Things I Learned And Wrote At Age 32

• You could not possibly feel grief if you were not first given something wonderful you did not deserve.

• Cosmetic makeup is for the superficially minded because the mature mind can only regard it as meretricious.

• When you forgive someone, you are no longer able to blame them for how you feel.

• The three excellencies of the mind:
• Intelligence: the ability to manipulate abstractions rapidly
• Smarts: quantity of knowledge
• Wisdom: timely appropriation of knowledge

• Human beings are reverse mirrors.  That's why it matters what you look at.

• Everyone cares about your talents if they uncover them.  No one cares about your talents if you uncover them.

• Forgiveness is not related to trust.  Forgiveness is a heart issue.  Trust is a mind issue.

• There are those who prepare for life and those who live.
• There are those who prepare for death and those who die.

• The truth most likely to save your life is that the problems that seem most unfixable are still fixable.

• Exercise takes care of the body, which is external. Study takes care of the mind, which is internal. Prayer takes care of the soul, which is eternal.

• When you know a little about someone, you appreciate them.  When you know a lot about someone, you take them for granted. A great challenge of marriage is to know a lot about someone and still properly appreciate them.

• Consistency is a virtue so useful it can even be profitable in error.

• Humans are like the moon:
1. They have no glory of their own. They can only reflect what was given to them.
• The ones who reflect no glory are they who dwell in earth's shadow.
1. They are only partially visible depending on the perspective of the viewer.
• You have to stay with them through a whole season to see all their aspects. And even then, you haven't seen 50% of them, which is their dark side.

• The only morality of modern society is social acceptability.

• The solution to victimhood is not vindication for what you don't have. It is gratitude for what you do have.
• Vindication requires another to change. But gratitude is within your own capability.

• In the relationship between God and humans, God is always the first to take a leap of faith.

• The ones who need safe spaces to speak without judgment are the people whose mind you want to change.

• You should not like your beliefs.
• A belief must always be based on alethiology, not preferences.

• You cannot expect God to care much about that for which you care moderately.

• Horizontal light blinds. Top light illuminates. Be careful thinking you're enlightening others. Let providence do it.

• Jonah of the Bible was a racist.

• The difference between belief and faith is that belief is expressed in words, and faith is expressed in actions.

• The main difference between the ethos of the ancient world and the ethos of today is that today men have to be taught how not to judge God.

• The monster under the bed is of no concern. It's the monster on top of the bed that should worry us.

• The brain is the only thing that learns itself with itself; and the heart is the only thing that hides itself from itself.

• When you become useful, you also become dangerous.

• A happy person doesn't know how bad they have it.

• I used to believe humanity's greatest weakness was forgetting, but without the capability to forget, life would be irrecoverable trauma.

• Faith is nothing more than the shedding of the notion that God is bad at His job.

• I'm stupider than I should be. And so are you.

• For those in hell, atheism is literal: God does not exist.

• You can tell the depth of a person by what bothers them.

• Other than sex, ignorance is the easiest thing to sell.

• At any given moment, your life could be better, but at every given moment, you don't know how good you have it.

• Being single is easier than being married. But being married is better than being single.

• I find that faith has less to do with belief and trust and more to do with cultivating a relationship.
• More so than belief, the ultimate etymology of the word faith is loyalty.

• Of the Trinity: the Father is eminent, the Son is imminent, the Spirit is immanent, and none of them is emanant.

• People tend to think of holiness like knowledge: there is an infinite store of it in God, and humans are always trying to attain unto as much as we can, though always falling infinitely short. This is wrong. You cannot grow in holiness. Holiness is more like innocence: you either maintain it or you lose it, but you can't gain it, though it can be miraculously bequeathed.

• The mental health of a generation is predicated on how they handle boredom.
• Boredom is the cultivator of creativity.
• Boredom is the easiest path to face your personal demons, because your mind quiets down enough to hear them.

• Perceiving those who have your best interests at heart becomes significant once it's apparent that not everybody actually does.

• Knowing much is better than knowing nothing. And knowing nothing is better than knowing little.

• God never prohibits anything that is useful.

• The right thing in the wrong spirit is the wrong thing.

• Whenever you justify yourself saying, "At least I don't..." you worsen the condition of your soul and the world by the end of the sentence: your soul because you're excusing something you shouldn't accept in yourself, and the world because you are disseminating opprobrium with no call or expectation of redemption.

• People who convert to Christianity learn God from the inside out. People who are raised in Christianity learn God from the outside in.

• Faith is not contingent upon requests. Requests are contingent upon faith.
• Faith must not be affected by expectation because our judgment is what sets the expectation, and human judgment is tainted by a limited frame.

• Do not look through anything at reality. Look through reality at all things.
• Never look at an "is" through an "ought."

• Your last hope should be your first recourse.

• It is as easy to see privilege in others as it is difficult to perceive hardship in them.
• The exact reverse is true when analyzing oneself.
• This is why nobody should speak about others' privilege as if they knew how much internal struggle accompanies it. It is also why no one should discount their own privileges when apprized of it.

The Odd Points Of Agreement Between Evolutionists And Bible Believers

    Some people try to make evolution and a historically literal interpretation of the biblical text compatible, but it does not seem anything more than shoehorning one into the other to force this unnatural cohabitation. A good example of this incompatibility would be the formation of the sun. The theory of evolution places the formation of the sun prior to the earth, and the Bible does just the opposite. Some try to say the days of creation were long periods of time, but if the biblical text is true, each long period of time would still consist of a morning and a night. So, we'd be left with millions of years of light followed by millions of years of darkness, which means no plant would survive. It seems clear that both viewpoints cannot be true, at least under a literal interpretation of Genesis.

    However, to clear up which is true and which isn't is not the goal of this post. In studying both sides of this extensively, I've been fascinated by the completely arbitrary mutual points of agreement each side comes to, and it seems nothing more than a coincidence that they have both made reference to such specific, similar factoids.  The purpose of this article is merely to lay them out.

1. Humans' advanced knowledge is the reason women have pain in childbirth

• Creationism holds that Eve's choice to eat the forbidden fruit gave her new knowledge: knowledge of good and evil. God subsequently cursed all females to have pain in childbirth. So, the reason womankind suffers in labor is because of the advanced knowledge of the human race.
• Evolution holds that when humans diverged from chimpanzees, they evolved a larger brain to allow for greater intelligence, e.g. capacity for speech. A bigger brain naturally necessitated the evolution of a larger skull. But the woman's anatomy has yet to catch up evolutionarily - therefore, while most primates give relatively painless births, humans are tortured by the larger infantile skull. So, the reason womankind suffers in labor is because of the advanced knowledge of the human race.
  

2. Snakes and fruit are the direct reason for our advanced vision

• Creationism proposes that in Eve's temptation by a serpent to eat the forbidden fruit, the fruit was pleasant to her eyes, and after she ate it, her eyes were opened. She could see things she never saw before. We extrapolate the same for Adam - both at the hand of the serpent. While this perhaps refers more to insight than eyesight, the following can still be stated accurately within this paradigm: Fruit and snakes are the reason for humankind's advanced vision.
• Evolution proposes that humans evolved color vision apart from our prosimian relatives specifically because it was advantageous in discerning ripeness. To eat unripe fruit is detrimental to health, and as such, we evolved color vision to detect its edibility. Additionally, the lower half of our vision is much better than the upper. This is owing to how many of our mammalian ancestors all the way through chimpanzees were hunted by snakes lurking below. Fruit and snakes are the reason for humankind's advanced vision.

3. Expanding universe

• Evolutionary astronomers note that there is a red shift in the spectra of starlight, indicating that everything is moving away from everything else. This indicates that everything used to be closer - even compact. This is where the Big Bang Theory came from. The universe and everything in it is apparently being spread out.
• Biblical scholars note that God stretched out the heavens (as a tent). There is no mention of a central point of creation, but it follows that if the heavens are being stretched out, their contents used to be more compact. The universe and everything in it is apparently being spread out.

4. The human constitution ultimately came from rocks

• Evolution proffers a few ideas relative to the origin of life, two of which are: abiogenesis and panspermia. Abiogenesis is the idea that when the earth was a rocky mass, noxious chemicals created perpetual acid rain which dissolved the rocks into the seas, creating a mixture of chemicals out of which life first arose - life from non-life. Panspermia is a hypothesis that microbial life entered our planet on an asteroid, which evolved into all the forms of life we see today. Either way, rocks are responsible for the composition of human form.
• Creationism proffers the idea that the origin of human life is that God formed man out of the dust of the earth. Of course, dust is nothing more than granulated rock. Or perhaps rock is nothing more than compacted dust. Either way, rocks are responsible for the composition of human form.

5. The tree of life portends of eternal survival

• The Bible called the tree in the middle of the garden of Eden the tree of life. When mankind sinned, they were ejected from the garden lest they should eat from it "and live forever." The Bible also claims this tree will be in heaven, ostensibly providing eternal life. A creationist calls the mechanism by which life continues perpetually the tree of life.
• Charles Darwin called a diagram he made connecting all species, extant and extinct, the tree of life. This is a drawing showing how each animal slowly evolved into higher or more favorable forms. Its lines of connectivity show how all life is related - and the tree has no end because as long as life keeps evolving, it will find a way to adapt to whatever new environment presents itself, so that, theoretically, life could go on eternally. An evolutionist calls the mechanism by which life continues perpetually the tree of life.

6. Time, space, and matter all came into existence at once

• Scientifically, we cannot admit the existence of anything not made of matter. If we are to say it exists but has no matter, that leaves the realm of natural science and goes into philosophy, or more specifically, ontology. Neither can we admit the existence of something that does not take up space. For anything to take up zero space, that means it simply isn't anywhere - it doesn't exist. If we say something is not within time, then we certainly can't interact with it in any physical fashion. No one has ever observed an object move through time backwards or at a stand-still, and observation is the great anchor of science. If anything is purported to exist, it must hold those three titles simultaneously. That is why the Big Bang was the beginning of time, space, and matter.
• Biblically, the beginning of the universe is described thus: "In the beginning (an expression of time), God created the heaven (an expression of space) and the earth (an expression of matter)." So all three are mentioned simultaneously.  It is of interest that it seems if they were to be created independently of each other, it would have to be in that order. If matter were created first, there would be no place for it, and if space were created first, there would be no principle of cause and effect (time) for it to dwell within. Time, then space, then matter seems a plausible order if not in synchroneity. That is why the creation was the beginning of time, space, and matter.

7. The way the world ends is by consuming fire

• According to 2 Peter 3:10, “The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.” This isn’t necessarily creationist so much as eschatological, but as creationists adhere to this species of eschatology, it can be said they believe the world ends by being enveloped in fire.
• According to astronomical models, in approximately 7.5 billion years, the sun will become a red giant whose radius will exceed one astronomical unit, meaning that it will swallow up Mercury, Venus, and indeed the Earth. This isn’t necessarily evolutionary so much as astronomical, but as evolutionists rely upon astronomy integrally with many of their theories, it can be said they believe the world ends by being enveloped in fire.

    The fact that two diametrically opposed world-views agree on these seven maxims is so odd to me, I hardly know what to make of it. I suspect they indicate some deeper truth as of yet unapprehended.

Things I Learned And Wrote At Age 31

• Belief is superior to knowledge in this: knowledge is limited; belief is unlimited.

• It is impossible to know what will happen in the future.  But it is possible to know what won't happen.

• To love someone truly is to love the nothingness of the person.

• The only way to persuade someone effectively is through careful preservation of their dignity.

• "Part of the reason you're alive is because you are dying all the time."
• If your cells don't die, that's called cancer.  So, life is really a balance between generation and mortification.

• A good man needs to have faith in his own ignorance.
• It's hard to believe you're capable of the same errors you see in others when you don't see them in yourself, but if you don't acknowledge your likeliness to be guilty of them, you have no hope of avoiding them.

• Constraint is necessary for freedom.
• A man floating in space has freedom but no constraint - no ability to accomplish anything, because he needs something outside of himself off of which to push.

• Humility is the receptacle for blessing.

• Anytime you get to know someone and feel strong affinity for them, you are learning a little bit of what God feels for them.

• Non-theistically speaking, you have two duties:
1. Fix what's inside of you
2. Give that to the world

• Make sure you have more charity than knowledge.
• And make sure you have much knowledge.

• Differences between a covenant and a contract:
1. A covenant is sacred.  A contract is secular.
2. A covenant is permanent.  A contract is temporary.
3. A covenant is motivated by love.  A contract is motivated by money.
4. A covenant seeks the welfare of the other.  A contract seeks the welfare of oneself.

• There are two credit card scores that show financial responsibility: 800 and 0.

• Saying faith is how you obtain things from God is like saying conversation is how a wife obtains things from her husband.

• Your appetites can change who you are.
• (And you can train your appetites)

• The more you take a burden upon your heart, the less it is a burden upon your shoulders.

• Life is an outdoor activity.

• Love controls emotions, not vice versa.
• Causality is a subset of control.

• When you say you want a spouse who makes you better, you are asking for an outright attack on the person you are by the person you love the most in the world, because by definition, becoming better means losing parts of who you are.

• There is no upper limit to how good you should be.
• Applying the phrase "good enough" to people is not good enough.

• When the sun is highest in the sky, shadows are at their least.  So, when the source of all goodness and light is lifted highest, all wrong and detriment are maximally diminished.

• When we are in the darkest places, we think God isn't hearing us, but it is just the opposite.  We are not hearing God.

• In marriage, it's never an issue that's the issue.  It's the expectation.

• Never follow an apology with, "It's just that..."  It undermines everything you just said.

• The proper way to go through life is to hold all you have with an open hand, i.e. expecting it to be taken from you.

• The greatest sign that God is a gentleman is that if your opinion clashes with His, He lets you have your way.
• One of the greatest opponents to "your way" is your wellbeing.  Since God is always on that side, His wants will occasionally clash with yours.

• The cross symbolizes the vertical connection we have to God and the horizontal one we have to mankind.

• The shallowest love is one word removed from the deepest love:
• They know me, so they love me vs. they know me, yet they love me.

• The great lamentable truth about mainstream Christianity today is that they will never say there are some things a Christian doesn't do.

• Your conscience doesn't actually judge the weight of your actions.  It can only judge your motives.
• Because of that, we tend to judge ourselves lighter than we should, since we haven't perceived our own effects.

• It is with snow globes as with life's problems: when agitation stirs up a mess, the solution is to sit still.  Further action only exacerbates the chaos.

• Putting your own hand to life's problems: positive immediate effect; rapid downturn.
  

         Putting life's problems in God's hands: negative immediate effect; massive recovery.

• Trusting God is the same as an investment.  It yields short-term loss and long-term success.

• Unbelief is the seed, and complaint is the water.
• Faith is the seed, and praise is the water.

• If it's true that your emotionalism can make you believe you have faith when you don't, it's also true that emotionalism can make you believe you have no faith when you do.

• Joy is said to be a fruit of the spirit.
• Happiness is the pericarp of joy.
• Feeling happiness is the exocarp.
• Causing happiness is the mesocarp.
• Understanding happiness is the endocarp.
• Sorrow is the seed.

• All of science is truth.  But science is not all of truth.

• The thing that gives life must be delivered through the thing that kills.

• Don't ask God why.  Ask what.

• If your religion costs you nothing, it is worth nothing.

• Your sensitivity to one's voice shows how great your love for them is.

• We're all only one negligible step up from infinitely ignorant.

• A prayer answered increases faith. A prayer unanswered increases patience.
• God always gives you the one you need.

• Malevolence is a form of art.

• You can't spell "bother" without "both."

• The two great pathologies of life are chaos and order.  Chaos is the naturally occurring one, and order is the humanly constructed one.  Each is the antithetical response to the other.
• The human role is to balance chaos using order while giving in to neither extreme.

• You can get what you want, but you'll lose what you have.

• Verbal astuteness is the most superficial kind of smart.

• Faith in God is to rely on Him exactly the same when you have resource and recourse as when you don’t.

• The circuit of the soul (which is comprised of the heart and mind):
• The ears and eyes are the double doors to the mind
• The mind is the entrance to the heart
• The mouth is the exit from the heart

• The great folly of atheism is the unconscious, hypocritical borrowing of the ethos of theism.
• Ethics have no standing in atheism but are needed for society to function.

Origin Of The Devil

    The entirety of this treatise assumes that the idea that Satan used to be in heaven is inaccurate. See my note in the comment section below.

    If God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all, how could He be said in Isaiah 45:7 to create darkness? How could an all-good being find material with which to create evil? For if He found it outside Himself, He is not the creator of all things.

To this I answer, not everything that is (even in this universe) needs specific creation to exist.

I believe shadows were not created specifically - they were a byproduct of the creation of light. So, did God create shadows? In a sense, yes - by creating light. But, in a sense, no. There was no specific creation of the shadow, since it technically does not exist (which, incidentally, is why it qualifies as a two-dimensional object in our universe). Darkness is merely the privation of light and is therefore nonexistent by the laws of our universe - it is simply a term we use as a tool to describe lack of light.

The same goes for heat and cold.

Dare I say the same goes for God and the devil? The devil is merely the shadow of God’s existence.

    But then, doesn’t that mean the devil is eternal as God is?

No, I don’t believe so. The reason cold exists is not merely because heat exists, but because there is a law of cause and effect. The reason for cold is the effect of heat leaving. Theoretically, if the law of causation were revoked, one could have heat and no cold - light and no darkness. Of course, we would also be describing a universe entirely different than our own. But, since God was not ever bound by the laws of causality, there is no reason to suspect He had a shadow until He created a universe with cause and effect. That would signal the creation of the devil - not by special design, but by mere corollary of God’s existence coupled with the law of cause and effect.

    But wouldn’t that mean the devil isn’t real, since darkness and cold are not technically real?

It depends on what you mean by real. God’s reality doesn’t fit within the laws of this universe - so He may be said to be scientifically unreal. Yet, by faith we perceive Him more real than the universe. The devil is unreal in the same way and real in a similar way. His effects are real, whereby we know he is real. Yet he is not perceptible with the five senses, though his spirit is everywhere. The devil is as real as hate is. Is hate real? It’s metaphysical, yet I suspect no one denies its reality in that sense.

    But if the devil as the shadow of God came into existence at the inception of the universe with the creation of causality, doesn’t that mean he will cease to exist when this world and universe end?

No. No more than humans will. For we also were not eternally existent prior to conception, but we will live forever, whether in paradise or the second death where the worm never dies.

    The atheist model of life is that humans are the supreme beings in the universe, but all organisms’ lifespans look like a geometrical vector (a line segment with direction).

Note that it has two points: a beginning and end, and is monodirectional.

The theistic model of life is that plants’ and animals’ lifespans look like a vector.

Humans, who are higher, have a lifespan that looks like a geometrical ray.

Note that it has a beginning point but no ending and is still monodirectional.

God, the supreme being, has a lifespan that looks like a geometrical line.

Note that it has neither beginning nor end and is bidirectional.

(Of course, that is as far as our limited minds can imagine. I have before hypothesized that God’s timeline may not be a line at all which is a one-dimensional thing, but may be a two-dimensional shape or a three-dimensional object.)

The devil then, under this model would have a ray-like lifespan: created as a byproduct but with an eternal soul.

    These concepts are quite difficult to fathom, which is why I suspect the Bible never gives us a clear origin of the devil. The Bible’s goal is understandability of rudimentary truths undergirded by logical consistency, empirical adequacy, and experiential relevance - the purpose of which is to speak to the highest and lowest minds. As these matters of diabology elude comprehensibility at large, they were not fit for the Bible.

Things I Learned And Wrote At Age 30

• You can always judge a thing by its effects.

• The reason most people are living with major problems is because to solve them they have to be willing to do things that are hard.

• People do not accept the stringency of an upright lifestyle because of what it would signify to the condemnation of the rest of mankind.
• But, this error in judgment does not calculate that each is judged by the light he has.

• Envy is discomfort at the success of another.

• God-given inspiration is exclusively that of the spirit.  This means that it is not the words which are under inspiration, but the message.  If the spirit of truth is what inspires words, the words are still subject to fallacy and error but not the message.

• Atheist mindset: I won't believe it until I see it.
• Christian mindset: I won't see it until I believe it.

• A tyrant is known by his intolerance for error.

• Be respectful to people because of who you are, not who they are.

• You know you hate someone if their nonexistence would please you more than their life.

• When God is on your side, every problem in life is really only an attitude problem.

• A smart person starting from wrong foundational principles can reason his way into anything.

• People reject the notion of God's existence because they find the mysteries of religion either too much above man or too much below God.

• "The definition of courage is not the absence of fear but the conquest of it."  - William Danforth

• One of the most defining characteristics of maturity is the ability to determine what is not important.

• The adjective to describe marriage accurately which has been lost today above all others is: categorical - meaning without exception.

• The success of a husband is measured by the width of his wife's smile.

• Compassion and mercy are both unjust.

• A book that's wearing out probably belongs to a mind that isn't.

• Greater love requires greater vulnerability.

• The deceptive aspect of vain pleasure is its urgency.
• It is hard to believe a desire is vain when it is strong.

• Pray for the ends, not the means.

• One of the rarest virtues is to have patience with another's ignorance.
• The moment we are liberated from an ignorance, we have immediate intolerance for anyone else retaining that ignorance.
• This is also at the root of why some people do not like children.

• The question that most tortures humankind is not so much, "Why is this happening to me?" as, "Did I do something to cause this to happen to me?"

• I used to correlate honesty with openness.  But, I didn't account for inevitability of misinterpretation.

• Inflexibility is indicative of weakness.

• We are only upset by things we don't understand.

• The function of content renders fact.
• The function of context renders meaning.

• Be childlike.  Do not be childish.

• Commitment and sacrifice are the same thing.

• There isn't one kind of carefree person.  There are two.

1. One who either doesn't realize or acknowledge that problems exist.
2. One who knows problems exist but remains unaffected by them.

• I spent most of my life as the first, not realizing that the purpose of life is to become the second.

Loneliness

     I asked my Senior-year High School English teacher, "What do humans want more than anything?"  I expected to hear, "Happiness," or some derivation thereof.  But, she said, "Not to be alone."  Initially, I disagreed about that being the most basic desire of humankind, but the longer I live, the more I am of the same mind as her.

     I am convinced that, outside of radical socio-religious ideology (Japanese Kamikazes, Buddhist self-immolations, Islamic terrorists), loneliness is the only cause of suicide.  The death of the natural self is the result of privation of our most fundamental needs.  Death occurs naturally from lack of physical needs, but not from lack of emotional or spiritual ones.  But those needs and desires are not less real or urgent.  That is why, when they go neglected, they can lead to that person taking their life.  There are sundry motives for suicide (e.g. acute depression, inability to bear responsibility, loss of stabilizing factors in life, etc.), but they all go back to feeling alone.  I've known married, successful men to commit suicide who had no reason to feel alone from an objective viewpoint, but deep inside they truly did feel as though no one else understood them and the burden they were bearing.  That inner isolation became a source of irreconcilable hopelessness, i.e. complete despair.

     Despair is the inability to formulate any hope under any circumstances.  It is the the most difficult pit to ascend out of.

     It is said that in the archetypal manifestation of Jesus Christ's passion, Judas' great folly was not his treachery so much as his despair.  His betrayal plunged him to the lowest place of humanity (that which Dante perhaps properly identified as worthy of the lowest level in hell), but his despair cut the rope of his redemption.  Had he reversed his ways, repented, and become a witness of Jesus' resurrection, he would have been the greatest of the apostles.  His testimony would have been the most powerful, being the most contrapuntal.  But, why did he kill himself?  Despair.

     And despair is loneliness in its purest form because it is hopelessness.  No man is hopeless who has another to understand him.  Even one interpersonal connection that is realized by a heart consumed with loneliness is an oasis.  This is the power of human contact.  Human interaction has the potential to redeem life even if the deliberate aspect of action is removed.  It is an ablution.

     Loneliness, however, is very deceitful because it is an illusion.  Why?  Because everyone retains a certain degree of loneliness.  Why?  Because who can know the plagues of a man's own heart but himself?  But everyone deals with their allotment of loneliness differently.  Some drown it in pleasures, some disguise it in multitudinous friendships, some seek fame, and others fight it head-on every day.  "Irreconcilable differences," as cited in divorce settlements, is a phrase which means nothing more than "lonely when together."  It becomes the unidentified cause of serial espousals.
     "Isn't that proof of its reality rather than its fictive nature?" one might say.  No.  Illusion is always a universal human experience.  We know loneliness is an illusion because perspective has the capability of destroying it.  We see this represented easily with optical illusions such as 3-D street art, but it tends to go unnoticed in its parabolic representation in the psychological realm.  Perspective dispels illusion.

     Most negatives are only shadows of positives, which means they are not real.

• Cold is not a substance - it is the shadow of heat.
• Dark is not a particle - it is the shadow of light.
• Loneliness is not real - it is the shadow of hope

Hope cures loneliness.

Questions about loneliness that yield subjective answers:

1. Does human interaction cure loneliness?
2. Can we be lonely while sharing our soul with another who voices sympathy and understanding?
3. Can one be alone and not be lonely?
4. In an instance of utter human abandonment, can belief in God relieve loneliness?
5. Can intrapersonal harmony (self-communion) sate loneliness?

     Theist or not, the opinions on these vary so much from person to person, they show how perspective can affect our loneliness.  Loneliness is felt - it is perceived.  It is because it is perceived that it is illusory.  It is because it is illusory that perspective can render it inert.

     No one is ever truly alone.  The feeling is real, but the state is not.  Even hate precludes loneliness because it requires an assignment of value to hate something.  If God exists, there is a perspective extant that could remove loneliness.  If He does not, you have to go through every human on the earth before you know there is no hope of being understood.

Things I Learned And Wrote At Age 29

• Readiness, not age, is the gauge for tragedy in death.

• Men are the work of the hands of God, but nations are the work of the hands of men.

• The cause of interrelational displeasure must be discontinued before it can be propitiated.

• Wisdom and strength are mutual ballasts.  Where one is enervated, the other must compensate.
• If you don't have strength to fight some things, you need the wisdom to avoid them.

• The only prerequisite for love is understanding.

• Logic should teach you that the ineluctable result of putting everything in God's hands is seeing God's hand in everything.

• Religion is fire:
• It is man's greatest asset when directed by proper authority.
• It is man's greatest foe if left to its own whim

• Consider yourself nothing, and if any consider you something, it will be a gain.

• No man should be honored above what he stood for.

• The word immoral means illegal by the laws of the universe.

• "Humility isn't denying your strengths.  It's acknowledging your weaknesses."

• In prayer you are not using God.  God is using you.

• To apologize, you have to be in disagreement with your past self.
• Credibility is one of the most underrated human needs; it is how we monetize respect.
• The reason apologizing is hard is that it removes credibility from oneself and confers it upon the other.

• A human that will remember...now, there is a remarkable individual.

• A simple observation of fact is more enticing than a lesson with a built-in judgment.

• Guile is saying something that is true to make someone believe something that isn't true.

• In the end, the godly are vindicated.  If you are unvindicated, either you are ungodly or it is not the end.

• The number one cause of being upset with someone is the belief that they are upset with you.

• A good man does not consistently do right by virtue and strength.  He does right by knowing his limits and not approaching them.

• All joy ultimately comes from gratitude.

• For an atheist, all good things come to an end.  For a Christian, all ends come to a good thing.

• The amount of credit and blame you are willing to take for your children should be equal.

• If you are quick to take offense to a contrary position, that means you are not secure in your own.

• The right thing at the wrong time is the wrong thing.

• The only time rebellion has potential for good is when it is rooted in something other than itself.

• The key to every attitude problem lies in perspective.

• You will know when you see God clearly because you will inevitably see yourself clearly.

• A good communicator must 1.) have a good imagination and 2.) be perceptive because he/she must use both to grasp how the other person is thinking.

• If you keep God as a last resort, the devil will ensure you have no shortage of vain resorts.

• Faith is an extrapolation of knowledge.
• No faith which is not primarily based in knowledge is legitimate.

• Effective leadership steeps itself in the teapot that is the laymen.

• The price of Heaven, at any cost, is cheap.

• Those who are most sure they understand the entirety are typically those who have grasped the least of it.

• A child in pain calls for mother.  A child in danger calls for father.

• True listening is not trying to get in a place where you can understand what someone said.  True listening is trying to get in a place where you understand what would cause you to say the same thing.

Things I Learned And Wrote At Age 28

• False humility is attempted self-deception.
• True humility is instinctive self-forgetfulness.

• Cowardly men use sarcasm often because it offers them refuge from accountability.
• If something is well received, they take the glory; if not, they pass it off as a joke.

• A good person will alter their way of life for the sake of a line of reasoning.

• If you believe in God but believe there is no written standard of what is right and wrong, you have taken morality from God and remanded it to the care of men.

• Statements of fact are never inherently unkind.  This is why the wisdom of any person who uses one may be called into judgment.

• It is humanly impossible to change inwardly without wanting to.

• Punctuality is a point of pride for a gentleman.

• In general, the longer you take to explain something, the less you understand it.

• It is better to find the right person too late than the wrong person too soon.

• The mission to do good to all mankind begins with yourself.

• A person of class is, first and foremost, knowledgeable in the history of a thing.

• A wife is a great blessing or a great curse to a man; and there is no in-between.

• You can address an offense face to face or you can let it go forever.  There is no third option.

• You have done wrong every time your justification consists of pointing out the flaws of others.

• The hallmark of class is that it ages well.

• A funeral should be a time for reflecting upon the thought: How would my life be different if this person was never born?
• And if possible, we should reflect on this before they die.

• When someone is in any way better than you, it doesn't make you worse than you were.

• If the whole world's out to get you, you might be guilty.

• There is nothing in the world more practical than wisdom because wisdom is the usage of optimal means to attain the optimal end.

• Of the three forms of time (past, present, future), the future is the most ephemeral, the most volatile, and therefore, the least worthy of concern.
• Diligence in the present will intrinsically secure the future; and the past is a treasure trove of mistakes and successes.

• Happiness = Success ÷ Expectation

• A woman who is constantly reminding the world that she is a female is no lady.

• Faith is the receptacle for grace.

• To a good man, peace is more valuable than being right.

• Inside every unlikable person is a lovable soul.

• Home ceases to be home when it revokes its welcome.
• Wherever a welcome avails itself - behold, a home.

• None will find himself in Hell but despite God's best efforts.

• You can always tell the wise from the smart by who is happy and who is sad.

• The reason love is so uniquely renowned above all human experiences is that it is a deep-seated longing for something you already have.
• The feelings of love and longing are so indistinguishable it is nearly impossible to describe one without expressing the profundity of the other.

• Your word is more valuable than your life.

Things I Learned And Wrote At Age 27

• Happiness is predicated upon goodness.
• No one ever committed suicide after a string of right choices.

• The will of man may technically be the most powerful force in the universe.  It is the only thing that can counteract the will of God.  Even the will of the devil does not have such power.

• Honesty is when what you say concurs with what you believe.
• Sincerity is when what you do concurs with what you believe.

• You can tell when someone is naturally sweet because upsetting circumstances will make them sad rather than angry.

• Do not make any oath without trembling.

• Asking where God came from is the same as asking: Where will God die?

• Faith is not necessarily stepping out on water thinking you're going to walk on it; it's stepping out thinking you're going to sink, knowing only that God said to do it.

• Always look at your present self through your future eyes.

• If you're flat on your face, the next step toward standing up is getting on your knees.

• Passive aggression is sowing seeds of aggression.  Those seeds yield active aggression.

• The more frivolous things you spend your time on, the less deep of a person you become.

• The only kind of people that should become a couple are two good people.  If either or both are less than good, they do not belong.

• Validation for pain is an essential human need that only a neighbor can fulfill.

• Men often deal with and exhibit their pain through anger; women, through sadness.  Of these two, the man's mechanism is more dangerous.

• Old age is a greater gift than youth. All have had youth, but not all attain old age.

• The more you consider how you'll want to look back on your past, the more you'll know what course to take now.

• The definition of truth is not that which is known.

• The scope of how you regard God is exactly as big or small as the scope of how you regard sin.

• People never forsake faith in God for what is known; it is always because of what is unknown.

Things I Learned And Wrote At Age 26

• Don't lie.  It's just more to memorize.

• Life isn't easier for Christians, but it makes more sense.

• You can have faith or control.

• Your life is a balance: God on the right side, all else on the other.
• Whatever you contribute to either end will affect the opposite.

• You can live for your goods or you can live for your good.

• If faith is worth anything, it's worth everything.

• Forgiveness is the gift God gives to man.  Consecration is the gift man gives back to God.

• Patience does not actually have to do with length of time.  It has to do with attitude.

• I was so focused on what wasn't, I missed out on what was.

• A good man compromises his preferences ever - his conscience never.

• Always compare yourself temporally to those below you and morally to those above you.

• Don't prepare for life.  Prepare for death.  Life is not guaranteed.  Death is.

• A dad is the standard by which children measure all other men.

• As you grow old, you either get better or you get bitter.

• A fool is a man with no lordship over his temperaments.

• Unless you are God, you never have to figure out who is going to heaven and who isn't.

• There is a plethora of things to which everyone ought to be closed-minded.

• The only way you don't fit in with good people is when there is too much of you.

• The only person you need to be superior to is yourself yesterday.

• Work equals worth.

• A good man thinks: What would I say to my younger self?
• A better man thinks: What would my younger self say of me?

• Nature is God's great instrument.  He is not bound by it but will use it exclusively when it can be utilized as the vehicle to accomplish His purpose.

• Charity and convenience are not friends.

Things I Learned And Wrote At Age 25

• People are first attracted to cynicism because it seems mature.

• Life is seldom fair, and it seems fair even less so.

• Grace is getting what you don't deserve.  Mercy is not getting what you do deserve.

• If you make a woman cry, you have lost.

• You can find out if a wound has healed by its response when provoked.

• The strangest quality of being young is that most of the people who will be at my funeral have not been born yet.

• One of the most foolish things we can do is place our happiness on anything in the future.

Things I Learned And Wrote At Age 24

• Trust is the price of a lie.

• If you believe the first verse of the Bible, you shouldn't have a problem with any of the others.

• Heaven is full of people who did good.  Hell is full of people who meant to do good.

• Secret knowledge is better than open erudition.

•  Peace is the foundation upon which joy is built.

• Words are the actualization of the mind, but actions are the actualization of the heart.

• Failure is the pavement of success and trying is the first step toward failure.

• The principal characteristic of marriage is nonrepudiability.

• If we would seek solace when a loved one departs, we shall find it only in strengthening the bonds between the loved ones that remain.

• Marriage is held together by threads, not chains.

• We must all seem as the mentally handicapped to God.

• A married person can never say, "That's none of your business."

•  Every human being alive knows some kind of love.

Things I Learned And Wrote At Age 23

• If you see yourself as your mother sees you, you are arrogant.

• The phrase "No offense..." is a hypocritical one.  There is nothing to follow this phrase which could not be construed as offensive.

• Being bossy is not telling others what to do.  It is telling others what to do when you have no authority to do so.

• There are two kinds of people who cannot fix a problem:
• Those who are too small to fix it
• Those who are too big to fix it

Things I Learned And Wrote At Age 22

• Let them be wrong.

• Prolixity is proportionate to age.

• It is facile to undo good and arduous to undo wrong.

• One cannot be convinced who wishes not to be dissuaded.

• Earthly education is inversely proportionate to ecclesiastical morality

• The difference between guile and honesty is not in veracity, but in the intent.

• The people who have the most cause to complain usually don't.

• He who denies divine inspiration will never acknowledge diabolic influence.

• People speak for two reasons: 1) to volunteer information and 2) to obtain information.
• Those of the latter are better suited to partake of the former.

Things I Learned And Wrote At Age 21

• Some want to be healthy, and some want to be happy.

• Wisdom lies not in what is said so much as what is not said.

• Reaction is weightier than action.

• War is the guardian of peace.
• A lover of peace is at times a supporter of war.

• It is impossible to live upright and not be happy

• Once you forgive someone, you forever relinquish all right to bring the matter up again.

• The greatness of a man is proportionate to the veracity of his word.

• Two people claim to know Jesus: the wise and the lunatic.

• Where truth lacks, there complexity ensues, and confusion reigns.

• Loneliness is a voluntary condition.

• It is no easier to judge than to misjudge.

• Do not ask a question unless you are prepared for the answer.

• Consistency in large areas is formed by good habits in small areas.

• The degree of fear is commensurate to the distance from God.

• A ton of good is overturned with an ounce of evil.

• "Cool" is sedated boldness.

• Truth is a rock.  It does not conform to man; man must conform to it.

• Passion is emotion plus direction.

•  When you fear someone, you give them power over you.

•  The most direct way to view a man introspectively is through what he owns.
• Property is an extension of a man.
• To disrespect a man's belongings is to disrespect the man.

• Prosperity tends to stifle spirituality.

• There are many who stand unvindicated by God, but there are none who remain so.

• Justification is the gateway to heaven.  Self-justification is the portal to hell.

• While a man will retain a grudge for a lifetime, a child has more wisdom than to hold on to something called bitterness.

• The thoughts of God are so far divorced from the deeds of man that a partaker of one must abandon the other.

• A large portion of wisdom is to surrender the need to know some things.

• There is a list of things you have done for them and a list of things they have done for you; but they will only remember the latter.

• Every work of God is redemptive.

• Perfecting is a process.  Perfectionism is a sickness.

• Peace: Prevention from mention of all contention.
• Holiness: Abstention from invention of carnal intention.
• Heaven: The pension of ascension to a godly convention.

• Money that is not in immediate possession merits no heed.

• Do not remove the aspect of service in a "church service."

• The atmosphere of life is chosen by the individual.  The atmosphere of the home is chosen by the parents.

• Knowledge is obtained of Earth, but wisdom is obtained exclusively of God.

Things I Learned And Wrote At Age 20

• Hold a bird too tightly and it will choke.  Hold a bird too loosely and it will fly away.

• The circulation of influence: what enters into a man is what he becomes.  What a man is, is what comes out of him.

• Emotion breeds commotion.

• Proximity plus time equals frustration.
• Knowledge plus understanding equals wisdom.
• Experience plus confidence equals trust.
• Trust plus belief equals faith.

• Attitude is a state of the spirit.

• Wisdom is obtained from the spiritual world and applied to the literal world.

• It is because the allotment of life is singular that the epiphany of the source of life's true beauty is imperative.

• Happiness in life cannot be found in the search for what satisfies.  It must begin with the self-seeking quest of what needs to be satisfied.

• Foresight is wisdom.

• If a god exists, the wisest man on Earth is he who fears Him most.

• Sin is both an action and a condition.

• Intelligence is manifested in the how more than the what.

• Age is inversely proportionate to the disposition to change.

• Self defense of the culpable precedes accusation.

• Antiquity does not negate veracity.

• The difference between friendship and courtship is tantamount to the degree to which one's problems become another's.

• It is as grave a matter to conceive a life as it is to take one.

• There are absolutes.

• The majority of happiness is based upon expectation.

• The aspect of legitimacy is the attempted justification for the sin of intemperance.

•  All manner of satisfaction is derived from the denial of immediate pleasures.

• Women are the signposts for morality in a society because what women will allow, men will do.

• The greatest folly of church division is that it sends the message that salvation is complicated.

• It is not given to man to do good to his own soul.  But he does have power to undo the good.

• Abstinence from violation of the conscience matters little when accompanied with unscrupulous appearance.

• Reputation is a creation fragile in structure, built through years of painful endeavor and shattered at a breeze's whim.

• There are two spiritual conditions: fighting and dead.

• The absence of faith is insecurity.
• The opposite of faith is fear.

• There was a time when I always had to win, but I got victory over that.