Purpose isn’t assigned. It just can’t be that way.

Some people like to live their lives as though they will live forever. Some take everything too seriously and forget to live. I was watching a film this morning, produced by Rhonda Byrne, about the power of our mind and it hints at the power of energies, even though for the most part  it carries the same ideas as “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill.

In it, one of the experts says that we choose our purpose, that people waste their time thinking that out of nowhere we will get a “eureka!” moment and then our lives will drastically improve. I agree with that. It makes sense to me. I know, I know.. the point of the video is to say that we shape our own fate every day, based directly on what we think and feel. The Law of Attraction.

 

 

I’ve read a lot of books that shattered previous ideas that I had considered to be Truth. If I had one super power, it would be to be able to unlearn something. They say that even when you’re training a dog you can’t make him unlearn something, just replace his current habits with a new one. But why can’t we unlearn?

I watched a movie recently titled Mary and Max. In it, Max mentions to Mary that he used to believe in God, but has since read lots of books that have explained to him that God isn’t real. That we use religion to explain things that are difficult to understand, such as do worms go to heaven? and where we come from.

Knowledge never hurt anybody.

I don’t believe that phrase anymore.

I’ve been making a lot of changes around here that I should have made a long time ago. I was forced to look at my current situation, and it feels just like when you hear yourself on a voicemail, or watch yourself on a  video. You do not like what you sound like or what you look like, but that’s you and you have to become aware of it. I didn’t want to, but I did. And it showed me what I am and where I’m going. Its ok to be honest with yourself and forget about everyone else’s opinions about you.

I thought I was happy not knowing of these things that I was and had become, life was simple. Simple doesn’t always mean happy. But I was sad, a sad person too afraid to face reality and change it to a space where I knew I belonged.

I felt a spark when I faced my reality. Where I was emotionally, physically.. what I thought about my sense of purpose, my religion, my ideas, what I like, what I dislike, what people think of me, what I really am, what I care about.

It took a while, but I’m there.

On second thought, maybe unlearning something is not what I want anymore.

we traveled to a distant place
in a disk shaped spaceship that
took us to the moon where we found
an alien trying to hide between the seats
we captured it adn tried to bring it to us
it was not mean, but on our way out
we saw a bunch of other ones waiting
to see what we would do
we took the one we caught inside our
ship and asked it to speak to us

I was with two other people, and no matter how hard I try, I cannot remember who. We traveled in a disk shaped spaceship that took us to the moon (or some planet somewhere), where found a bus.. which looked a lot like the train I take to school every day. An alien was trying to hide between the seats, but did not try very hard. It was short, about 3 or 4 feet in height, and had a big head, with light yellow skin, and big eyes. Eventually, I got near it and nudged it outside and toward our spaceship. It seemed nice, and more scared of us than anything. A large group of aliens gathered around to watch him enter the spaceship for some sort of interrogation, we asked it to speak.

—-

The night before, I was wondering what I would do if the train conductor would suddenly say “Brace for impact” and we all had to think of a position that would be least harmful once a 60mph train comes to a sudden stop. I remember looking around the train at the seats, and under them.. which was a lot like the image in my dream.

Weird dream.

Six members of my family were coming back home in a truck. The view of the school at the end of our street seemed different, and I recalled seeing construction work being done there. It now looked more like the missions that span up California’s coastline. Slightly dyed yellow. I ran toward it, and my sister followed behind it. We then discovered that it was not a school, but an apartment building, where one of my friends, Jamie, lived in. I somehow thought that the school would be behind it, creating a type of plaza thing there.

…

We were inside of what appeared an indoor swapmeet, we had gone inside after getting out of my sister’s old car in order to get something my mom had requested. My sister patted her pockets and said she had left her iPhone in the car, and went back to get it after I convinced her, remember that someone had stolen a friend’s iPhone from his car in the past. We looked around, and bumped into David (some guy I knew from baseball when I was a kid), and my sister acted nervous around him. She went to the car after finding her iPhone case, the clear one with no screen protection, and I stayed to look for it. I found the back cover of an iPhone and then the front cover, I put them together and made a black iPhone. My sister came back and told me that she found hers in a green bucket thing she had in her car. I hid the iPhone I found in my pocket and headed for the car, where her and one of her friends were.

“Don’t lie to me” I told her, showing her the phone I found.

She showed me hers, and I turned on the one I found only to find out it was AT&T provider, different from ours, so it wasn’t hers.

…

My little cousin and I were in a truck with the rest of my family, and she blamed me for messing up an inner part of a boot. She had grown very long hair at that time, almost reaching her ankles. There was a party where my dad seemed to be breast feeding a baby. A woman, supposedly a neighbor, was sitting on a lawn chair on my driveway and I explained to her that a man was going to help her overcome something, through responses on her inner self that she had to become aware of. She looked surprised, but not scared.

..

There was a fight, a war. Two groups of people were going to fight a battle, I saw knives and there was one man in particular that everyone knew was the best. He had long black hair and a goatee. I felt the rush of fearing for my life, and stepped away as I saw a man lose his life by being stabbed in the back by the opposing group. 

————————————

I do not remember if the apartments turned into the swapmeet area now, but there is a school down the street from my house that we can see from our lawn. Its my old elementary school. David is actually a guy named Josh that I knew from back when I was a kid and were in the Yankees team together in junior league baseball. My sister’s iPhone is white, the one I found in the dream was black. My dad breast feeding was comical only after I woke up. What I was explaining to the woman at the party was Neuro-linguistic programming.

I feel like this blog is about to get a tad more weird. I have been having weird dreams lately, and I’m tempted to actually publish them here for the world to see. I’ve kept a dream log in the past, but I suddenly stopped because it was a bit too intense for me at the time. In a way, I felt as though there was a whole other world that would come to life when I would go to sleep; a world with its own problems (and solutions), its own patterns, and frequent visitors.

Here is what happened last Wednesday night:

I was having a conversation with a young man with an Asian accent. At a bus stop, I asked him when he was planning to graduate, and he told me in 3 years. In my dream, I found that confusing, a community college is known for a graduation time of 2 years prior to transferring. Of course there were many other things in the dream, but I can no longer describe them accurately.

He wasn’t somebody I knew.

The next day, I met up with some guys from a bible talk group, where I met a Chinese guy named Simon. He told me about his life, and how he used to be an atheist. We went to the talk, walked to a restaurant with a group of other guys and then headed for the bus. He had only seemed a little familiar to me, until I asked him when he was planning to graduate. He told me he didn’t know. At that moment, I felt like I had been there before, like I had already spoken to him, and then it all came back to me. He was in my dream.

I asked him when he had arrived to the United States, and he told me 3 years. His voice was the same, he had the same height as the guy from my dream.

I am new to the college, I don’t know many people, so I thought it was one heck of a coincidence to meet someone that I had already met in some other “realm”.

I’ll write down my dreams.

I heard that is a book, someone suggested in a forum online, but I still haven’t looked into it: “What Should I Do With My Life?”

How many people out there actually know what they want? A while ago, I went to get an eye exam, and the young optometrist was showing excitement for what she was doing, so I asked her if she always knew what she wanted to do. She said she just grew up with that thought, and followed it until she got there. She went to college, got a degree in biology, joined another program and got a job.

Working in Florida with the rocket scientists launching rockets for a living, I went all “interviewer” on the older engineers. Bill, an engineer that was nice enough to give me a ride to work on some mornings was talking to me about his life, and things that he wanted to do, he said he always wanted to write novels.

What stopped him?

Life got in the way, it was not going to earn him enough money, and he was starting a family. He was divorced, with a kid in college.. actually a lot of the guys there were either single or divorcees, supporting one or more college kids. Was he unhappy? Did he feel content with the choices he had made? Eh, its possible that he could still feel happy knowing that at least he has a stable job and not many things to worry about; but then again, there was a lack of happiness. Even in the way the man would speak, one ocould easily tell that he was bored.

“How does one know that they are pursuing something they really want?” I asked.

“One doesn’t know. Few people can be sure of what they want, and even then the reason why they feel so sure might be because they’ve convinced themselves to believe it.”

Some people feel destined to do something, but are held back. Others are just lost and confused all the time and wait for something to come to them and show them the way.

Can it really be that hard to figure out what to do with our lives?

So I have less than a week over here until I fly back to California!

Moving back has got to be the thing that I have MOST looked forward to in a long time. Not so much because I don’t like it here, but its because I am excited to try out some of the things I have learned about myself. To appreciate the things that we take for granted, to enjoy the little things, and to practice the skill of staying happy.

Engineering is super exciting for some people, but not for others and I’m one of the “others”. I think its awesome, but not awesome enough to keep me behind a desk for 9 hours a day every day. So I’m registered for a full course load at a college and begin a journey to something else while I still have time. Before you know it, you meet an awesome girl, want to settle down and no, no no! No! Ahh! No! Hahaha okay, maybe I overreacted.

Happiness is something that takes a while to understand, but you don’t have to understand it in order to be happy. I’m sure dogs don’t understand what happiness is, but you can tell when they’re happy! But I’m a curious guy, so in my reading about happiness, I have also read about people. I like people: I like watching people, talking to people, reading about people, and even writing about them. Awkward List isn’t just about random stuff, its about people! I hope to someday write a book involving all of these things: happiness, people, and humor. All in one!

Traveling isn’t that bad. I used to really hate it, but after a while you realize that the world is too big to just stay in one place forever. There are a ton of things to see out there, so maybe once I turn 50 or something, I’ll start traveling the world.

Random post, I know 🙂

Edwin

I really like lighthouses, so finding one at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station was really something awesome to me. It really made my day.

So many things have happened that its hard to keep up.

A friend and member of one of our school organizations recently passed away from a hiking accident. Before that, the death of two close relatives (about to weeks apart from each other), and prior to that, a high school buddy died from a rafting accident, his body was found a couple of weeks after his death.

To fit all of that in one summer is one heck of a task.

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” -Dr. Seuss

I am mastering that. To be myself.

A while ago, I read a book titled The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, and it really got to me. An average person can make radical decisions about their lives, despite what every one else says. She had the idea to begin a series of changes and document her results to see if she felt any happier, and everybody thought she was being too drastic by attempting to do a “Spring cleaning” of her brain and environment. Also, I recently watched a documentary film by Joe Cross titled Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead in which Joe decides to go on a juice fast for sixty days in an attempt to change his health and release himself from all of his medications. Along his journey, he met another man, Phil, who was morbidly obese and ends up going on the same fast. These are drastic changes that take a lot more brain strength than you might think.

I’ve asked myself in the past about what made me unhappy for a while, and I’ve come up with one answer so far: the fear of change. But what can we do about it, really? I wanted to do so many things, like switch my major of study and decided to stick to it because of all of the external pressure. People around me graduating, friends telling me that aerospace engineering is awesome, and the biggest obstacle, my pride, were keeping me in a field that I was unhappy being a part of. But one has to learn to be who one is. One of the easy ways to reach that happy point, is to be yourself. Sounds simple, but it really isn’t, for me at least. I first had to understand myself a little better, and find out what I liked and disliked. After finding that out, there comes a point where you must accept yourself just as you are, and that is what I’m working on.

I’ll be who I am and I’ll say what I feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter will not mind.

Thanks, Dr. Seuss.