edwin

What do I think about when important milestones arrive? You know things like a new year, a birthday, or even a new season. The arrival of these moments give me pause as I consider my life to this point, what my long term goals are and how much progress has been made to reaching them. In essence, I take an inventory of myself. With my next birthday approaching in a little over a month, I begin to wonder once again how incomplete my existence has been, and what more I feel I need to complete it.

In college, I was introduced to Abraham Maslow's hiearchy of needs theory (here's a refresher for those of you who missed it Maslow's theory ). Being obsessive compulsive and an organizational freak, this theory was highly attractive to me. Just to think your entire life could fit into the levels of this pyramid.

Upon the study of this theory I began to juggle ideas of my own. Then through external sources, (movies & books) I came up with my own life defined in 5 important areas. I excluded basic things such as shelter, food, etc. Instead I focused on what my mind needs, or more simply, what I need to feel like I have a happy life. I broke it into 5 areas all explained below:

In no particular order...

1-Self: Who am I? Can I ever know? It is my belief that we gain knowledge about ourselves til we die, so can I ever fully know myself? There's always going to be little things about ourselves we never know, but I'm focusing on larger scale points of being. I also suspect as I grow older I will desire less knowledge of myself because I'll slow down and put myself in far less unknown situations and seek out far more comfort than anything else. But for now, I wish to better understand who I am so I can make the best decisions I can for myself. I feel like this area is moving along pretty well.

2-Courage: I find that most regrets and disappointments in my life are caused at least in part by fear. Fear whoops my ass quite often and keeps me from being who I would like to be. I still consider myself to be shy and antisocial and quite frankly I will never be a man of the people, but I'm trying hard to be friendlier. I find as you get older, good friends are harder to come by. Defeating my fears will make me more powerful. I would also have less regrets.

3-Love: I had love once upon a time, but I did not live happily ever after. It's been 2 years now since the love died, but man it still feels like it wasn't that long ago. Powerful emotions that you cannot control (like love) leave an imprint on your soul. You may move on or even forget, but it seems to stay with you forever like a scar or a tattoo. Knowing what love felt like, and knowing myself as well as I do assures me that I still have tons of love to give.

4-Worth: Religious people talk about God's plan. They take the good and bad and accept it because its God's will... or at least some of them do. Since I haven't believed in God in a long time, you can file me under C for confused. In some ways I believe in fate, but I don't think I believe in an all powerful deity. So basically, I'm not sure if I believe I have this path my life will follow. I've never known what I should do with my life, and I think I've been waiting for signs for so many years now that I'm not sure I'd recognize them if I saw them. I'm reminded of a song lyric by Emiliana Torrini. I have this on my website as well: "It shouldn't hurt me to be free, it's what I really need... to pull myself together. But if it's so good being free would you mind telling me... why I don't know what to do with myself." I may be farthest behind in this area out of the 5. I only began to break through and understand what my talents could be recently, so I have a long way to go to understand my worth.

5-Truth: Why is all of this necessary? What does it all mean? Why am I nice to strangers with pretty faces? As they say on the x-files, the truth is out there. One of these days I'm going to find it, although I must confess that I've found nuggets of truth on occasion and all they do is feed my appetite for more.

So this is my mind. I thank you for your time. I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts on anything right now so feel free to stop by anytime... I have an open mind.