the sensiway weblog

life is everyday.  each day that passes is a chance at life lost.  every waking morning is a new chance waiting.  make life today.

i haven’t a clue, really, i don’t. what i do know is that life, much like happiness, cannot be bought, sold or bartered for – that i believe is the key as each one of us has a uniquely different goal, or destiny is you will, to accomplish in life. so now i will attempt to define why it is that i believe such to be true.

this goal, or destiny that i am referring to does not have to be world peace or world domination, it doesn’t have to be anything. yet it should be something that ignites passion – without passion, without that flame lit underneath you there will be no everlasting effects; also the flame has to be able to be self ignite, needing or depending on nothing or no one but ones self. this is especially important when considering a career.

true happiness comes from inside, its about when your wants and your needs align, almost perfectly, it is when you are peace with yourself; that i believe to be happiness. ‘happiness’ is not easily obtained, simply stating what i believe happiness to be is not really all that simple, for i do not believe happiness is entirely quantifiable. to be happy is, at times, a struggle. no one will ever be happy 100% of the time. speaking personally, i often struggle to be happy. i let things in my life consume my thoughts, then eventually my emotions get involved, then once the emotions start, my mind is a foggy wasteland where no one, nor any thing is around.

as i read the above passages over and over and over again, i believe, rather i’ve come to realize that there is no one thing that i can do, or say, that will lead to inevitable happiness. that is different within each of us; what makes me happy and what keeps me happy is probably not the same as what makes you happy. i think that is the point. to be able to find inside of ourselves what it is that makes each of us happy. what it is that defines us, for ourselves, not what defines us to other people. (honestly, who cares what other people think? if you are doing your best, 100% of the time for no one other than yourself, because you choose who you want to be, then everything will simply fall into place) this is easily said and not so much done. in order to live a life for oneself, for yourself, we need to be able to not care what people think. we need to be able to think for ourselves without the influence of other people, even sometimes the people who love us. to be able to actively pursue our wants throughout our lives will make our lives so much more meaningful; after all, who isn’t happy doing what they want? plus, if you are to live a life, who better to live it for than yourself?

what i hope to convey is if each of us can wake up daily and be the person that we choose to be, the person we want to be, that is all that is needed. unless, of course that person is a alcoholic, public nuisance, ect…i think you all get my drift.

in closing allow me to say what has made all the difference in my life. what it is that keeps me going and keeps that smile on my face is that ever pursuit of knowledge, that is what makes me happy, in addition to that is also the ability for me to be able to help people with what i know, to help makes peoples lives at least a little better, to help people see that they should live life for themselves and no one else. to help broaden peoples overall view of the world and all that it has to offer. thats the me i want to be. thats the person i try harder to be everyday knowing im always one step closer to being Me.

this is a follow up to my entry ‘whats love got to do with it‘

recently i have been focusing on the idea, or concept of Love more readily, actively; what it means to me, to others and how we are so easily influenced as to its meaning.

love is such an interesting, complicated state of mind or perhaps it is a state of being, either way is equally as complicated. the feelings you get when you’re in the presence of the one you ‘love’, the emotional attachment, the physical attachment, the butterflies when you kiss, the tingle up and down your spine when your hands meet, these are all feelings that we associate with love, with the idea of love.

what if, for a moment, the word Love did not exist. what then would we refer to those feelings as? extreme closeness? overbearing perhaps? if you were to ask 10 different couples what their definition of love is, you would undoubtedly get 10 different answers.

one such asnwer that i remember clearly, when asked what she thinks love, the resopnce was ‘i think love is meeting someone and knowing you are going to be with them for the rest of your life. meeting someone and knowing you love them’.

above you may notice the italicized word ‘knowing’, and this is such because of my feelings on the very concept of Love. reality is none really know what meaning to attach to the word Love. so, i say, without a doubt i do feel so strongly for my girlfriend, i would be lucky, and i mean this, if i could have her at my side for the rest of my life, and i would hope it to be. yet, i only think i love her, and she knows this. it was not easy for me to convey exactly how i can say that i do ‘love her’ because i say it, daily, and to turn around and say, ‘but i only think i do’ in the same breath. i say i love her based upon MY OWN definition of love, i say I Love You to her based upon what i THINK to be the meaning of true love.

love is, like everything else in this world, subjective to each individual.

here are a few things i think love is, or at least should be, about:

• to want to wake up every morning with that person, to yearn to see their face daily

• to want to help make that person a better person & for them to want the same for you

• to want to see that person happy, always at whatever the cost

• to be able to see yourself growing old with that person

• to have a mutual understanding of each others wants and needs

• willingness to change for that person if need be, and vice versa

when i started to make that list i was much more sure of my answers then i am now. i thought i had a much clearer, more defined view point on my definition of love. it seems i was wrong, perhaps i have a block at the moment, but those are the best ideas i can come up with. yet, there it is. love. im sure there will be a follow up to this post as love is an ever changing subject as we are ever changing out subjects of desire.

one topic i believe has deep roots in a successful relationship is the ability for us to properly communicate what we want out of a relationship. what we look for in our significant other. where we hope the relationship to go and how we see it growing. once we are able to communicate to our lover what we want in a relationship, it is at that point that we can see if the relationship has any staying power. for if we can communicate what we want, what we hope for, and if our significant other listens and responds in kind, then we see the possible future, or perhaps we would see them not respond in kind, not make changes to assist in what each other thinks to be important, in effect for the significant other to be alone, doing what he or she wants as opposed to what the relationship wants, what it desires. love can conquer all, but only if we let it. if only we give ourselves to love and to the relationship if not, all love, lust and desires will simply perish.

take no ones definition of anything, most notably love. let your love grow and evolve, let it become something unique to you, something unique to the both of you.

im sure by now most people have heard of NY’s most recent debacle – the Obesity Tax! you can find the full article on it here.

in an effort to curb the close to $15 billion deficit in NY this year and next here is a quick run down of their plan to help NY come out of it:

• begin to TAX all NON-diet soda’s an additional 15%; so normally 1$ will now be around 1.15$
• 3% cut in education spending
• $620-a-year tuition hike at SUNY
• $600 increase at CUNY
• +/- $3.5 billion in health care cuts
• restore the sales tax on clothing and footwear

the article further goes on to state that “Raising the price of this liquid candy will put children and teens on a path to a healthier diet” . no it wont, you MORON! has alcohol prohibition taught you fools nothing!! if you try to PERSUADE YOUTH to do ANYTHING, even if that anything is in their own best interest, they will go running like mad men in the other direction. what raising the price does is what you want it to do, MAKE YOU MONEY! theres no positive spin on; what about the lower class of families that can only afford soda! and, yes, that IS the case in some parts of the city!

heres a few more things they propose; to “expand the state’s social services net, including a 30% increase in welfare payments over three years starting January 2010, increased money for food banks and expanded access to the state’s Family Health Plus program.” as well as, “easier for people to enroll in Medicaid by eliminating face-to-face interviews and fingerprinting requirements”. and a local source states he will attempt ‘a tax on downloading songs to an iPod’. further plans say ‘Six youth detention facilities would be closed, including the Rochester Community Residential Home at 2325 Elmwood Ave. That building has not housed any juveniles “for some time.”

well, for the sanity’s sake ill start from the top and chop em down from there:

• additional 15% tax on SODA! and GATORADE! common! now the gov’t is trying to TELL US what is healthy for us and FORCE US to drink what THEY THINK is the proper thing for us to drink?! ill add this to the list of ways the gov’t already tells us how to live our lives. i.e. – who to have sex with (prostitutes), what to put into our own bodies (any type of ‘illegal’ drug), when we can drink alcohol (which is another thing that happens readily in nature, theres evidence of animals getting drunk all over the place), when we are ready to die for our country, the list does go on and on
• education cut – of ALL the things to cut money from, of ALL the things to stop paying and contributing to, does NYS REALLY think that cutting spending to OUR FUTURE is the best idea? cut spending so that kids DON’T have computers in the classroom, so they DON’T have the books they need, so teachers cant get compensated properly. PLEASE open your eyes NY, don’t take the children’s future out from underneath them.
• the tuition hikes – same concept as above, of all the possible things to cut, to slow down on, or to suspend indefinitely, they choose to make it MORE DIFFICULT for young adults (and adults alike) to go to college, to get back to college after time off, to better themselves, to make society better, to be a positive impact on society, to MAKE MORE MONEY FOR OUR ECONOMY. SUNY and CUNY schools were great for the very fact that they were relatively affordable.
• the health care cuts – we very well know that health care co’s make a lot of $, theres no denying this; but they aren’t going to admit it. any you know whats going to happen once they do NOT received the monies they were expecting? well, shit flows downwards, be prepared to have some sort of increase in your health care costs; though if your health care is like mine chances are the prices already went up
• the taxing on clothing and footwear is just ridiculous, ludicrous even. there has been tax on clothing and footwear for a while here, i cant remember a time when there wasn’t? actually, i seem to remember once a year theres something like tax free week???? anyone able to enlighten me on this whole tax thing? lol

anyhow, i feel like NYS just had a list of items that were not taxed and then decided which ones they WANTED to tax, not which ones were the best to tax or made the most sense. then once they decided what they WANTED to do, and DID it, they then decided how to put a positive spin on the horrific ideas they had. o, there is also a .05C bottle tax on things like WATER bottle and JUICE bottles. i thought that stuff was healthy? i though the gov’t wanted us to be healthy, thats why they were taxing the soda? so now, we buy water instead and we STILL have to pay more? oo, lest i forget that taxes on BEER AND LIQUOR are ALSO GOING UP!!! i cannot understand who is coming up with these plans or why in the hell they think they are any good.

here some ideas:

• instead of taxing the CONSUMERS, tax the COMPANYS who sell the non-diet soda! tell THEM its going to cost THEM 15% more to have their product in our state, you really think they will say no? imagine the funds they would loose if they did!
• for THE LOVE OF GOD do NOT TAX PLASTICS or PAPER bottles, you know the kind used for WATER and JUICE – this stuff is recyclable!! your already taxing beer and liquor, with all these proposed cuts, liquor and beer consumption will GO UP, i almost guarantee it.
• a tax on D:ing songs to an iPod?! you’re serious? i already paid 349$ for the damn iPod Touch, roughly 1000$ for the computer to connect it to, 40$ a month for the ‘high speed’ internet, $ monthly for the POWER to turn the fugging thing on, and NOW you’re going to TRY to tax me to DL a song?! i am honestly not worried about this, because there will always be a way around it; the new generation will not stand for such a thing, and neither will my generation.
• SIX youth detention facilities, SIX. and one hasn’t been used for some time now?! WTF?! all the POS buildings and housing and HOMELESS in this city and they have a facility furnished and ready for people and they are NOT using it?!?!?! MOTHER FU*K! close the youth center, take some of the white and blue collar workers who are going to, inevitably, loose their jobs, hire them to work at the aforementioned facility and make it a shelter for the homeless! it does NOT have to be full service, TRUST ME the homeless would love just to get out of the cold weather! ITS DECEMBER!

CARE FOR YOUR COMMON MAN INSTEAD OF SHITTING ON HIM, TAKING HIS HARD EARNED MONEY and NOT TAXING THE RICH!!

the worst thing of all for me, well hopefully for all of us, is to realize that this is just the beginning. this is the first step in the gov’t taking away our freedom. anyone remember why we got rid of the British in the first place? anyone remember the Boston Tea Party? thats right, ridiculous TAX on TEA; the British TOLD US WE HAD TO DRINK TEA FROM THE PARLIMENT – see what happens when gov’ts try to tell masses of people what they can do? a coup d’etat!

we are going to be the test dummy state. they start by slowly taking away things from us. one by one, little by little, until soon enough there is nothing left to take. until we are living in the exact way in which the gov’t thinks we should, and then what? what happens when they run out of $ then?

i read this particular analogy a while back, it was in reference to the gov’ts control over substances (cannabis, opium, salvia divinorum, ect) but it works equally as well here:

lets say we take a lobster from its habitat and place it directly into the boiling water, immediately the lobster knows its in for a rough time and starts screaming and then, in an instant its dead.

now lets say we take that same lobster from its habitat and place it in some luke water water; the lobster is none the wiser. thinking may be hes in for a bath. until the water is heated, slowly, slowly, and then, without knowing it, hes cooked, from the inside out.

we are the lobster. our freedoms are being slowly taken away from us, one by one and soon enough, we will turn around and there will no freedoms left to take. its time for a revolution. its time for change. its time for me to move the hell out of NY.