That's your BS

Today, we had a thought.

Certainly not an earth-shattering event by any means, yet this one went as follows:
There are times when you will be exposed to the fact that there is a difference between how you want life to work, and how it actually does.  Then, you can hold on to your beliefs about how you think life should be, or you can get to the business of understanding how it actually is.

It really shouldn't surprise us that most times we choose to hold on tightly to what we "know". 
The idea that life situations will just rearrange according to our desires is comforting, seductive, and sometimes intoxicating.  After all, we're not bad people, don't we deserve to have happiness? 

However, what evidence is there that life gives us what we deserve? As Clint Eastwood's Will Munny states so succinctly in the movie Unforgiven, "Deserves got nothing to do with it."

Doing nothing differently and then pretending that things will somehow get better or a situation won't recur....well, the kindest thing we can say about that, may be that its illogical. (Others may describe it as a definition of insanity)  
However, we do accept that it may take us a few exposures to the aforementioned differences, before some of us decide to go the other way.  

A gentle nudge becomes a shove, situations may get more extreme or dangerous, and we finally decide that what we're doing isn't working.  To paraphrase what someone once said, the acid of our pain finally eats through the wall of our denial. Sometimes, we need to suffer enough to say; "There's got to be a better way." Then, if we're lucky, we begin searching for it.  We question what we've been taught, and look for answers, truth, the meaning of life, and an end to the suffering & stress.

The thriving personal development and motivational industries is evidence that a lot of searching is taking place. The continued production of new best selling books, all promising answers to a lot of the same questions, indicates that many of us aren't quite finding the answers that work. 

We've experienced that haven't we?  The euphoria of new knowledge and insight that's going to change our lives!  Fast forward a few months and....the thrill is gone, and something is still...missing.

This blog is in no way intended to provide THE answer that many of us are looking for, or to spend time debating the ones that some of these industries claim to provide...
Our position is actually that they're all bullshit.  

Hold on, hold on, allow us to expand on that thought a bit. 

We agree that there is definitely a lot of great, sensible, insightful and useful information in the thousands of best selling personal development, motivational, spiritual and psychology books and websites published every year.  We also find that a lot of them cover similar ground, say similar things in many different ways and are really drawing water from many of the same wells...but when they start promising us THE way to finding happiness or THE magic secret you've been missing all your life...then the pot they're cooking starts to give off a different smell.

Our premise is that no human being can really give us all the life answers, and a future post will explore a rational explanation for why we think that's the case.  For now, we'll adapt the the way that the Bernie Laplante's character expressed the idea in the movie Hero (1992).  

Despite all of these "Gurus" always trying to tell us what the absolute "truth" is, we put it to you that there is no "truth", just layer upon layer of bullshit.  And most of us, have a particular layer that we prefer, that we're comfortable with, and that becomes our bullshit.  (Check out the movie clip below for the full scene)

So, what we would like to establish through this blog, is a way to interact with a community of people, all searching for answers, and all of whom would have gained many insights along the way, yet who are still open to the idea that their current understandings may, contain some bullshit.  People who are open enough to discuss and examine their positions beyond "That's just the way I feel" or "I know that this is how it is." and are willing to honestly, logically and rationally consider why they think a certain way, and if it really makes sense.

Or put another way, the philosophy would involve an acceptance that i'm full of shit, and you're full of shit.  Yet, if there's something in your BS, that better explains what i've come up with so far on that topic...hey, i've got no issue refining my BS to include it.  Once we're agreed that it all falls short of the absolute truth, hopefully we can bypass any counterproductive "my truth is better than your truth" debate. 

Instead, it would be about learning from each other and appreciating the similar journey that we're all on.
As the legend himself put it; "Absorb what is useful, discard what is not, and add what is uniquely your own."

So that's the idea, we'll post essays and random thoughts on life, work, parenting, awareness, movies, television, psychology, marriage & motivation, all for us to discuss, share different viewpoints and learn from each other. We'll do our best to keep it as conversational and entertaining as we can.  Since we're fond of movies & television, we will be using more movie clips and other interactive ways to communicate our thoughts.  

We're thankful that you're here and we really look forward to
sharing in your journey.  We, by the way, are a couple of friends who've been questioning and searching for a while now, and most of the posts would be primarily based on our discussions and experiences.  This is our first attempt at blogging, and we can assure you that with your input, we'll only get better and better.

But then again...maybe that's just our bullshit.