Another 5 subject meme
Directions: Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate with you. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.
These are 5 subjects given to me by tempe_rivka
Love:
There are so many aspects to the word love that it would be way beyond the scope of a Live Journal entry and I am quite surprised that this is a subject which is associated with me. That being said, I will look into one of the most sweeping aspects of “love for my fellow man” which I assume was the context applied to me. I try to apply this concept to all I encounter (sometimes with heavy amounts of failure). In my not to distant past, I was made aware of the saying “Do the next right, loving thing.” Love in that regard is definitely an action verb. To me I associate the concept with wanting only the best for everyone. To do this, I need to want the best (not that I necessarily know what is that is) for everyone and do whatever I can to help them to achieve it. In practice, this is often quite difficult, but so long as I can remember that I can only help those who a) want help and b) ask for that help and even then the only help I can offer is facilitating them to help themselves, I have a chance to be useful and loving. I can only offer the benefits of my strengths (such as they may be), experiences and hope and from that I must let them draw their own conclusions.
Obama:
First off, I have to say “Wow, was this a subject that is associated with me, or just wanting my opinion of our current president?” I am going to have to assume that the latter is the case, because otherwise I can’t see any connection. What immediately comes to mind to me thinking of our current president is that I need to give him the benefit of the doubt. When looking at the “bailout,” “stimulus package,” “reducing the deficit by 50% in his first term” my first reaction is either he is extremely naïve or delusional. I hope my gut reactions are wrong and he is enough the wizard to pull that off and in four years he can prove that I am the one who is deluded. I am also extremely curious to see his statistics which tell me that I am one of the richest 5% of the country when I am hard pressed to believe that I am even one of the richest 5% in the state of Oklahoma which has a lower than the national average income and a relatively small part of the nation’s population. To look at many of his goals, it seems that his short term plans are contradictory compared to his long range goals. Hopefully, I am missing something though and he has a very successful administration and can empower the country’s population without burdening it at the same time with devastating “entitlements”.
Recovery:
One of the best working definitions I have come across for the word recovery is the extraction of something useful from otherwise waste material. Much of my life before I entered into a 12 step recovery program definitely qualified as “waste material.” However, in the past 17 + years since finding my way into a recovery program, I believe that some of those waste material aspects of my life can actually be useful (see some of my earlier comment on love). Like many others, my recovery from alcoholism is not just a freedom from the obsession to drink, but to have found a manner of living that offers me serenity and peace of mind. That is not to say that my life is always a bowl of cherries (good thing too, as I detest the taste of cherries), but I do have a kit of tools which allows me to find peace of mind even in the most stressful of times if I will just utilize those tools.
Aging:
My first inclination when presented with expressing thoughts on aging is a smartass comment that “It’s better than the alternative” (death while still young). There are aspects of aging that truly suck rocks, such as I don’t have the stamina I once had, my body tends to hurt more often than it used to, and certain parts of my body don’t work as well as they did in my youth. However, it is by aging and living life that we get to gain experience and knowledge and hopefully as we acquire those things we can apply them and gain some glimmer of wisdom as we age. So again back to being a smartass, I would have to say that aging is good, I recommend it to everyone.
Having a high IQ:
This is another rather difficult subject for me. Not because I don’t have a higher than average IQ, but because I am not always sure that IQ in general means much. At the risk of sounding like I am bragging, I probably could just squeak into Mensa based on my IQ, though I don't know why I should want to do that. But having a high IQ does not necessarily make me any smarter than anybody on the street (I am fighting hard not to use a Joe the Plumber reference here). I do believe that my IQ does make it simpler for me to learn (providing I am willing to do so), but unless I can apply what I learn to situations to make for better outcomes, it has no real value. A big reason I don’t equate high IQ with being smart is because I am not convinced that the tests themselves aren’t flawed and even if they do adequately measure one’s intelligence they don’t show whether one can actually apply what they learn beyond the ability to answer test questions. As I once told a woman who said that I was one of the smartest men she had ever met, “then why do I do such dumb things?” I may have an uncommon intellect, but that doesn’t necessarily imply that I have common sense. But then I remember the quote “Sense ain’t common!” for whatever that may be worth.
By the way, just because the directions say leave a comment to play the game, don't let it stop you from leaving a comment if you don't want to play. I may go ahead and give you five subjects I associate with you, but since the meme requires posting in you LJ you don't have to play. Besides you might find it interesting to see what subjects I might associate with you, for that matter, the two journals I have "played the game" in, have given me some interesting things to reflect upon. *grin*