xangst – visions from a treadmill

Be patient – don’t push

Being patient and actively waiting is one of the hardest things to do. You want to confront things, you want to ask more questions, you want to insert yourself into situations to get a response from people.

Don’t push yourself into things – but wait patiently.

It is hard – but it helps you in the long run.

If people don’t ask you to be a part of something – do not insert yourself – let it go.

To be quiet sometimes, to be in the background, to not be involved in everything is a good thing. This will only come if you resist the knee-jerk reaction to jump into things.

Don’t make everything about you.

Realizations in your 50s

the 50s are very interesting. yeah, you are getting old and yeah, the body starts to break a bit. but, the realizations about life that come to your mind are awesome!

here they are –

realize that you will die soon (in the next 10-30 years)
realize that because you will die soon, you need to stop giving a shit about stupid things
definitely stop caring about what others think
definitely start cutting out people from your life that don’t care about you
definitely remove all arrogant people from your life immediately
definitely avoid all arrogant people
focus more on family
focus more on your real friends
see that most people are acquaintances only
don’t try to go back in time to deliberately revive old friendships
realize that all friendships have a time and a place in your life
not all friendships are meant to last a lifetime
realize that routine is good for you and helps keep you alive
live in the moment – look at nature and understand this concept
go and do things now
tell your loved ones that you love them
understand that people, including friends, might not want to be around you anymore – that’s ok – keep moving forward
listen closely to your gut – and follow it
look at each day as a blessing and a victory
not every day is going to be exciting – that is ok

everyone will not like you and you won’t like everyone

it can’t be explained in any easy way. it goes back to the saying – “it is what it is and it ain’t what it ain’t”. so here it goes –

when you are young, you want everyone to like you and you think everyone should like you. but you quickly find that some people don’t like you through bullying, etc.

at that point, you don’t think about it too much – it’s like – on one hand, these are my friends and on the other hand,these are people that i don’t really know so they are not my friends – and some pick on me for no apparent reason so they must not like me. this is all very straight forward.

as time goes on, you do acquire many friends through various stages of life – but many of these friends move on -some because you physically move away and others because they don’t like you anymore or you don’t like them anymore. this is harder to explain and you start to wonder – “maybe everyone doesn’t like me” – and you start to wonder am i an asshole or a jackass?

the short answer is simple – YES! (we can all be assholes or jackasses sometimes – accept this – we are human!)

the long answer explains it more and is the root of this entire concept – Yes, you can be a jackass or asshole to people that are your friends without even knowing it.

this is because the longer we are friends with someone, the more time we have to see parts of that person that we do not like. and sometimes, we get tired of dealing with these things that we have discovered that we don’t like about this person and we move on – putting them on the non-friend list.

and definitely vice-versa – they do the same to us – and this is why you are not going to like everyone and everyone is not going to like you.

bottomline – no one is perfect or will be seen as perfect in our eyes or their eyes – and we determine that life is way too short so we move on.

we need to accept this reality – and not get upset for too long – and move on.

2nd bottomline – move on and don’t get upset – and keep spending time with the people who have not reached the point of no return.

side note – with family – you can’t move on – so get used to the things that you do not like and accept them.

friends change and don’t change

we all change over time. we are the same person but we do change. friends change too. you have friends that you think will last forever but some don’t. in fact, most don’t go all the way. every day we all go through different experiences and we react to those experiences in different ways. we can’t always be the same person anymore – these experiences change us. they move us towards new people and away from longtime friends and even relatives. the effects of society on the individual is ongoing and everchanging. we try to maintain who we are or who we once were – but is a continuous conscious process to try and do that – and inevitably we form new ideas and opinions based on these new experiences that shape our mindset. what didn’t offend you 20 years ago now seems like an obvious problem or mistake. we are quicker to judge because we feel that time is running out.

we can’t dwell on things that don’t work anymore – like old friendships or past friendships. we have to keep moving forward for the sake of self preservation because that is all we have in the end – keeping the self preserved as long as possible or as long as we want. some friends fade away or an abrupt end occurs because of these changes going on. what can we do? try and keep the friendship going? yes, we can try. but in the end, the friend or relative is also going through change and they will decide to focus on moving forward as well.

we also have friends that keep in sync with you and the relationship never changes – these are the friends that you keep until the end.

you can’t think too deeply on why some friends stay and some friends go. the ones that stay with you know who you are and love who you are – and you know who they are and love who they are – conflict never arises once you reach a certain age – you just go together.

but others don’t change with you – they get jealous of you – they want to keep testing you to get a reaction or want to keep inserting challenges into the relationship to try and affect you in a negative way. for these situations, you must smile and move on.

self preservation is priority number one – we can’t dwell too long on things that aren’t working

it can be sad but what other choice do we have – we must move forward not backward

cowards

when a friend or relative becomes a coward it is a shocking thing to witness. this means that they don’t want anything to do with you anymore but don’t have the guts to tell you to your face. imagine being friends or relatives (through in-laws) for 25 years and then one day you are not. in the in-law scenario – you are still related but just not friends anymore. imagine having a wife and 3 kids with the wife also being related to the in-law for 50+ years – and the whole family is snubbed by this person that you loved and trusted – like a true brother. this person has now become a coward and you will never see them again – maybe at a wedding or a funeral – but they won’t show up – not because of you but because they don’t care for anyone in the family. the patriarch passed and this person saw the chance to get out too. i don’t really care anymore – though i did for awhile – this big brother figure snubbing me in a cowardly way – i couldn’t believe it until i saw the snub with my own eyes. we traveled thousands of miles to visit relatives and there was a family gathering – all showed except the coward. he couldn’t drive 10 minutes to see the sister-in-law that he loves and the nieces that he has professed love towards – the message was loud and clear – good-bye to me and my family – but hopefully he can be there for my family, especially my wife – i don’t care about me anymore – he is dead to me. the memories were good but you turned out to be a person that couldn’t go all the way. am i being dramatic – yes – but it is the truth and i will say no more about it from this day forward – life is too short – we don’t have time to waste on people that don’t have time for us – wake up and move on

jackasses

you are a jackass to some people and i am a jackass to some people – and some people are jackasses to me and some people are jackasses to you. the point is that we are all jackasses to some people and some people are jackasses to us. so one goal in life is to spot the jackasses and stay away from them. this will also happen to you as well – some people will think that you are a jackass and will stay away from you. this natural process is inevitable in life – but you need to be aware that this process exists and then you can act on it more frequently when you spot a jackass. people usually don’t start off as a jackass in your eyes and many times they might be social friends – not real friends – real friends are rarely jackasses. it is the social friend that you meet through friends, in the neighborhood, through your kids – these people might be a jackass in the end. you might see it quickly with how they act towards you or it might take a longer time – where you are social friends and then one day you see the jackass side. while you are assessing them, they are also assessing you – all in a subconscious way – we don’t think about it all the time – but then the signal goes off – the jackass alert. from there, you must cut them off from interaction – life is too short to keep engaging with people that you think are jackasses. can people come back from the jackass label? – I’m not sure – it is possible but not probable – not enough time in life to backtrack too much.

arrogance

this is one of the worst traits in people. if someone is arrogant, you must cut them out of your life. if they are arrogant, then it means that they don’t respect you at all – that they look down on you. you put up with it when you are young – you don’t want to lose friends because they are arrogant. but as you grow older, you start to see how bad this trait is – they don’t care for you. they think that they are better than you. they don’t listen to what you have to say. even if you have known someone for a long time and you have ignored their arrogance – but then one day you see the arrogance in it’s full form – you must stop right there and cut those people out of your lives. this is another life moment where you know that time is running out for all of us on this planet – life doesn’t end well – we all die in the end! so stop being with arrogant people – it is a waste of time and they need to know that you are done with arrogance and arrogant people. you can’t tell them to their face that they are arrogant – you just have to move on, cut them off, don’t speak to them again – they will get the message or they might not – it doesn’t matter – you have to focus on your life and not being around arrogant people. the clues are as follows – they don’t treat you with equal respect; they don’t listen to what you have to say; they think you are beneath them; they only talk about themselves

THINKING IN PHASE 2 STARTS NOW

i took a break from writing my thoughts – i had said all that i could say before 50 years old – i was starting to repeat my thoughts – it was time for a break – i thought the break was permanent – my mind keeps going with new thoughts – and now i need to put those thoughts down on paper again – to help me and to help you

it is what it is

and it ain’t what it ain’t. this is an old expression that states the obvious, but it also makes everything so clear and so simple. it tells you what you already know – don’t fight reality, don’t fight your instinct, don’t fight your gut. you know deep down that whatever is happening is supposed to happen and there is nothing you can do about it. you must accept what is happening as reality and you must act based upon that acceptance. yes, you can still go on for awhile without facing the facts, perhaps waiting for people or things to change, but the odds are against changing reality. it is possible only if other elements of the equation change to create a new reality. other than that – it is what it is and you need to start accepting that fact – and you need to act on that fact instead of wasting time

limbo

limbo is ok. it is ok to be in limbo sometimes in life – in you job, with friends or family. it gives you time to reflect, to think, to plan for the next step. limbo is something that always happens in life to everyone at some stage. we keep going on a constant path, juggling all the things in life – our goal is to keep busy, to be productive, to strive for more, to gain more order in life, to understand more, to learn more, to experience more, to make mistakes, to learn from our mistakes, to be positive, to push harder, to have bad days, to have good days – and to be in limbo – long or short – we go into limbo in areas of our life. we get confused, we get out of sync, we get worried, we want to have routine back, we want to know what is next, we want to know what to expect each day, we don’t like limbo. but if you look at limbo as a good thing – as a thing to help us get through change, as a thing to help us understand who we are, as a thing to appreciate, as a time of reflection – then we can accept a state of limbo. but you must use limbo to prepare for the next organized phase. do not waste limbo. use limbo to your advantage to make the next stage better. limbo is good. embrace limbo like you should with all change. change will always come. limbo will sometimes come. embrace both and use them both to your advantage.