Much of life is all about the timing.

"Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence."  Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

I've always liked the imagery of two ships passing in the night. Each on a journey with a goal and destination in mind.

One heading towards where the other is coming from. One seeming to be returning. A moment in time each on a different part of their voyage. They meet and continue on.

Will there ever be a time when they will meet in a safe harbor and decide to leave together on a voyage of their own?

Love and Lust

I feel compelled to write this as I don't want any confusion between me and someone I truly respect.
I feel that all to often we as a society confuse or don't understand the difference between love and lust for reasons that I won't get into in this post.
To me lust is all about the 'I'. I want this thing, or I want to be with this person. It can be possessive and worrying only about how we feel in the moment. This is when it is taken to the extreme, and it doesn't necessarily need to be a bad thing as we do need some desire to want to be together.
If lust is all about the 'I', what is loves focus? To me love is all about 'them.' It's about the ability to take the 'I' out of the equation and being able to ask what is best for that person you purport to care about. It's about being honest with yourself, and respecting them enough to care what is best for them. Respecting their wishes even if it's not what you want.
There also needs to be a love of self and the ability to recognize that the object of our desire is not always the best thing for us.

In any healthy relationship there needs to be a balance between love and lust.  Love is not lust and lust is not love.

Moochers and Looters

I'm a fan of Ayn Rand's Books, and her philosophy of 'Objectivism' is the closest, I've found, to my own.

In Ayn Rand's book "Atlas Shrugged," she identifies two groups of people that feel that the world owes them stuff just because they live in it. The 'Moochers” go about acquiring 'their' stuff by guilt and being helpless, and the 'Looters' feel they have a right to acquire 'their' stuff by force.

Anyone that asks for a hand out with out first trying and then tries to make you feel guilty because you want them to do for themselves; is a moocher, and you should call them out on it.

Anyone that tries to take your stuff by physical or mental intimidation needs to be resisted with all the legal means possible, and if the law is not on your side you need to work to changed them; as, the looters tend to change them to work in their favor if not watched.

The whole point of this post is I think we should bring these terms, moocher and looter, back into the American lexicon back into popular use.

So, I ask you anytime you come into contact with a moocher or looter call them out on it.

Ps, Here's a heart warming story about what you can acomplish with out taking government assitance, and Amanda Zych is my hero.

Beck meets the woman who found his fathers coat.

Video #2 has the story.
Video #1 is back story.

You can find Amanda Zych's Shop to the left under: A place to find Cool Stuff - Rogue Retro.

Part 3 of The Tao of Josh - Honesty/Integrity

What is honesty and integrity? To me honesty is telling the truth, pretty simple. Integrity is the hard one because it is being honest even when it’s not to your advantage. In other words you can’t pick and choose when to be honest. Lying by omission is still lying, as is leading some one to believe something that is not true just buy the way you state the facts.

The white lie is still a lie. If someone ask for your opinion, give it honestly and your reason why you feel that way. You should not worry about hurting some feeling when giving an honest answer. If they get made at you, they shouldn’t have asked the question if they were not ready for an honest answer. I personally never ask a question until I’m ready to hear the answer.

Remember the easiest person to lie to is oneself. Lying and self delusion seem to be our greatest pastime. Can I really afford this house when I’m already up to my I eyeballs in dept. Oh, everything will work out. We delude are selves into believing what ever it is we want instead of facing the facts. To be honest with anyone else you first must be honest with yourself.

Part of having integrity is saying what you mean and meaning what you say. This way when you make a statement the people around you don’t have to decide if you are being honest this time or not. Don’t use confusing language or be purposefully misleading in you statements. The American English language is already confusing enough with out purposefully trying to mislead our audience.

If you realize that something you said is untrue, because your understanding of the facts has change, admit it. Let everyone that’s involved know what happened and your reasoning and move on. We can’t know everything and we must make statements and decisions with what information is at hand.

Just remember, once you are known as a liar and you really need to tell some that the house is on fire and they need to get out they just might not believe you.

A Small World.

This is part of a comment that I left on Steve Perry's (author not the singer) blog.  Link here: How to Write - Pacing .

I'm looking to put together a collection of your works ever since I was re-introduced to you and your work through reading your comments on Rory's blog.

It was through reading "The Man Who never Missed" that I realized that I need tobe careful and not set up bad habits. That there was economy of and right movement. That if you new these principle that when the time came you would know what to do as needed.

So, over the years I've stepped into a few dojos and never been happy as after you learn the basic they seem to lock yo into the 'if they do this you do that' paterns of thought and muscle memory.

Then, I came across MoV Rory's Book and it resonated with my soul. This is what I had understood at a subconsious level. But, he had been willing to go through the proces of learning the systems to then be able to deconstruct them.

So isn't it a small world that when I started to read Rory's blog, from the beginning as that is the onlyway to get the totality of something, I run across you and him, having some interesting discussions. Both coming at the problem from different perspectives going to the same place.

Sometimes I feel like a theif in the night scavenging the thoughts (edit: and abilitities) of those around me.

Avoidance or Hiding of Consequence

How much of lifes problems are a result of us trying to avoid or hide the consequences of what we want to do or have done.  Earlier I stuck my foot in my mouth and made my self look like a complete ass.  I made a comment on a blog with an incomplete understanding of what was said or context.   I wanted to delete the comment. What I did was thank the author, explaned to him and my self what went wrong (the learning moment).  Now everytime I go back to that post and the comment I made it will remind me to be more attentive to what I read.

For those that might want to read it. Update  on Chiron.

Part 2 of The Tao of Josh - Respect

What is respect? To me respect is evaluating someone or something to see if it is worthy or has worth. We are asking is this person or thing worthy of my time and energy? You are saying to yourself, “Do I need to pay attention to it or them?” So, telling others of your respect for someone or something is a declaration of it or their worth to you.

Some other words that have similar meanings are: deference, high opinion, admiration and value.

Respect starts with giving it to oneself first. How can you value others if we don’t value ourselves. Also, respect is earned you can’t just demanded it from others, and some think that if you carry a gun you get respect. If you are not worthy the gun my get respect but not you.

There are to types of respect that you can bestow on someone. The first is what I like to call personal respect. Personal respect is the respect that you give someone because of your opinion of them; i..e., you find them worthy.

The second is what I like to call positional respect and this is respect for the power of the position that the person holds even if you don’t respect the person in it. Example of this would be The President of the United States of America, your boss and your parents. Now these people are worthy of your time and attention based solely on there position and how much power they have over you. Now, I would hope that they as individuals would be worthy of your respect in their own right.

You can also bestow respect on inanimate objects. Anything that can hurt you if you are not paying attention to it deserves your respect.

Is everyone worthy of your respect? That’s an individual’s choice. I only give my respect or let others know that I respect someone if I find them very worthy. I do believe that you should be respectful to everyone. What I mean by this is I show respect to every one by having good manners. Having good manners, etiquette and showing decorum is the social lubricant that allows us all to live together without killing each other. Just because you don’t respect someone personally doesn’t give you the right to be rude to them.

You can value others opinion and ideas without agreeing with them just hear what they have to say evaluate where or not you agree and make your case. Most people do not make choices in a vacuum. They have reasons for doing the things that they do. If you have empathy and understand “why” they believe the way they do, it will better help you make decisions when dealing with them.

Discrimination is having a lack of respect for something, some group or some one. Now we all make some form of value based judgments every day. Do I like this or do I not like this. Do I like this person or do I not like this person. We as a society have determined that it’s not OK to make value based judgments on whole classes of people, as this shows a big lack of respect for the individual. Individuals should be judged on their own merits.

In my opinion you can not fix racial, gender or other large group discrimination with discrimination, or tilting the playing field in one groups favors. As I have said this practice shows disrespect for the individual. As I think Martin Luther King Jr. would of wanted we should judge a man or woman (got to be PC now or not) by “the content of his character and not the color of his skin,” sexual preference, gender or any arbitrary reason are little minds come up with.

Respect it’s the one thing we cherish receiving and the one thing we relish bestowing

I realy need an iditor.

I really am alot better at this than I use to be.  I try to read what I've written out loud after stepping away from it for awhile.  But I notice things still slip through. Please let me know if this confuses the message or just makes it hard to read.

Thank you for your patients.

Part 1 of The Tao of Josh - Personal Responsibility

What is Personal Responsibility? To me these words mean taking ownership of ones own actions. I will not expect nor is it anyone else’s duty to take care of me! I will not whine or blame others if things do not go as I plan.

The first responsibility of the individual is to oneself, now this might sound selfish to some, but if you think about it; it’s really not. If you take care of yourself first you’re not a burden on your family, society or anyone else, and you can help others in times of need. Now this doesn’t mean putting yourself first at the expense of others.

Let me give you an order of importance to the responsibilities in your life: your first responsibility is to your self; then family, friends, acquaintances, local community and the world at large.

Now you might be asking why family isn’t first. Let’s say you put your family first and give everything to the family. Say a family member needs some money, so you just go into debt to get the money, because you’re not worried about yourself. Now you get so far in debt that you can’t pay your own bills. You are now a burden to your family.

If you had kept your responsibility to yourself in minded, and said, “How can I help this family member support him self, so we can both prosper?” You would be keeping this principle in mind.

So, if the individual is strong then our families, friends, acquaintances, the local community and the world at large will be strong.

Now there are things that happen that are out of our control. Let’s say, a natural disaster comes along and destroys my house. It’s not everyone responsibility to insure that I get my life back exactly like it was before. It is my responsibility to plan for the future and part of that future is uncertainty and Mother-Nature. It’s my responsibility to ask myself, “What could happen and what should I do if it does?” and plan accordantly.

We can band together to help each other start over, but it’s not mandatory. I do believe in teamwork. You wouldn’t ask a teammate to do something and then stand around doing nothing with your handout? Teams work together to accomplish something for the benefit of the group. If, you do have to except someone’s help don’t fall into the trap of always relying on others. You should try to do things yourself first and if you really can’t do something then ask for help; while still doing what you can yourself. You will be surprised at what you can accomplish on your own. No freeloading, after you recover from what ever you needed help with pay those who helped you back in full; plus a little extra. There should be no free rides.

If you do rely on the government and others to take care of you, you are weakening are society, because you will put-off doing things waiting for someone else to take care of them.

So, if something bad happens pick your self up, dust yourself off and start building your life over. There are no guaranties in life, so plan accordingly.

Keep Death in Mind.

The introduction to "Bushido Shoshinshu" by Daidoji Yuzan is all about keeping death in mind. Death can find you at anytime, so give thanks for this time with your loved-ones on this day of Thanksgiving. We should keep and show the spirit of this day all year long. What would you do today if you new that you wouldn't have tomorrow? What words would you take back? Time is precious use it wisely as you might not get tomorrow. We shouldn't need a single day to remind us to appreciate and give thanks for this life.

Intro to The Tao of Josh - Why having a code of Ethics and Conduct makes life easer.

My dad once told me, “Josh, for every decision and action you make there are consequences: some will be good and some will be bad. So every time you make a decision or take action, you need to ask yourself, ‘what will the consequences be and can I live with them?’ If the answer is no then don’t do it. If you decide to do it anyway and the consequences comes to pass don’t whine about it, don’t make excuses and accept it like a man. You will have no one to blame but yourself.”

Now this wasn’t the first time my dad had told me this, but this time for some reason it stuck with me. Maybe, this was do to me realizing that my dad wasn’t always going to be around to bail me out and make things better. You see, we had just moved to Wyoming and by “we,” I mean it was just my dad, my brother and me; my dad and mom got divorced when I was four. My dad worked in the Oil Field and put in about 100+ hours a week and would be gone for days at a time. We had been staying with my grandparents, but now it was just going to be the three of us. So, you see if I got in trouble it was up to me to deal with it. Oh, and by the way, I was twelve, and my brother was ten.

Now you might be asking yourself, “Why are you telling me this,” because, even if I didn’t know it my dad was helping me build my own personal code of ethics and conduct, a code or “Tao of Josh” if you will. Now fast forward 20 some years, I’ve tried to live my life by this code. Some of it I got from my dad and some I got from books. I never wrote it down, until now. It was just these ideas floating around in the back of my head. “Again why are you telling me this?” It's simple, I see so many people making the same mistakes over and over. These same people complain that “life is hard,” and now I can say, “No its not. It’s just you making it appear that way. Here is my code of conduct and lets help you make one of your own, because the hardest part about life, in my opinion, is making decisions; if you have a code of conduct making decisions becomes easy. You see with out a structured way of looking at the world we tend to make decisions haphazardly and in the moment. We might do something one way one time, and then in a similar situation do it another way; this leads to inconsistency of results, and we scratch are heads and wonder why.”

There are four guiding principles I try to live by. Three of them are Personal Responsibility, Respect and Honesty/Integrity. I will go over them in following posts.

Now you say, “But you said there were four guiding principles and you only mentioned three?” This leads me to the first and overarching principle of my code, “The Tao of Asking “Why?” In a nutshell the Tao of Asking “Why” is if you ask the question ‘why something is the way it is’ or ‘why did something do what it did’ you engage your mind and you are telling your self this is a problem to be solved. By asking “Why” you will never stop learning, because as soon as you stop asking “Why” you start believing that you know everything. If you come up with an answer to why something is the way it is you will better understand it and know how to use it. We as children know this intuitively. How many of us drove our parents crazy asking “Why?” As we grow up, we stop asking “Why,” we just start excepting everything that we are told as fact. (I will go into why I think we stop asking “Why?” later.)

So, keep this in mind as you read this blog. Don’t just take my word for it; just ask “Why.”

Here goes nothing.

I have decided put my thoughts into writing as this will better help me organize and look for inconsistencies in my thought process'.  I want people to look at the things that I post and see if they make sense and for any inconsistencies in logic.  Feel free to correct my grammar and forgive any spelling mistakes.  If my writing is unclear or confusing, please let me know and I will try to make my point clearer or attack the problem another way.  Don't worry about hurting my feeling as the point is self refection and to get as many points of view on the subjects as possible.  Please don't make thing personal; attack the post, thought or idea not the person.  I will do the same.