Taylor's Great Guide to Life (standard:Creative non-fiction, 2913 words)
Author: Nathan Scot Taylor	Added: Nov 22 2006	Views/Reads: 3578/2508	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
What I would tell someone who was just starting to look for their one.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

never hurt the people who cared about you, and were never hurt by them. 
 Unfortunately, that means you would only interact with god and his 
saints, and you are currently on planet earth.  Learning to forgive 
yourself for your mistakes is one of the greatest gifts you will ever 
give yourself.  Learning to forgive another, when it's the most 
difficult thing you can imagine doing, is the greatest gift you can 
give another.  It can also be the absolute best thing you can do for 
yourself. 

6)  Pain is a teacher.  It can blind or it can teach.  When you receive
pain, oftentimes  you have a choice.  You can let your pain blind you 
to that pain in others, or you can use it to learn to help yourself, 
and understand others.  You are not perfect, there will be many times 
when you fail to live up to being the sort of person you want to be, 
but that doesn't mean you should give up.  There will be times in your 
life when you feel pain so intense, you don't think you can go on.  It 
will make you want to say, "To hell with it".  For if they can't help 
you with your pain, why would you choose to help someone else with 
theirs?  Life is short, right?  That trap is one of life's most 
insidious.  But if you can somehow drive through it, you can gain a 
divine understanding. 

7)  Four Great Questions, (not mine - an author named Joe Michael
Strazinsky):  Who are you?  What do you want?  Why are you here?  Where 
are you going?  Most of us never completely answer these questions.  We 
shy away from them, because we're not sure of the answers ourselves.  
But they are intrinsic to human happiness, because inside yourself, 
inside of everyone, some part of us is always asking these questions of 
ourselves.  Many hide from them, ashamed or afraid of the answers they 
would have to give, if they were being honest with themselves.  There 
is nothing wrong with making a mistake, or a bad choice.  Or simply not 
knowing the answer.  But there is a problem when you become so scared, 
that you run from these questions.  Your courage will always have to 
come from within yourself.  Others may give you hope, or a good reason 
for your courage, but it will always have to come from within yourself. 


8)  You have to be happy with who you are, before you can be with
someone else.  This sounds simple, but its actually fairly tricky.  The 
only time when someone else really makes you angry, is when you see in 
them parts of yourself you don't like.  If you don't like who you are, 
you can't be happy with someone else.  Now everyone needs someone else 
in their life to be happy.  We are social animals, we are designed 
through evolution and socialization to seek to be a part of something 
with someone else.  But if there are no parts of yourself you really 
like, all you will ever see in someone else is your own failings.  
Their cowardice becomes your cowardice.  Their lies become your own 
dishonesty.  Their anger merely reflects your rage.  Their inability to 
change, to grow into something more, is really just your own resentment 
at your own obstinancy.  Your own anger that you can't grow into 
something more.  Your own fear of changing. 

9)  No one can change your life for you.  You could spend your entire
life, utterly miserable, and it would never change.  Many are always 
waiting for something good to happen to them, for that one great shot.  
This is wrong.  This is self-delusion.  This is just wallowing in your 
own misery.  Everyone has hurt, everyone has their own confusions.  No 
one has all the answers, we may think we do, from time to time, but we 
don't.  When one thinks they have all the answers, we are suffering 
from a moment of dan, of blindness.  We are all scared, we are all 
crazy, we are all stupid.  Sometimes we are two out of three, sometimes 
we're all three.  Do not let these three traps lock you into doing 
something you know is wrong, and you later regret.  Do not sit around, 
waiting for some perfect person to come along and fix your life for 
you.  It will have to be you who fixes the problems in your life.  No 
one else can, no one else should.  If another is making all of your 
choices, you are not living your life; you are living the life another 
has choosen for you.  And the truth is, you only get one. 

10)  The earth is never in the same place, twice.   A lot of people get
confused by this, but its actually the most important thing I've ever 
learned.  The earth is rotating around the sun, but people forget that 
the sun is rotating.  It is changing its relative position every moment 
of every day.  And while you might look around, and think you are in 
the same place you were yesterday, you have moved.  Others have 
traveled with you, but they have moved as well.  Every one has 
different experiences, everyone learns something different, and learns 
differently, along their travels.  No one in the world, or in the 
history of mankind, understands things quite like you do.  This makes 
you, and everyone else, specifically unique in the history of the 
universe.  This is not something to be afraid of.  We are all 
different, but it is these differences that teach us about ourselves.  
About what is important, and what isn't.  Far too many people worry 
about being normal, about hiding the things that make them feel 
embarrassed, or awkward.  This is bullshit.  It is those differences 
that teach us, and show us what it means to be human.  It is the 
differences that both define us, and unite us.  The emotions we all 
seek, the love we all need.  The desire to hold and be held.  That is 
the nature of humanity.  Always seperate from another, but always the 
same. 

11)  You are the stuff of stars.  A corney come-on line?  Yes.  But its
also a scientific fact.  Look at your hand, you'll see skin, hair, 
maybe a couple of nails.  If you could see closer, you'd find a mix of 
molecules, made up of oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon.  Do you know where 
these base elements come from?  Scientists have hypothesized that the 
entire periodic chart, every base element of the universe, was actually 
the byproduct of a star going nova.  You, me, all of us, we were a part 
of a star.  We weren't at the corona, not the part one could've seen, 
we were all deep within a star-once.  Perhaps once we provided light to 
warm a planet.  Perhaps across some great distance, two creatures look 
at us, looked at each other, and knew that they were in love.  We were 
a star.  We are a part of the universe, we always will be.  We are all 
part of this universe.  This realization, this understanding, should 
both daunt and awe you.  Awe, in your importance, and then daunt, in 
the weight it requires in dealing with others.  For they were a part of 
that star with us.  They are just as unique, just as important as we 
are.  They may be confused by this, they may forget this.  They may not 
treat others with the kindness, and importance which this demands 
others be treated.  But they were still part of that same star that we 
were, once. 

12)  Rejection/Failure sucks, never trying is always worse.  Love is
difficult, it is painful, and there are always things that will go 
wrong.  Love will make you hurt worse then you ever imagined you could. 
 Love will make you crazy, blind, and more then you ever imagined you 
could be.  Love is not supposed to be easy.  If it were, it wouldn't be 
appreciated the way it is.  Love is supposed to be difficult.  We are 
social creatures.  Our children are our links to the future.  Our 
parents are our guides to the past.  I regret the girls I never got to 
know better because they didn't feel the way I felt about them.  I 
despise myself for the girls I never got to know as well as I would 
have liked because I was too scared to try to tell them how I felt 
about them.  I've have made a large number of excuses and 
justifications for why I didn't tell the girls I cared for the way I 
felt about them.  "They wouldn't have felt the way I did."  "They were 
happier just as friends."  "It would have wrecked what I already had 
with them, and I wanted to keep them around."  These were all nice 
little excuses, but they were really just letting me let fear control 
my life.  I've never not ended up being proud of a moment when I told 
someone I cared about them.  I've never regretted exposing myself the 
risk of rejection.  I've never been ashamed of trying to be more then I 
was.  Because that's what love is.  Its attempting to forge a better 
person in yourself, by connecting to another person in a way different 
then no one else ever will again.  Every love I've ever had has made me 
grow as a man.  Has made me happier as a man.  Has made me braver, 
stronger, more convinced in the inherent decency of man.  Now I 
probably wouldn't have said that at the time.  There were times that I 
was sure love was going to suck me up and spit me out, and I've played 
it conservative.  I've seen people who treat love as an excuse to hurt 
others, or try to patch up their own hurts.  This isn't them loving 
anyone, not even themselves.  This is them crying out in the dark for 
help, for someone else to save them.  They don't realize that they have 
to help themselves.  But overall, love is divine.  It is the ultimate 
exposure of oneself.  It is risk, all of who you are, for judgement by 
another.  It is the only time we are really alive.  And you can have 
fun, alone.  But you are alive, really alive, when you connect with 
another.  These people you connect with can be friends, confidants, as 
close as brothers to you.  But it is only when you offer your whole 
heart, your whole soul, your own being, that you are alive.  And its a 
hell of a rush.  There will be more failures then successes.  There 
will be great heartache.  But if you are not loving, with your entire 
soul, you are not alive yet.  You are merely surviving.  There is a 
difference. 

13)  If you want to know someone, don't ask them what truths they know. 
Ask them what lies they need.  We are all much more sensitive, and 
weaker creatures; then we will ever admit to.  We are all far more 
scared then we are willing to let on.  We are all far less independent 
then we would like to be.  Most of us claim that we don't let others 
negative opinions affect us.  Most of us say we would do the right 
thing, if no one was looking.  Maybe we would, but many of us wouldn't. 
 We are never completely who we wish we could be.  We always think we 
could always stand to be better looking, or smarter.  Kinder, funnier, 
somehow better.  We all use lies, in different ways, to make ourselves 
feel better about ourselves.  And yet all of us claim to love truth.  
It is tough to look in the mirror and not see who we wish we could be, 
so we use lies to make ourselves look better.  We are just scared.  
We're just imperfect.  We're just human.  We're just taking a little 
while longer then we'd like to become who we want to be.  There are 
times in your life when you will build who you are off of a lie, 
because you can't stand to face the truth.  Oftentimes, this is because 
we are not yet ready to face this truth.  Its always easier to believe 
in the myth of pure evil.  Its much harder to learn to understand, to 
be brave in the face of fear.  To try.  To love.  That's what makes 
trying so important.


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