To those that have stood beside me, even when I lacked faith in myself, you have my everlasting gratitude, respect and love. You are the Cornerstones that my life is built upon. There is no way I could possibly repay you for all of your kindness and respect.

To those that have condescended me and have been intolerant of my flaws, even when you had no cause to be, thank you as you also have my everlasting gratitude, respect and love. You are the foundation of my life. More than any other person I know you have motivated, challenged, and driven me to success. I could not have been me, without you. There is no way I can repay this debt to you.

To those that have been apathetic and had no interest in my life, despite that I tried earnestly to be there for you, thank you as you also have my everlasting gratitude, respect and love. You have taught me humility, tolerance and compassion. Without you, I would be far less of a human being. There is no way I can ever repay my debt to you.

To those that I have never met and do not know me, just by circumstance, I can barely wait to meet you. You are my future and the person that will invest so much of your energy into building my character, wisdom and perspective to meet the challenges I will need in that era of my life. I will owe you more than I can ever repay someday, and I will do my best to be a positive contribution in your life. But how you receive me is not my option it is entirely your choice.

To those that I will never meet, due to time constraints, I want to thank you for the many ways you have improved my life though I cannot even fathom how you have. You have influenced others that have indirectly had an indirect or direct influence on me. I thank you for filling this need and I owe you a debt I can never repay.

When I tell you that you need to love your enemies, I am not being witty or sarcastic. I mean it emphatically and quite literally. How a person treats you is beyond your control. How you react and use their influence on your life is entirely up to you. They are not responsible if you fail to accept all the wonderful experiences they can bring to your life, if you let them.

No one will fail me because I will not allow that to happen. I will find a way to make their influence a positive one. If I do not meet this challenge then I have truly failed myself. You may say this is impractical or unrealistic, and I tell you it is not optional. What we do not use to build ourselves up with, will be used to bury us with.

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#Essay #Philosophy

It might seem on the surface that words, spoken or written, are quite fundamental, easy to understand. Is this really the case though? In all reality words are most misleading. Perhaps I should explain.

Almost every word in any given language has multiple and sometimes contradicting meanings, it is worth considering how sarcasm can reverse the meaning of a word in contemplating this. Also, every word has three distinct meanings in its simplest interpretation. The denotation of the word, which is its dictionary given meaning, which in itself is sometimes not exclusive. Ever taken a look at a dictionary some words have more than one given meaning. Then there is the connotation of a word, which is the meaning the speaker or writer is actually applying to the word. With all things considered, being that language is an attempt to communicate, this would or should be the most important interpretation of the word. The third and less obvious interpretation however is the most significant interpretation and is the listener, or reader's connotation of these words. I can not count the times I have been present to overhear a conversation between two people that I knew well, yet they had just met, and they were having a conversation and either totally agreed with each other or disagreed, and in reality were talking about two entirely different subjects to begin with, neither having a clue of this fact.

So at this point you might ask yourself. Just how do we unravel the mysterious meanings of these words? What are people really saying to me? Words in and by themselves having no real meaning that we can cling to, is there any hope of understanding someone else at all, or of them understanding us?

Consider this. When my daughter was an infant and clung to my finger smiling up at me. I needed no words to understand her at all. When she was five years old, and I stood beside her at the school bus stop, with her clinging to my hand as tight as she could with anxiety on her face and her small frame as tense as it could get. I needed no words to understand her at this moment either. Communication transcends mere words. I knew and still know my daughter's feelings, hopes and perception of life. It is what gives meaning to every word she speaks, or writes. It would be safe to say at this juncture that truly understanding the person is the key to understanding there words, whether of tongue or pen.

With that said, how often do we really even make an effort to understand the people we meet, or are we more satisfied to just accept our perception of them and judge there words by that standard? If I spoke to you, would you listen to me, or would you just hear me?

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@Melissa BearTrix @Nelson

I am a bit different than average. Okay, maybe that is to mild of a way of looking at it. In reality my focus is never on the metrics I observe others using. For instance, I do not care what your political views are or your pronouns, biases or what your other identifiers may be. What I focus on is how you behave despite how you would like the world to perceive you. I tend to always believe a person is of the best intentions until they give evidence otherwise. In short I am evidence driven rather than being dragged around by my emotions. Does that mean I do not have emotions? Of course not, it means that how I feel about what you said is far less likely to have an effect on my view of you than my evaluation of your intent.

It is all to easy for us to say 'I do not like labels.' and this may be true. It does not change the fact that labels is how the human brain tracks. We label everything. That is how we developed language in the first place. When I think about my own identity I am not focused on accidents of birth like my hair color, eye color, race, gender, nationality. I am more concerned about the attributes I play a role in. Such as humanity, apprecitation, awareness of my surroundings, awareness of now.

It is easy to define yourself by common labels such as Christian, Atheist, Muslim, CIS, Trans, etc. How important are these to your identity and why? When a person thinks of me I would far rather their first thought be 'He really cares' than 'He is a great Software Developer'. I really do not even care what pronouns they use as long as they are comfortable with them. To me if you confuse my identity I do not find that as a flaw in you. I find it a a flaw in me. How am I not representing my ideals? How can I more clearly reflect my ideals. If I have failed in this, it certainly is not your fault. Identity is a real issue these days. Though, the next time someone tries to set boundries ask yourself this. Are they building a privacy fence around their yard or are they building a fence around my yard? Respect the fence around their yard, do not accept their trying to control the way you think or express yourself. If a person offends you at the moment then do not dwell on that. Just move past that moment to now. If they tend to always be offensive toward you then move on in a way that seems most productive. These are ideals I live by not just talk about. Were most people tend to be very critical of others. I am most critical of myself. The reason is quite simple. I control my behavior not other people's. So I am only responsible for my behavior not theirs. It is about accountability. I am me, it would be very nice if you could be you. No one else has a right to impose on who you are. The good news is that they only can if you allow them to.

Unus Nemo

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#Identity #Self Awareness #Philosophy