Happy

“Generally speaking, the most miserable people I know are those who are obsessed with themselves; the happiest people I know are those who lose themselves in the service of others… By and large, I have come to see that if we complain about life, it is because we are thinking only of ourselves."

-Gordon B. Hinckle

Big Fan

“It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach."

-Franklin D. Roosevelt

Truth

“We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing."

Charles Bukowski

Safe

“Quite often, without awareness, we come to feel that perfectly safe ventures, feelings, explorations, relationships, etc., are unsafe, only because they are unfamiliar or different, and because we haven’t experienced them.
Very often we will stick with something truly destructive and unsafe only because it is familiar, because we have experienced it; it represents a status quo — no taking a chance situation."

Theodore Isaac Rubin, The Winner’s Notebook, 1967

Disgusting

“At around 9:00 a.m. on May 5, 2011, officers with the Pima County, Arizona, Sheriff’s Department’s Special Weapons and Tactics (S.W.A.T.) team surrounded the home of 26-year-old José Guerena, a former U.S. Marine and veteran of two tours of duty in Iraq, to serve a search warrant for narcotics. As the officers approached, Guerena lay sleeping in his bedroom after working the graveyard shift at a local mine. When his wife Vanessa woke him up, screaming that she had seen a man outside the window pointing a gun at her, Guerena grabbed his AR-15 rifle, instructed Vanessa to hide in the closet with their four-year old son, and left the bedroom to investigate. Within moments, and without Guerena firing a shot—or even switching his rifle off of “safety”—he lay dying, his body riddled with 60 bullets. A subsequent investigation revealed that the initial shot that prompted the S.W.A.T. team barrage came from a S.W.A.T. team gun, not Guerena’s. Guerena, reports later revealed, had no criminal record, and no narcotics were found at his home."

Cops With Machine Guns: How the War on Terror Has Militarized the Police - The Atlantic

Just in case you’re not furious yet, here’s the official verdict from Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWall:

Under the circumstances, and based upon our review of all the available evidence, we have concluded that the use of deadly forces by the SWAT Team members was reasonable and justified under the law. Accordingly, the Pima County Attorney’s Office finds no basis to prosecute.


This is sickening. When did our "war" on drugs become an actual war?!

Insight

Most consider me to be a controlling person. A label that I, of course, have always resented :) Over the past few years, I have made a conscience effort to curb my controlling tendencies. I know that I can’t control other people’s lives; I can only control my own. And I have recently come to another revelation: I hold people to an impossible standard. If I email you and you don’t email me back, I automatically assume that you’re mad at me, which usually isn't the case — everybody leads busy lives with their work or family and I can't expect to take top billing. Texting gets to me as well. If I send you a text, its safe to assume that we are friends, and I usually expect a text back. I think that a courtesy reply is the least that one could do. I do these things, so I expect them in return; but I have to realize that not everybody is like me. I don’t like letting people down — if I say that I am going to do something, I go out of my way to make it happen. I try and do my best for other people. I treat friends and people the way I want to be treated, but that doesn't mean that others share the same philosophy. (This is where the controlling part of me starts to take over) Why don’t people want to cook me dinner? Why doesn’t someone take the time to text me back? I have to let this part of me go. I have to realize that just because someone doesn’t do something for me, it doesn’t mean they are a bad person. Everybody has different personalities and beliefs when it comes to "paying it forward". I need to let things go. I'm going to strive to be the best (and least controlling) person that I can be and let others decide how they want to live their lives — even if we have different views of what that should be.

We Never Change

I wanna live life and never be cruel.
I wanna live life and be good to you.
And I wanna fly and never come down.
And live my life and have friends around.
We never change, do we? no, no
We never learn, do we?
So I wanna live in a wooden house.
I wanna live life and always be true.
I wanna live life and be good to you.
And I wanna fly and never come down.
And live my life and have friends around.
We never change, do we? No, no
We never learn, do we?
So I wanna live in a wooden house,
where making more friends would be easy.
Oh, and I don´t have a soul to save.
Yes, and I sin every single day.
We never change, do we?
We never learn, do we?
So I wanna live in a wooden house,
Where making more friends would be easy.
I wanna live where the sun comes out.

-Coldplay

This song never get old.