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From the mind of critic: “Does one plus one always equal two, or does it sometimes equal one? Does bringing two things together always keep them seprate entities, unable to combine because of what makes them similar? Or can two completely seprate entities combine to make one, when they find they can coalesce around similarities, and balance each other out around differences? We all come from different backgrounds, cultures, upbringings, environments, religions, and poltical belief structures. However, we all come from the same human beginings, and we all strive for the same basic things. We all want love, peace and security, and we all want to make a difference. In these turbulent times, when so many of us are at each others throats, it seems like we’ll never be able to unite, and become one powerful unit to affect positive change for us all. It seems we are so different, and we are being pulled from all the positive gains we’ve made as a community. However, once we realize we’re happier, more prosperous and more productive when all of us are, we’ll see that dividing people into different groups because they believe differently, doesn’t mean they’re threatening us. It means we’re threatening ourselves. One plus one does equal one, when we see ourselves as equal to all other ones. This isn’t math, this is the future construct of our species. Seperate but equal is never equal, equal is equal becaue it’s equal. We can unite when we see all of us are a part of all of us. We add to each other, we don’t subtract” 🙂

From the mind of critic: “If things have to get worse before they get better, is it because it takes some of us much longer to see problems? Do we think that problems aren’t that bad, and therefore don’t require solutions unless they’re personally and forecfully slapping us in the face? Do we see the problem right away, but because it is so big, so inbedded and so gerationally powerful, that we also fail to act unless it personally slaps us in the face? Or have we let the problems fester, because we’re searching for the perfect solution that will be long lasting, and we wont settle for anything less? Problems come to us at different times, for all different reasons. Maybe our life experience guides our action or inaction in a certain direction, because it’s what we’ve always been told. Maybe our biases and pre-concieved notions have grown so strong, that if we hear anything that pokes through the armor that those biases have created, we think we’re being threatened so we become even more entrenched. Whatever stage we’re at of seeing big picture problems that affect us all, we could all agree the next few years will be very interesting. Every extreme thought, feeling and action that has ever been dreamed up, will be thrown out on the table. Over half the departments of governement, gone. Medicaid, medicare and social security, gone. Food stamps, fianancial assistance and public education, gone. Environmental protections, diplomacy and regulations on everything from food to taxes, gone. There are many more extremes I could list, it would take a book to list them all. I’m not saying all these things will come true, but I guarantee every single one will be attempted out in the open, for the entire world to see. Maybe we need to do something about it now before it gets real bad, and/or later when it’s effects start hitting us. We must do something, anything, unless we want America as a concept to longer exist” 🙂

From the mind of critic: “If the key to life is happiness in whatever way we define it, and that happiness is found by awakening our inner joy, do we really need anybody other than ourselves? If feeding this inner joy is how we find purpose, are we really an island? Do we need others to define us, or do we need to define ourselves? There is no question that we are the people we’ve been looking for, and we have to be the change we want to see. We can have issues when we think we don’t need anybody else, that everything is on us, if we want to succeed, evolve and move forward. This can be extremely motivating in acheiving our goals, but can be tough if we want to share with somebody. This act of sharing is not done so much to define our inner joy, but to expand and enhance it. What we also find out, that this act not only lifts our inner joy, but it’s also meant to help others lift theirs. We share our experiences and lift their inner joy, they share their experinces and lift our inner joy. Once we realize that this balanced back and forth is the key to the whole equation, we’ll see that we define our inner joy, and others bring it to life. It’s like reading books about something, and then experincing that same thing in real life. We need both to fully learn what something is about. Our inner joy is up to us, and under our control. Bringing that inner joy to life, is up to the people we decide to surround ourselves with” 🙂

From the mind of critic: “If resolutions are meant to guide us through the coming year toward improving our lives and bringing us more joy, how come we forget about them so quickly? Is it because we believe saying the words is enough, then we find it takes work, so we forget about it because works takes effort? Or are we scared about improving ourselves because it entails changing who we are, and we’d rather stay the same, even if it entails going stagnent? Many of us believe the new year provides a fresh start, a clean slate where we can engineer each and everything we want to see happen. Some of us are more ambitious than others, but we all wanna be successful at what we attempt. Where we run into trouble is when we lay out all these elaborate ideas, but fail to come up with a way to actually make them happen, bow out early if we do, and neglect to lay a foundation to even make them possible. Maybe this is a symptom of a much bigger disease. Maybe it’s something that has become so inbedded in our political system, that no matter what end of the spectrum we find ourselves on, we have gotten really good at stating exactly what the problem is, but fail to articulate how we’d fix it. Maybe our political leaders learned it from us, because they are us. Whether it’s a resolution or venting our political opinion, we must have follow through, we must walk the walk, and we must do what we say, or nobody will believe anything that anybody says, and nothing will ever change. We just have to ask ourselves if we actually wanna make positive change, or just say that we do” 🙂

From the mind of critic: “Are we on the eve, precipse, apex, peak and layed out plan for destruction, or is it something else? Are we on the eve, precipse, apex, peak and layed out plan for creation and rebuilding? Or are we about to be destroyed by what we created? We can all hope and pray that 2017 is better than 2016. We can hope that people are more human to each other, and step on each other’s necks a little less to get ahead. We can hope till the last breath leaves our body, but if we don’t take it the next step from hope to action, we will forever be waiting for Godot to suddenly appear to save the day. Trump is a scary notion as he tries to radically and dangerously remake the country. But he is not our biggest threat. Our biggest threat is the hate, ignorance, division, bigotry and nastiness that we allowed to fester, which made a Donald Trump administration possible. The great thing however, is that all these issues we have continously kicked down the road, are now slapping us in the face with their overtness. The opportunity to finnaly put down this ugliness is ours, we have the power to succeed. This knowledge should make us feel good, and less helpless. This is something that’s easy and not easy at the same time. This is a power struggle between the elites and the common person that has been raging for eons. We have the chance to take the upper hand in this battle, and show with courageously and exponentially high numbers, that we won’t sit idly by anymore, we will rise up and stop it. If we don’t utilize this golden moment, and allow our system to be radically changed to benefit even less of us, then we deserve whatever happens. Whether we’re on the eve of destruction or the eve of creation, it is our choice and it always has been” 🙂

From the mind of critic: “If we feel great that we’ve found our passion, but are lonely, do we realize that alone time can give us the time we need to work our passion? Does the lonliness we feel overshadow all the joy we have from not only finding our passion, but working it as well, making us forget what’s really important? Or even though we are well aquainted with these lonely feelings, we see how low an importance they hold and how they drag us down, so we ignore them the best we can, in favor of our passion that holds the most importance because it lifts us up? Doing something that brings us joy, is something we all strive for. Some of us have found that thing, and some of us have not. Even if we haven’t found it, just the fact that we’re consciously looking for our passion, allows us to access some of the immense energy our passion produces. Whatever stage we’re at, our passion causes us to be more in the moment, which causes us to feel things more. Because we’re accessing a very specific part of ourselves, we feel emotions more as well. Because everything is raw and out in the open, we are forced to deal with what doesn’t serve us, as well as what does serve us, especially if we have found our passion because it is the ultimate thing that does. Lonliness doesn’t serve us at all, because it makes us focus on what we don’t have. At the same time, it is an emotion we must honestly admit to having, before we can recognize it and let it go. Letting go of what doesn’t serve us, is partly how we find our passion in the first place. What we must remember is that letting go is a constant process, not a one and done equation. This constant can overshadow our passion, but only if we let it. We can find our passion, and we can work our passion, but only if we allow ourselves to” 🙂

From the mind of critic: “If we constantly and repeatedly ask why can’t we all just get along, and then don’t follow it up with positive action, are we trying to have our cake and eat it too? Are we trying to take credit and be praised for simply uttering words, hoping somebody else will take action, and cite us as their primary motivation? Or do we realize that it all starts with ideas, which become real when they become words, which in turn spurn actions, and we’re just trying to do our small part to get the ball rolling in the right direction? We all wanna do something important and feel like we mattered during our short time on this earth. Finding our voice can be hard, especially if we’ve never allowed our positive thoughts to surface before. However, the benefits of a positive reality that we take part in creating, are huge. Constantly articulating a problem can raise awareness, bring people around and show them that we can’t be silenced. Although, if all we do is articulate thae problem without actually doing the actions we speak of, then nothing will really change. To crush negativity and usher in the collective and conscious evolution we all know is upon us, specifically because everybody is on edge, we must take, bold, unapolagetic positive action. To take action we must have ideas, which are spawned by words. Once we realize our purpose starts with words but doesn’t end there, we’ll see a whole world that is vast and filled with possibilities, we just have to get out of our own way” 🙂

From the mind of critic: “If money only exists as a concept because we put our faith in it that it does, but it’s also the root of all evil, does that mean evil only exists because we put our faith in it as well? Does goodness only exist because we put our faith in it that it does? Or do both goodness and evil exist because we put our faith in both equally, and both would dissappear if we favored one over the other? It’s amazing the things we can get so hung up on, because of the real world applications of them slapping us in the face. Paper and plastic money allow us to go, do and buy things that seem real, but lose their validity when we realize that we could be using shells and rocks for currency as well. Evil exists because we feed it, ignore it’s buildup and then blame the other side when it explodes on the scene. Maybe we thought we were too good which made us weak, and to defeat the darkside we must become part of the darkside. Maybe we think we’re too evil, which made us strong, so to hang on to afleeting, short lasting power, we become more evil until we become the people we used to fight against. One we fully realize what “we create our own reality” really means, we’ll see that if we believe something is real, it is, just like what we believe isn’t real. However, if there are positive changes we wanna make, we just have to have faith and believe in that better world. Once we truly believe, the positive world we imagine becomes a reality through every thought and action we take, whether we are cognizant of it or not. Being the change we wanna see, starts with us believing and having faith in that positive change. We just have to remember what’s for our highest good, is also for everyone else’s. We all succeed when we all picture that positive world existing” 🙂

From the mind of critic: “If we don’t know what’s truly possible until we try, how come we try to convince ourselves that we do? Are we trying to get an idea of what’s possible by getting advice and words of wisdom from others, while also taking into account our strengths and weaknesses, using all that to make an educated guess? Or do we take in all the advice and pay attention to our weaknesses, but forget about our strengths and what we’ve accomoplished in the past, which causes us to put ourselves down and think we’re not good enough? Many of us don’t know what it means to surprise ourselves, until we realize that we still have the ability. We constantly analyze and reanalyze our thoughts and actions, whether we realize it or not. Which too much over thinking can serve to take away positives, because only the bad possibilities linger at the end after all other possibilities are exhausted. However, some analyzation is a good thing because it reminds us how good we have it, and what’s possible when we get out of our own way. Finding that balance between over analyzing and negativity and under analyzing and negativity, can be hard. Just like anything though, we get better with practice. Once we find the goldilocks zone of analyzing, we’ll see that not only can we surprise ourselves, but we can also move the goalposts as to what’s possible. Trying something new can be hard because it’s moving into the unknown. But it becomes much less scary when we see it’s the process of moving forward, which is always better than over analyzing and moving backward, right?” 🙂

From the mind of critic: “If this is the season of our discontent, couldn’t it also be the season of our contentment? Do all the signs point to the destruction of how we think, feel and act, completely changing the fabric of who we are, and changing the trajectory of our evolution? Or have there always been signs and symbols that point in different directions, and we could choose to see them as driving us downhill, or see them as unknown and simply driving us in a different direction than we expected, but one in which we see the opportunity to make the positive changes we have always dreamed of? The blatantly overt changes we face haven’t been this apparent since the 60s. The possibilities for wholesale change with our system of government and how we conduct ourselves as a country is extremely high. Seeing presidential rules being thrown out the window on a whim or a tweet, conflicts of interest dissapearing as a concept, multiple departments of government eliminated, vast swaths of basic life functions privatized, press freedoms squashed and definitive facism ushered in, is now completely within the realm of possibilities. However, all the dreams of the extreme far right coming true gives us an opportunity to make the positive change we have only imagined. The uglyness, hate and divisivness that has always simmered under the surface, is now above the surface and can be smacked down and put away. We have the chance to stand up and fight for what we believe in, because the vault of power that has held sway for eons knows it’s losing it’s grip, and will fight tooth and nail to hang on. Life is all about perception, how we view people and events, whether wepicture ourselves living within a facist state, or a truly democratic one. Our future is up to us, do we wanna create or destroy, it is as simple as that” 🙂