Cool Hand Luke (Escape from your prison)

"You know the funniest thing about being in prison guys pretending they wanna get out. I can't do any more time, Dougy. So if we get jammed up, we're holding court on the street." - James Coughlin (Jeremy Renner) - The Town

 

I’m hoping you have never been to prison. If you have I’m hoping you don’t want to go back and you’re willing to change to do so. Chances are however if you are reading this that you have found yourself enslaved into some kind of prison you can’t break free of.

The easiest example is to think of is the alcoholic and addict. Most of you can think of functional alcoholics and addicts. On the surface it doesn’t look like they are doing any harm. Sometimes they are the ones just committed to being on the go and never slowing down. Sometimes it’s just blunting out trauma or situations that have re-written the brain. It could be physical pain or simply not wanting to deal with life. It works but only for the moment we are in. As Charlie Harper (Charlie Sheen in two and half men) once said about drinking “It’s only a temporary solution if you quit drinking”. We all have issues we would rather not face and we all are into bondage of whatever comforts us and makes us avoid the bigger issues of life. Sometimes we need to tolerate the pain so that we can examine where it is coming from and fix it at the root instead of just managing the symptoms. You refuse to live in a fog anymore then change is possible.

Some of you are neck deep in debt for a million different reasons, student loans, credit cards, mortgages, Bills you couldn’t pay from things you are stuck with that you didn’t. You can’t afford to get by on what you make in a month. (I am going to exempt sick and out of work people.) Chances are your money problems are from you seeking validation from things you can’t afford and don’t need. On the other side some of you have nearly killed yourself in your careers working for the same things except it’s paying off for you. Either way it’s when you seek your meaning from other than ownership.

How much is pursuing and having the perfect mate important to you? Are you afraid of being alone? If you are a guy how much do you like pursuing the girl you want? If you are a girl how much do you love this guy being devoted to you? Do you find that you can’t live without this feeling? Have you been through partner after partner? Guys are you Promiscuous proudly knowing how many girls you’ve slept with? Girls are you more moral and have had serial monogamy? You are so much better than the guys at least you had a relationship before you did even if you’ve had a number of boyfriends you won’t disclose. If this is you, no matter what you say you aren’t pursuing love and commitment. These people are all interchangeable to you and have been so regularly. Your identity has been caught up in attracting that partner to live for those orgasms, that cuddle, those date nights out and you in high esteem from that high social status guy or girl.

What if you are married and settled down how much of you is obsessed over this family defining you? Making you happy? That husband can maybe be used in attempt to fill the previous addiction discussed. What about the little baby you wanted so desperately? What kind of woman is without a child? It’s a natural desire to have kids and they are adorable and a great experience. How much pressure though is on this baby if they are expected to hold your marriage together, or make you feel great about you; this little cute thing needs you to get by how needed and special are you or what if this baby is supposed to live the life you never did and go down that path and do great things. That’s a pretty big job for a baby who didn’t ask to be born or to validate a human being. Yet so many babies and ultimately so many lives are led in directions by adults who view parenthood this way.

It’s easy to notice the drug and alcohol addicts because everything is so urgent with them and they have to fix it now or risk death or harm to themselves or others. They aren’t alone. You are emotionally and spiritually in the same boat they are.

 If you took it all away who are you? What if you didn’t drink and use when you were bored or hurting? What if you weren’t hiding behind your job or stuff you didn’t need? What if you weren’t tracking down the perfect partner or making your baby into your clone or your actualized self. You are more than the roles you play in life.

In AA the saying goes about asking God to help you remove your addiction you’re helpless over to change them. You have to admit how much you’re hurting and how much you don’t know if you can handle the world around you. Once you see it for what it is you can’t turn back and see anything different. The question is: are you going to let those things enslave you and define you? Let God heal you and restore you and appreciate those things as compliments (except drug addiction and consumer debt) when done in a healthy way and in context and be able to love someone as they were meant to and enjoy. People claim to want to be free. Just as long as they don’t have to change and it costs them nothing. Some of you would rather die than be enslaved again to things that hurt you (mostly good in right context) and hurts others. I recommend you fight it out and let yourself be healed and transformed and not enslaved to what a society which thinks you are disposable dictates you do. For the rest of you, you’ve been warned.

You Looking for a fight?

You looking for a fight?

“How much can you know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight” – Tyler Durden –Fight Club

Boxing maybe on its way out as a sport but never did a sport ever serve as a better metaphor for life. Some of you and most of us have both been in our share of them. Some of us have just been thrown into them by the life situations we were born into and sometimes because of stands that we take and won’t back off of. On the negative front sometimes we look for fights because we are in a bad place (and don’t know any better) in life over situations that don’t call for it and to people who don’t deserve it.

There is always a fight to be fought. If you were blessed enough to grow in a healthy situation with parents who helped you develop into a well-adjusted and relatively healthy individual. You can feel great with a well-paying job, a good looking spouse and kids and a house.

Some of you were born with alcoholic and emotionally unstable parents. People who were sick and self-consumed that some kids ended up fending for themselves while other kids are playing goofball games. Then there is the abused kid who has seen the reality of evil on multiple levels, and is ready to fight and has that killer instinct; either for themselves or something more.

We all have to fight life on two levels. If you are blessed to have things going well for you on a personal level and you are comfortable then you get to move ahead to the greater causes then yourself. British philanthropist William Wilberforce was independently wealthy at a young age. He could have lived of relative ease but he had a spiritual conversion and realized life was more than his comfort. He got in politics to make a difference. He spent 30 years of his life dedicated to the abolition of slavery in England against a government that resisted.

If you were born with unstable parents who may have been emotionally absent and unable to teach and understand how to raise kids with their own lack of emotional growth and had unrealistic expectations and poor understanding of kids and development who couldn’t lead them or help them or even show them how to find the answers and the hope. That person has to put up the fight of not following that same example and fighting to do the right thing after finding what the right thing is. If you manage to win that fight in your life, you get to get to get back in it and help fight with and for others who are lost and can’t find their way out.

Nobody is in a bigger fight then the abused. The likelihood is that they are bottled up with up knowing the reality of the evil and that the opponent they face and how most people don’t beat it. They are angry and they are hurt and if they don’t get past this opponent it will not hurt them it will destroy their lives. It maybe the stage of the fight of standing up to your abuser and just getting it to the end or it may be at the stages of having to forgive and not be so full of hatred. Even then as beat up and tired as that person is if and when they get past that stage they don’t get to just sit by and rest and celebrate and feel proud. They more than anyone have what is a task very few people get and maybe nobody really wants but is needed; They get to go pursue those people who are going through hell to the point the darkness is crushing them and may feel like it can destroy them any moment and do whatever they can to get them out of it.

If you weren’t born into those situations you will find that life will most likely put you in one of those situations at one point or another. You may work hard and get all you ever dreamed of and feel like coasting and being content and proud of yourself for all you have accomplished. You may have been the most straight laced by the book kid who did nothing wrong and for so long but you are the wayward child now who doesn’t know how to get his life back on track. You may have become a victim through rape or an abusive relationship. You have the unfortunate task of either living in fear now or living in rage and what may have felt like a life of progress before that may feel like you can never get better or get past it. You didn’t expect the comfort, or the feeling lost or excruciating pain but yet there you are.

It’s important to go look for a fight; the right one. You may just have to spend time to get to know where you are and which fight to take and when.

You are not afforded the luxury of standing by and doing nothing. Just because that’s what you have been doing, doesn’t mean you should have been doing it and doesn’t make it ok. You have to get out there and you have to face your own issues and repent of them and change. You then get the task of moving on to causes greater then yourselves; in the lives of others and in causes and epidemics that destroy lives individually and collectively. Jesus gave us the two great commandments of loving God with all your heart soul and mind and loving your neighbor. How would you explain to a father that you cared for him and did nothing to help his hurting children with what he provided you with out of his love for you? Even those of you who claim to be humanitarians without needing God how much do you have to hate somebody to not give what you can of yourself (not of others, you) to help them while they suffer.

It’s good to be healthy and it’s good to be healed and happy but don’t for a second think it’s over as long as you still have breath in you.

“Do all the good you can. By all the means you can. In all the ways you can. In all the places you can. At all the times you can. To all the people you can. As long as ever you can.” ― John Wesley

Everybody Hates me...Don't be silly you haven't met everyone yet

 We live in the generation of texts and emails and facebooking issues finding ways to connect except to actually talk to the person. I can't think of anything more harmful to the art of communicating and to healthy friendships and relationships then just avoiding simply telling someone with love but in the moment what was that? and what are you doing? Instead of all the bottling up and waiting to explode; how about stopping what you are doing and solving the problem in the first place? That being said there are times when there is no problem and it's just your issue and nothing that person needs to change.

If you won't take the stand in your personal relationships what makes you think that you will stand up when something is going on that's bigger then you and bigger than your life. We live in a generation of people who are offended via Facebook and coffee houses but if you have to get up and be uncomfortable and take a stand then they don't want to do it. You are pro-life by starting Facebook petitions forget actually getting up and counseling and talking to the people involved. You’re concerned about crime in your town but going to city hall or starting a neighborhood watch is a little bit much for you.

I'm afraid we are a generation of cowards. We won't take a stand and we won't be hated for any conviction. So many of our views on tolerance and being open minded are more on just not wanting to upset anyone and risk being disliked. We all have that need for love and acceptance for who we are but can we please take a stand. Can you love your friend or family member enough to not put up with any of their crap and help them not make a habit of the wrong things they can do. Can you do more about social problems then sit around a coffee house and sound upset about them? I'm begging you all to be a little more offensive. Take a stand, do something about the problem, be unabashedly who you are. Push people to do the right thing make them love you and accept you for who you are. Do not back off the truth, tell people you love them but you’re not taking any of their crap or letting go of the truth, and besides enablers don't love anyone but themselves. Quit hiding behind your phones and computers and actually make some human contact and in this communication age, communicate that you actually care and that you are going to do something. The world still boils down town to talkers and doers only one shows how much you really care.