it back with a vengeance. Lets forget about why or where we hid our motivation and focus on the fact that its still there and its still ours and nobody not even yourself can take it away from you. So the next time you or someone you know "loses" there motivation think about it and take a another look a little closer to home.
Jesse Roulette
Hopefully motivating One at a Time.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
One at a time
My name is Jesse Roulette. I'm not a professional writer, I didn't go to college or university, as a matter of fact i didn't even scrape up enough grades to finish high school. Does this make me stupid in some way? Does it make me dumb or ignorant? Maybe it makes me irresponsible and illiterate, yea, that has to be it! Although i didn't spend very much time attending my wonderfully under budgeted public school i did learn a lot. I learnt about math and science, history and language, geography and politics, i learnt many important things from my limited time studying but one thing that no school in the world can teach you is common sense.
The funny thing about common sense is that unfortunately some of us have it and some of us don't. Does anyone really remember how or when they first learnt about common sense? I don't. I'm sure that somewhere down the line we have all had a conversation with somebody lacking in the common sense department. Its quite sad sometimes. I have recently gone through a separation and it has been difficult. Two people who thought they loved each other more than anything else in the world just to find out three years later that they didn't. Now some people may call this a bad relationship, some people may call this a waste of three years. Because i don't like to throw anything away and i refuse to believe i just threw away three years of my life i like to call it a sociological study of common sense, with excellent results. Now I'm not here to call down my ex or make fun of people in anyway shape or form, all I'm wondering is if we as the human race can unify and find an effective way to teach people common sense. If we teach common sense to the world we could make a difference. Maybe we won't make a difference but at least if we teach common sense to those who lack it, we who have it won't have to deal with them anymore and for me that's a good start! So please people for the sake of man kind if you know an individual lacking in common sense slap them across the head and tell them to read this! Thank You!
Jesse Roulette
Teaching Idiots One at a Time
The funny thing about common sense is that unfortunately some of us have it and some of us don't. Does anyone really remember how or when they first learnt about common sense? I don't. I'm sure that somewhere down the line we have all had a conversation with somebody lacking in the common sense department. Its quite sad sometimes. I have recently gone through a separation and it has been difficult. Two people who thought they loved each other more than anything else in the world just to find out three years later that they didn't. Now some people may call this a bad relationship, some people may call this a waste of three years. Because i don't like to throw anything away and i refuse to believe i just threw away three years of my life i like to call it a sociological study of common sense, with excellent results. Now I'm not here to call down my ex or make fun of people in anyway shape or form, all I'm wondering is if we as the human race can unify and find an effective way to teach people common sense. If we teach common sense to the world we could make a difference. Maybe we won't make a difference but at least if we teach common sense to those who lack it, we who have it won't have to deal with them anymore and for me that's a good start! So please people for the sake of man kind if you know an individual lacking in common sense slap them across the head and tell them to read this! Thank You!
Jesse Roulette
Teaching Idiots One at a Time
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