Pain is Everywhere

I work with 16-25 years olds. I interact with them, share lives with them, and generally get access to the story behind the story.

It's one of my greatest honors, yet also the greatest source of pain in my life.

We generally listen to the news, watch the divisiveness of s.m., and different headlines being thrown at us slowly castrating us from any real empathy or compassion. Hard external shells have become the norm. If you don't believe me go walk through a high school hall, college campus, or public library. It will be shocking at first. A general glare of disdain...over and over again. Most people will not do it intentionally. Rather its simply their normal state of being. Your smile may shock them into a awkward response of a smile in return, but it will only last a moment.

Most individuals do not intentionally live their lives with a hard external shell. It's what happens when your insides turn hard.

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I have no intention on claiming that I know all the reasons for our hardness. I think if you have a brain you could figure that out yourself. I have heard the pain of death, trauma, abuse, sickness, drugs, isolation, betrayal...i felt some of that in my own life. And when left to our own to grapple with these things the only reasonable outlet is survival.

Survival is Selfish

Ultimately survival at its core is selfish. Logical. And the solution to the pain thats affronting your life. Most of us would read the word selfish and put a negative connotation to it. Regardless, it fits the definition of selfish.

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As people wallow in pain, medicate, and try and fool others with their facade - how long will our society really last?

It's now common place for successful people in the business, political and entertainment sphere to be exposed as the next lying, manipulating, sexual predator...do we care?

I'm not so sure most people really care...outside their selfish desires for someone to succeed or fail. We attach our selfish desires to someone else failing or succeeding thats carrying our idea of 'right or wrong'. Then we lose our brain and let our emotions lead as we disavow all internal desire for fact and commit ourselves to our pet doctrine being played out in these people. Its a weird narcissistic control mechanism that most of us function within sub consciously. Most of us are motivated by self preservation.

I read an article today of a teenage facing manslaughter. He choose to rape this girl as she was o'ding on drugs instead of actually take her to the ER. http://www.breitbart.com/law-enforcement/2018/02/13/teen-accused-raping-girl-dying-drug-overdose-texted-nude-photos-body/

Think about the amount of pain in these two individuals, and the amount of hardness present to get to that point.

Look at our political landscape and the amount of blatant hatred. Ask anyone about their relationship with their mom or dad. Pain, hatred, hardness and self preservation are ruling the day.

It's the current state of our society. Whose job is it to address it?

Teacher's? Parents? Government? Church? Individuals?

What are you going to do about it?

Make a choice to live bigger then yourself today.

You choose the life you want to live. You choose what the next generation inherits as normal.

Make your choice...today