Get your own
 diary at DiaryLand.com! contact me older entries newest entry


powered by SignMyGuestbook.com

December 12, 2002 - 1:21 p.m.

An essay on the past, the present, perception and the persons within ... some food for thought. Your comments and thoughts are specifically invited.

"It is somehow interesting how the human mind responds to the present, the past and the perception of both.

Take for a moment the woman that goes on a diet and looses a great deal of weight. Somewhat rapidly her friends and family will notice this change and comment to the positive on it. She, however, may continue for quite some time to retain the mental body image of a woman that was 10, 20 or 50 pounds heavier as her former self. In fact it is that mental image that she carries that is frequently the beginning of a downfall and a cause of the weight to begin creeping back. They say it takes 21 days to create a habit and twice that long to remove one. How long does it take us to change the perception of ourselves?

Next we take a change that is not created to the form but one that is more to the substance of who a person is. Look to the womanizer that has found his one true love and is now happily dreaming of a future with the one true love. For how long to the bachelor chums continue to invite him out on the latest bar crawl and woman hunt? Are his personal changes unnoticed by his friends or are they noticed but unacknowledged in the hope that if we do not give credence to the new order of things then the order really hasn't changed. How many of us have turned a blind eye to a negative act done by one held in high esteem in the hopes that they may remain on that pedestal that we have placed them?

What then of the changes that a person makes to their life to rectify some past wrong? How long then do we paint someone with the false brush of past transgressions that are better left in a time that served them? This of course creates the dilemma in dealing with one that played you false in the past. Is it not far better to greet them with the skepticism of which they have earned so as not to be caught out by their false dealings once again. Or better is it to offer out another branch of pax in the hopes that the false person will sometime take hold and grow from the confidence in which you have placed in them. This here is likely the truth of the difference between the optimist and the pessimist, the Samaritan and the miser. It is not the actions of the first encounter but the second and fifth that reveal the true inner natures of our own Samaritan and miser.

What then of the Samaritan that did open their hearth or heart and was used falsely. Then doubly false by the user turning victim and making public a cry of wolf? Is it better to be silent and wronged or to descend into the pettiness of a quarrel for the grace of being publicly someone's better, which having so descended is then in fact no longer attainable. A paradox of the truest form, in which the only resolution is that of time and the durability of a reputation; which by the above cases may in fact not be repairable. Ill-repairable not due to actions or the lack, on the part of the self, but on the part of the false perception and inattention of others. Silence and patience on these matters seems but the only recourse.

What then can be done so that we may all let go of the past, and yet still retain enough from it to forge ourselves into the betters that we wish to attain? How then to remember the heat of the flame from the stove and still have the desire to warm oneself from its flames?"

previous - next

about me - read my profile! read other Diar
yLand diaries! recommend my diary to a friend! Get
 your own fun + free diary at DiaryLand.com!