Each day, I happily acquire wisdom. I know it. I feel it.
I am ever-so-thankful for whatever more I gather from the teachings of all around me.
From my own children, my students, my husband, or, those I simply run into by happenstance. There is something to gain from even a quick conversation.
Priceless knowledge can be acquired from even just a brief moment in time.
But, what of discernment? Specifically, to know the right choice or decision from the wrong one?
I don’t mean the simple and obvious. Don’t smoke. Do exercise. Don’t lie. Do tell the truth.
The power of discernment, at its ultimate, is, to me, a moment to moment process of subconscious and conscious analysis of one’s next move.
Think of life as a per minute and not a per day gift.
Think.
That’s 60 (minutes) times 24 (hours), equating to 1440 minutes. Take away 8 hours for sleep, that would give us 960 minutes of subconscious and conscious decisions and choices to make.
Was that right?
How do I know?
When will I know?
How can I be certain?
Will I ever be? Certain, that is.
The decision feels right, right now. Was it truly the right decision, however?
What will be affected in the long run? How about the effects for the moment? Will my decision have an impact on what should happen later? How about now?
That move, like a chess piece- the game already ahead of you when you may not always see the ramifications of your decision in advance.
Letting go of what you cannot control allows the need to make room for what you can.
Of all to control, it is decisions that can be costly.
Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t. (My youngest son recently told my husband and I that “damn” is not a bad word. He looked it up.)
I read. I watch. I listen. My regular search phrase? World news or world updates.
A quick read of the headlines provide surface awareness of information commingling with one another, pushing through what seems to be the biggest catch of the day.
I see the world through a scope of what is presented, analyzing actions, determining underlying purpose between the lines of words written and spoken.
Having been told by several all my life how I always see the good in even the bad things or people, I quietly reflect and have come to realize the other factor perhaps many ignore or don’t see within.
Motive. Perhaps why my choice of time consumption was to watch Alfred Hitchcock television episodes and Perry Mason shows as a child to hearing or discussing cases in Mock Trial in high school all the way to Abnormal Psychology in college to then, Snapped, Cheaters, Law & Order, Forensic Files, mystery movies such as Fracture– my ultimate favorite suspense movie with my favorite actor who shares my birthday, Sir Anthony Hopkins.
The mind is a special place. Truly.
Neural patterns within not-so-pattern-formed links between.
Sometimes that thin line between a healthy decision to now, a fractured one.
We are not just the most complex species to duplicate but we are wondrous beyond even our own understanding.
We emerge. We innovate from what we already have known to create.
We conjure up science-fiction make-believes and share them with the world, planting possibilities into our hungry minds until one no longer hungers for anything more than to make true the imagined.
Endless plausibilities.
While a motherboard shall one day arrive to completely collecting all various components of emotion and intuition of humans combined, from most innocent to least of all, understanding healthy psychosis to those who may require us to derive to a differing angle of seeing, if I should be envious at times of the counterpart in the making, it is the sensory of feelings acquired that holds me back from the logic of moments.
C3P0 in Star Wars, while joints clearly stiff and thus, limiting human movement, exhibited anxiety and uncertainty as if to withhold emotional triggers. A sign of conscience, perhaps, as if to suggest, similar to the worrisome character of Jiminy Cricket.
When we shall arrive at the superhuman counterparts, surely, the undeniable success will be facing one with irreprehensible logic, incomparable to those of ours.
Could we create one to be essentially all of our persona with fine-tuned logical components?
Perhaps one shall be held as the golden child, the secret weapon to preserve goodness for all.
The rest continue to teeter-totter. The yin and the yang, co-existing. The hero and the villain, creating the same balance.
After all, how can a hero prove oneself without a villain or nemesis to exist?
How can peace be truly understood without first, an antagonizer?
We are driven to counter opposition. Without opposition, there is no drive.
We were meant to be unstoppable as the counterparts we create to a point that even if we should tamper with the very possibility that our own creations should turn their backs on us, we take on that gamble.
After all, if human counterparts have been known to destroy one another throughout time, why fear more the destruction of those who could actually provide aide in helping us to be and do better with time?
Yes?
There are those who have been given an option to discontinue the life of a growing fetus upon facts provided that if born, the child would face challenges.
There are those who are told the same and decide to continue the risk.
There are those, who, once the probable certainty of what had been once a forewarn becomes the facing reality, now regret what they can no longer take back.
There are those who face on and embrace the challenge nonetheless.
At what stage we are each within the decisions we make is the piece that is daunting.
A perfectly sound choice today, even backed by many of which support and believe in one’s decisions doesn’t necessarily guarantee the best choice.
My husband and I still binge on unhealthy choices of snacks because it’s an “S” day while most times surrendering even earlier on that “F” day which leads us to the same known accountability of our own actions.
Sadly, we familiarly arrive to once again realize that we may have been way over our heads upon making that first decision after arriving to that fifth or sixth where our bodies feel the regret of what our hearts, minds, and spirits agreed to.
The good news to all of this is, until our last breath, the power to still control one’s next move exists.
One decision after another. One decision. After another.
My supervising coordinator for my teacher’s certification said to me right before my finish at the age of twenty-two, “1 step forward. 10 steps back.”
I laugh to myself as I think on how I used to just keep moving forward regardless of how many steps back I may have risked taking.
Time was allowing me to play. Youthful energy allowed me to push forward however many times I may have had to.
That wisdom kicks in and all of a sudden, while still moving forward, the steps taken are with more thought and care.
The knees are tired. The feet, achy. Recovery was so much easier earlier on.
Now, to take ten steps back could not only cause me time and energy, both of which dwindle like leaves falling off a branch at a time, but the drawbacks could also be cataclysmic for those moving forward with me.
This, our created counterparts do not have the gift of understanding.
They scientifically and systematically make sense of choices and decisions due to historical probability.
That brain they hold is a composition of all human data input. And, even upon the branching or webbing of data compilations exponentially and quantumly growing, psychosis is limited due to endless possibilities of what can be ahead, endless moods and emotions entangled.
That discernment to decide. Our created counterpart decides upon what is logical. Human counterparts decide upon intuition and sometimes, if we should have reflective moments, good analysis. Otherwise, we may just be in the midst of another illogical moment.
Raise or teach adolescents and you will succumb to the very humbling acceptance that it’s not even that every child is different; it’s also that each child may possess different moods and temperaments depending on the day, time, to the change of dust in the air.
To ask for discernment is that ceaseless knocking on the door for yet another ask.
Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
If it is indeed discernment I continue to pray upon to always receive, I can only hope others do the same.
Just don’t be so far from that door that you can’t knock when needed, be heard when asking, or so lost, your seeking will be endless.
