Category: Articles

When Choice Is All We Have Left, What Do We Do When It Is Taken Away?

We hear all the time that we always have a choice.  And that’s true — for the most part.  We don’t have a choice when we get sick or hurt. Or we don’t have a choice when someone we loves gets sick, or gets hurt, or dies.  We don’t have a choice when someone decides to exercise their choices in life.  We can still choose how we interact within someone else’s choice to voice how they feel they know what is best for us.
But when we are sick, hurt, or on our death bed and the only choices we have left is to decide if we want to get better or not get better — and someone is trying to take those choices away — what do we have left? It seems that everyone thinks they know what is best for us, even if they haven’t taken the time to really know who we are today.  It’s a interesting thing because the people that love and care about us pretty much just want the best for us; what hinders that purity is how each person’s own insecurity, weaknesses, point of view, or habits influence their decisions to try and influence our choices. Everyone has their own agenda as to why they want us to do a certain thing.  Have you ever watched someone get really stressed out because someone they love is sick and not doing what is needed to get better? And have you ever watched someone who is sick, fighting for their right of choice to not want to do anything to get better? There is a lot of emotions going around each side of this as the battle for choice ensues. The one side wants the person that is sick to get better because they want them around, and the person that is sick is fighting to keep the only thing they have left, which is choice to get better and live or to not do anything.
Most choices in our life are based on some kind of emotion. Sometimes our choices are clouded by an ailment in the moment, (physically and emotionally), that may otherwise be different when we are healthy.  It’s very hard to heal and make healthy choices when we are sick, hurting, depressed, or just generally feeling down about life.  It’s hard to make the choice to not react when someone is not making the choice that we think they should make. But one of the many beauties in life is that we all have a choice to make our own choices, and to honor and respect someone else’s choices (both good and bad).  Sure there are times when a choice made by others is clouded under the stress of a weakened mind or body but to them, in the moment, they are going to fight back to keep the only thing they have left: choice.  Of course there are times in life when a choice is degenerated by substance (drugs, alcohol, mental illness), to which interjection is necessary to preserve the safety of the individual and others; in those times we get to choose what is right for the greater good. It is natural to want the best for the ones we love, and it is natural (at least for some) to want to help and make sure others are around and thriving forever. It is better to support, care, love, cherish, and provide an avenue of hope and healing, than it is to put someone else, or even ourselves, under duress to make choices that we want others to want. The former provides an environment of gratefulness and thankfulness; the latter builds a wall of resentment, bitterness, and animosity.  Let’s choose to choose, and let others choose….even when our choice is being taken away…
-Joe Tesoro, Jr

Feelings are about information…and about control

Our feelings are loaded with information that we give to ourselves and to other people (and even animals).
But those loaded feelings have consequences.  How we feel affects how we are feeling.  How we feel affects everything we do or believe or what we stand for. Sometimes our feelings provide us with inaccurate information.
When we walk around storing our feelings for days or weeks at a time, it affects how we interact with ourselves and with other people, whether at work or play.  Until one day we decide that it is time to let the other in on how we feel — and that’s when the slippery slope, and control starts to happen.  Someone tells us that they don’t like how we react to something, or what  we said or did. Now the other person has a choice on how they react to our reactions or what we said or did, or even our energy.  They get to decide how they interact, or react, to their own information relating to any outside stimulus.  They can ignore outside energy, or they can store how they feel about that stimulus, and then choose how they are going to treat the environment surrounding that stimulus
Feelings are about information, but they are also about control.
When someone tells us that they don’t like what we said or did, and they expect us to change whatever surrounds that, they are really implementing control. They are asking us to change, so that they can stay the same. We have to keep in mind that we do the same to other people…I know I do

31 Days of Letting Go…

It is so easy to say “Just let it go”.  It really is an easy concept, but so much more difficult to apply.   We get into these patterns of collecting things, collecting emotions, collecting feelings, collecting hurt, collecting grudges, collecting bitterness, collecting fear.  But the results we really want are the opposite of all those things.  We’d much rather collect love, collect peacefulness, collect harmony, and collect happiness.  These are the things that can fulfill us and sustain us through life.  And yet we don’t do it.
On January 15, 2017 I decided that I had enough of collecting everything except what was truly brining me happiness.  And so I started what I call “31 Days of Letting Go”.  I said to Christine, “why can’t I just let go of things. I’m going to start with 30 days of letting go and get rid of something every day”. Then I realized that making it 31 days would land on Valentine’s Day, my mom’s birthday, and the one-year anniversary of asking her to be my girlfriend.  I couldn’t think of a better inspiration, and started on my quest. I was scared. I was excited. I asked her “Do I even have 31 things to get rid of?”.  She laughed with that “seriously???” type of thing. That question is kind of silly, really, because I have hundreds of things I could get rid it.  It was just too fearful to think at that time staring on a journey where I might not be successful at; and thinking I would have to let go of things that have been providing “comfort” for so long.
Why is it so fearful to let go of things? Why is it so fearful of letting go of that which holds us back; that which doesn’t bring happiness; that which fills our space with unessentials; that which weighs on us; that which steals us of peacefulness; that which makes us feel empty, even though we have so much?
I asked myself what would I do if I only was able  to keep 50 or 100 things to keep.  Well what would I do? What would you do? I have thousands of items, both physically and emotionally.  What am I achieving by containing all these things instead of setting them (me) free?  If I want to be more of a minimalist (that’s an oxymoron right there) how do I expect to achieve this by having a maximum collection mindset?
That’s what this big challenge to myself is.  Every day I have let go of something.  That something could be a physical object that wasn’t really adding value to anything in my life — it was actually just cluttering up other value I have.  It also could have been something emotional that I was, for some unknown reason, attached to.  Or it could have been a habit that I was repeating (some of which had lasted 25 + years), that I honestly cannot give myself a good reason why I was continuing.  It is sad that something I started so long ago for some reason or another and kept repeating just because of the longevity of doing, long had outlived its purpose or usefulness.  And when you cannot remember or find the usefulness in something that you have been repeating for such a large portion of your life, you gotta ask your: Why the F*** am I continuing to do this.  And when you have no good value, reason, logic, purpose, identity with, joy or fulfillment from….well, you release your grip on it, give it an emotional hug, and you let it go.  Now 26 days later I have begun letting go of things that that do not bring me any ounces of joy….
-Joe Tesoro, Jr 2/10/17
 
 

Relationships Are Based On Two…

Relationships are based on two people. That means two sets of minds, hearts, emotions/feelings, and lives. You go into it not really knowing what to expect. You make mistakes. You connect. You respect. You learn. You move on. You grow. You listen. You love. You make more mistakes; it’s natural. You communicate…and then you communicate more. You make decisions together. You make promises together. You rely on what the other is telling you. You give that other person your soul…One person should never unilaterally make a decision that could affect the other person’s life forever — and they should especially never make that decision based on their own perceptions of how things are going for the other person. You must give the other person the decency of a fair shot a love. You never get a fair shot at love if you are not allowed to be involved in decisions
– Joe Tesoro, Jr., 2010

Chemistry Doesn’t Have To Be Instant…

Everyone has their own idea of what chemistry is. For instance, I don’t look at chemistry as much with my eyes, as I do the sum of everything interconnecting. In fact, I’ve learned that chemistry doesn’t have to be instant. The best chemistry I ever experienced took some time to develop, and it was absolutely amazing! It was unlike anything that I can explain. To think that chemistry only belongs to the sighted, ask someone who is blind what their idea of chemistry is. You will obviously get a different answer than you expect. In fact, imagine what your relationship would consist of if you close your eyes for a day — or better yet, imagine that you couldn’t see what your mate looks like. What would you use to determine chemistry then? Interesting, isn’t it??
– Joe Tesoro, Jr., 2010

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