"The answers are always right in front of you. Just open your eyes."

So, I'm trying to wrap my head around some "new" concepts. Writing (my form of verbalization) is the best way to put my thoughts in order...or, at least, hurry them on their little way to being in order.

I found a list of 70 Reminders to help put life in perspective, and--as always--I felt compelled to actually do something. This is useful because, well, I constantly need reminders. Okay, more like slaps in the face, but these work as well. A few things stuck out:

68. the only thing you can change about people is your relationship with them.
64. using age-old methods to solve new-age problems is setting yourself up for failure.
45. the answers are always right in front of us. Just open your eyes.
1. Believe that even the smallest compliment can save someone's life.

Out of 70 statements, these four stuck out. Not because the rest were crap, but because these four fit where I'm at in my life, the most. if I'm on my journey to be like the crystal, then I need to open myself up. Recognizing the potential in every connection, in every interaction is a powerful place to start because, well, I am at least 50 percent of that interaction. While I may not be able to change the way the other person feels, I can change the way that I behave towards them...hmm, illumination is happening already--this is both great and scary.

Um, sorry, where was I? Oh, yeah. By learning to appreciate others I better open myself up to be like that crystal.

The crystal needs, light in order to show its transparency, right? I mean, how do we understand a crystal to be a crystal other than by its qualities, and if one of its major qualities is translucence, then without this transparency the crystal would just be another rock. But that's not just it; in order to be transparent, the crystal is dependent on its interaction with the light. Without the light passing through it--interacting with it--there would be no way to discover the crystal's transparency. Now, I understand this is a grossly oversimplified rundown of both the philosophy of interactions, and the physics of light, but it makes sense.

The key to being transparent (open) is in recognizing that my interactions with other people are not only key to their own happiness, but key to my own. By recognizing the value in each person, I can better recognize the value in myself, not on a scale of better-thans, but on a plane of equality.

In the end, the answers have really been right in front of me. I've just had my eyes closed. It's time to open them to what's before me. One blink at a time, until I can keep them open.

This is what thesis writing does to me at midnight (okay, anytime, really)...

I think we have it backwards. Plants don't need us; we need them.

I was writing my on my thesis and I began to think of what it means to make an existence. (I don't care, it's fun for me :-P.) I thought about how people rely on other people to "prove" or validate who they are. Society, and granted most education, has become so anthropocentric that we seem to have returned to the pre-Copernican days. Everything from animals to plants have been scripted to "depend" on humans for their existence. We see this in the films we watch (Battle: LA, anyone?) where things cry out for recognition from Man--either through war, "extinction," or some other catastrophe that only man can deactivate or cancel out--or those things that do not beg Man's mercy are doomed to destruction (that's right. Anything that resists our gaze is doomed to "non-existence.").

But, then it hit me: Man is not the center of the world!

This thought first came to mind when I was thinking about plants. Yes. Plants. Plants don't need us. They have existed for millennia without our help. How, one may ask? They live in a symbiotic harmony with the rest of their environment. Think Avatar, here (no, not the bald one; the blue ones). Things are connected to one another so that there really is no "individual" flower. Each is recognized in that it does not exist outside of the others--of course, until some yo-yo comes along and plucks one--and it only recognizes itself in relation to one another. One is constantly becoming the other as they (co)exist. Neither is ever singularly whole, but instead they are simultaneously completing one another.

Now, granted, I realize that it may sound like I am riding the fairy dust, or something, but I'm not. This all makes sense. There's an interconnectivity out there that we humans seem to want to fight against (we call this RACISM). And, yes, I acknowledge that there are those beings who eat and kill one another. But even this is part of the symbiotic inter-connected relationship in which they exist. It is predominantly humans who pervert this relationship with mindless, unnecessary killings.

So, instead of trying to make someone see you or acknowledge you, try to just exist with them. The world shouldn't be about recognition. It should be about a harmonic (co)existence because only then, will things start to make sense.

Now, back to that thesis.