character – William Dare

Zeit

How you spend your time defines who you are.

Who are you?

When I want to judge someone’s character, I don’t let appearances do the work. Experience renders character. Where do they garner their experience? Examine how they spend their time. A man is what he thinks about all day long. Whatever task is at hand will dominate your thoughts. Your mind manifests its intention through action, through activity. Do you sit for hours online and mull about the mindless material circulating ad infinitum on the web? Do you seek out the novel? Do you spend time with quality people? Do you read quality books? Or read at all for that matter?

Many people like to think they are someone. Everyone likes to think they’ve achieved a degree of individuality. I will tell you: how you spend your time defines who you are. Ask yourself if your routine is any different from the millions of other rats trapped in this menacing maze. The habituations trap the mind into apathetic unoriginality.

I suffer these delusions. I ask myself how I individuate my experience from all other experience. If I watch all the same shit, if I desire and strive and celebrate all the typical glories that hail from mainstream adulation, I am a copy. I am a duplicate. My experience may as well be the same. How you spend your time defines who you are.

Experience renders the material of thought. It provides sense datum which feeds the flickering flame of the soul. Like the flick of a match we were born into this world and throughout our lives we burn. The brighter we burn is dependent on the kindling and fodder fed by way of experience. Experience is the filament of human existence. It allows us to burn brightly. The more original experience, the more brilliant our flame, our life, will shine.

Individuate yourself. Individuate your experience. Do we realize how asinine and inimical it is to scour the ranks of top sellers and most popular lists? Why do we fawn more of the same?

There must be something to wanting a shared experience. “Happiness is only real when it’s shared.” Perhaps that’s why people rush to accumulate all the same experiences as everyone else. While there’s nothing original in going to all the same amusement parks, in reading all the NYT best sellers, in watching all the hit reality TV shows, in buying all the latest gadgets and gigs, I see the utility in it. Yes, the utility is glaring. It creates a unity of experience. Some experience so we can feel apart of this greater whole, this greater truth. Or it fills some hole, some void thrust upon us when we were bestowed with the burden of freedom. Perhaps they are one in the same. The responsibility of freedom- those god awful chains of choice- weigh equally on every man. I understand the exhaustion. I understand the willingness to shed a link or two and indulge in ‘truth’, or popular convention.

I seem to be stuck with these bitter sentiments. What did routine do to me? Ah. I remember: lull me into lecherous lethargy.

I want to get positive. Live life with enthusiasm and passion and excitement and energy. I say that most of my time I exert the full force of my being to the moment. I long to shine through. Sometimes I question. These questions rear their head like a hydra and I find myself lost in a continual battle . Pollyanna, or skepticism. Such is life.

Telling Character

A man never describes his own character so clearly as when he describes another.
-Johann Paul Friedrich Richter

This quote resonates with me. How people describe the world is an indication of their attitude towards the world. If you want a simple judgement test of someones character, you need only examine the attitude they hold for the world. This includes their beliefs about circumstances, people, relationships, and even the beliefs they maintain about themselves.

nonsense

You can be whoever you want. Who are you? Who legislates your role? No doubt your cognition, but from what matter? Your society nurses your beliefs. You choose which kernel of knowledge will yield the most fruit- we execute this legislation. And who decides if we are effective? Certainly not the executor, for that would be tyranny of mind, a fascist abomination of being. And who is the judge after all? Why, the society from which we glean our kernels and suckle our wellsprings. We are not our conscience; rather, we are fawns, helpless without our mother’s milk. We grovel, as slaves do, compromising and snarling in desperate hysteria. We are slaves to each other, to the perceptions of past ancestors, of yesteryear. Why can’t we inherit a spirit of wildness? Is that too unwieldy? It is not our man we cannot tolerate, but ourselves. We see ourselves in them and we recoil in horror, in disdain. Creeping around, like a blind beggar, seeking handouts from our fellow mendicants. We run, internally, and hide, but never willing to give up our conditioned vices. We rot inside, desperately coining new meaning for every chapter of life. The insatiable will for freedom only collapses on itself as we become our own ends, and means. But we are never alone, so long as our cognitions are anthropomorphizing sensations into false meaning. No. we are forever haunted.

Push yourself, and you will grow, we are adaptable creatures. Our minds absorb the brunt of circumstantial externalities and forces. They conform to the challenges and grow in complexity. Throw yourself into hardship, with reckless abandon. Confusion, pain, and unfamiliarity are temporary illusions of weakness. Do not succumb to despair or opt for an extended approach. Commit to the pain and hardship and you will find a transformation of boundaries, internally and externally. Life changes, its flux is evident on any time scale. Our cognition is apart of this change. Limits will migrate continually, closer and farther from your potential. Recognize that your potential is every growing. You will surpass those limits, confines of the mind, and flow into thousands of potential seeds of opportunity. Push yourself. Hurl yourself. Sweat is the reward. It cleanses perspective.

Infiltrate society. Corrupt custom. Confuse tradition. Reinvention is bound, helpless to each inventor. Distort familiar ground. Remap well worn paths. Gather mindless spirits to join. They will have no choice but to think. There is no end in sight. Only adaptation and invention. Perpetual evolution and rebirth. Toss the puerile minds into a boiling pot and watch as they firm and harden. Let nature corrupt mans manipulation. Let understanding wallow in neurosis. Nature is genius, overwhelming and paralyzing our imagination. Acceptance is not progress, it is pride. Attach with instinct but be wary of certainty. Open the gates of passion. Channel natures deliberate zephyrs onto our kindled spirit. Reignite our blaze. Life is not controlled. It is natural and wild, like our fiery spirit. Do not stifle its flame. Throw dampening constraints elsewhere.

My Ethics.

Over the years I’ve developed a strong understanding and conviction of proper morals and ethics through a variety of my life experiences. For a long time the ethics and morals I held for myself were relative to the situational occurrences and were usually based on how my actions would leave me feeling at the time. This philosophy quickly eroded as it was tested and failed time and time again. I realized that my ethics are a direct reflection of my character and a strong character is something that not only I can rely on in times of doubt, but others can look to for valuable guidance. A strong character is consistent, noble, respected, and trustworthy. Being morally and ethically sound involves being full of integrity, doing what’s right no matter who’s looking, being straightforward and honest, and being selfless in the decisions you make to benefit others as well as yourself. I think a man’s character is the only thing he has when all is stripped away. It’s the reputation that precedes him as well legacy he leaves behind. I realize there were flaws in my personal philosophy and ethical standards that were detrimental to my success. Upon realizing this, I made a resolution to refine myself to exemplify excellence in every endeavor or thought I undertook. My thirst for success motivated me to turn my search for answers to those who were successful and exemplified a life of excellence and honor, so that I could assimilate the best of what they learned and lived into my own life. My pursuit led me to read books of awe inspiring truth and wisdom such as the Bible, to books by authors such as James Allen, Napoleon Hill, John Maxwell, W. Clement Stone, Claude Bristol, Dale Carnegie, and other honorable men. My father is also a source of inspiration in his unwavering conviction to pursue what’s right and flee from what is wrong no matter what the consequence. When interacting with others, I often revert to the golden rule in one form or another to judge my decisions by placing myself in the situation of whomever I’m interacting with.

During my youth I was involved with many toxic activities which, in hindsight, caused many setbacks toward my long term aspirations. Due to moving over twelve times and attending twelve different schools throughout the first twenty years of my life, I developed a strong love and appreciation for people. This love often caused me to compromise my ethics and morals in order to satisfy or appease my friends and their expectations. Though I tried my best to exemplify my convictions, I often found myself compromising many of my ethical and moral standards when I was around my friends.

Many of the situations and dilemmas that caused me to compromise my ethics tended to be more internal clashes as opposed to visible confrontations. I do my best to assume full responsibility for my actions in the midst of any adversity. I consider myself a terrible liar, and as much as I dislike the feeling of being dishonest towards other people who trust me, I most of all despise lying to myself. When I get caught for doing something wrong, I embrace the responsibility for my actions and accept the consequence of my shortsighted mistakes. I do my best to spot these incongruencies in order to eliminate any detrimental conflicts with my values. I find it important to acknowledge the mistake without hesitation and take the appropriate measures to remediate.

I have learned that problems never go away until they are fixed. If you put off fixing problems they will eventually build up to overwhelm or drown you. They never fix themselves. When I was a younger I had misconception of responsibility. Taking the form of procrastination, many problems would pile up and eventually lead to a downward spiral. The same analogy goes for flawed ethical decisions which, if not immediately and emphatically fixed, pile up, causing severe damage to you in the end.