Metamorphasis

You turn away from the world because you believe the mistakes you have made are tattooed all over your body and that is all the world can see; marks of shame you cannot wipe clean no matter how many years you scrub your skin until no more blood can seep from your pores still stained with filth and sin.

You turn away from the world because you believe you are defined by your past, by the choices you made when there were no other choices; that you are bound to the Person you once were by the invisible ropes still tied around your hands and feet, held in place by words of shame that will never deliver you from their grasp.

You turn away from the world because you believe you are not deserving to hold your head high and look it in the eye; that you carry a scarlet letter upon your forehead that will blind those who dare to look your way, and you cannot stand to see the way they turn their face from your tainted humanity.

You forget, foolish Human.

You forget what you have survived.

You forget you fought alone against the world when your hands were too small to defeat the weight of it, and so you took it on as your own even though it almost crushed you.

You forget you were betrayed by those who should have protected you and so you barricaded yourself behind hard edges and sharp corners and promised to never trust or need another again.

You forget the way love was shown as abuse and abuse was shown as love and the shame you were forced to carry because of the way you longed to be loved even when that looked like abuse.

You forget you sat alone in a room filled with despair as your hands shook and blood trailed down your wrist and in that moment when you could have chosen death, you chose life.

You forget you have every reason to be hard, but you choose to remain soft. You have every reason to hate, but you choose to show mercy. You have every reason to cast judgment, but you choose to speak grace. You have every reason to f*ck this world the way it has f*cked you, but you choose to heal it instead.

You forget you have survived what most people never could.

Foolish Human , you are not foolish at all.

You are a warrior.

You are strength. You are bravery. You are courage. You are hope. You are light. You are truth. You are love. You are survival. You are kindness. You are wisdom. You are redemption. You are transformation. You are revolution.

And most of all, you are worthy.

To love, and to be loved.

You just need to believe it.

~ © Kathy Parker ~

(With permission)

My Experiences with Ppl

It is when you stop going along with the crowd and start realizing that there are many things about yourself that you didn’t know and may not like. You start feeling insecure and wonder where you will be in a year or two, but then get scared because you barely know where you are now.

You start realizing that people are selfish and that, maybe, those friends that you thought you were so close to aren’t exactly the greatest people you have ever met, and the people you have lost touch with are some of the most important ones. What you don’t recognize is that they are realizing that too, and aren’t really cold, catty, mean or insincere, but that they are as confused as you.

You look at your job… and it is not even close to what you thought you would be doing, or maybe you are looking for a job and realizing that you are going to have to start at the bottom and that scares you.

Your opinions have gotten stronger. You see what others are doing and find yourself judging more than usual because suddenly you realize that you have certain boundaries in your life and are constantly adding things to your list of what is acceptable and what isn’t. One minute, you are insecure and then the next, secure.

You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your life. You feel alone and scared and confused. Suddenly, change is the enemy and you try and cling on to the past with dear life, but soon realize that the past is drifting further and further away, and there is nothing to do but stay where you are or move forward.

You get your heart broken and wonder how someone you loved could do such damage to you. Or you lie in bed and wonder why you can’t meet anyone decent enough that you want to get to know better. Or maybe you love someone but love someone else too and cannot figure out why you’re doing this because you know that you aren’t a bad person. One night stands and random hook ups start to look cheap. Getting wasted and acting like an idiot starts to look pathetic. You go through the same emotions and questions over and over, and talk with your friends about the same topics because you cannot seem to make a decision. You worry about Career, Money, Relationship, the future and making a life for yourself… and while winning the race would be great, right now you’d just like to be a contender!

What you may not realize is that every one reading this relates to it. We are in our best of times and our worst of times, trying as hard as we can to figure this whole thing out.

We call it the “Quarter-life Crisis.”

People come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. When you figure out which one it is, you will know what to do for each person. 

When someone is in your life for a REASON . . . It is usually to meet a need you have expressed. They have come to assist you through a difficulty, to provide you with guidance and support, to aid you physically, emotionally, or spiritually. They may seem like a godsend, and they are! They are there for the reason you need them to be. 

Then, without any wrong doing on your part, or at an inconvenient time, this person will say or do something to bring the relationship to an end .Sometimes they die. Sometimes they walk away. Sometimes they act up and force you to take a stand. What we must realize is that our need has been met, our desire fulfilled, their work is done. The prayer you sent up has been answered. And now it is time to move on.

When people come into your life for a SEASON . . Because your turn has come to share, grow, or learn. They bring you an experience of peace, or make you laugh. They may teach you something you have never done. They usually give you an unbelievable amount of joy. Believe it! It is real! But, only for a season.

LIFETIME relationships teach you lifetime lessons; things you must build upon in order to have a solid emotional foundation. Your job is to accept the lesson, love the person, and put what you have learned to use in all other relationships and areas of your life.

Amazing Virtue & Patience

We value virtue but do not discuss it. happiness does not consist in amusement. In fact, it would be strange if our end were amusement, and if we were to labor and suffer hardships all our life long merely to amuse ourselves.... The happy life is regarded as a life in conformity with virtue. It is a life which involves effort and is not spent in amusement.
No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God . . . and it is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education that we come here to acquire.
Patience is a virtue
The picture below is an example of such. Talent is a long patience, and originality an effort of will and intense observation.

As a Programmer...... My Sorrows & Grief Phases

One's mind should be pretty clear when programming. I'm a decent enough programmer, but I'm not a bad-ass programmer. At least not anymore. Back in the day, before so many things happened in my life, when I was sleeping a full 8 hours, I could code some nice stuff. Now it's just a miracle it compiles. When it does. I also tend to, um, not think. At all.

I have been looking into OpenID lately, I was pleased they had made a .NET compatible OpenID library available (Andrew Arnott has wrapped it in a nice ASP.NET 2.0 Web Control). I was thinking I'd add OpenID support to our Desi Office's Server as a Proof of Concept, as our authentication system is pluggable. It'll be a nice demo, as our CardSpace one already works great. I went and download the .NET OpenID Library preparing for a few hours of tedious work.

* Shiv`s Tangent

The .NET OpenID library is written in Boo - I blogged about Boo in 2005 (I wonder if Ayende will update his Boo Reflector support for Reflector 5.0?) - which is a language that is damn-near Python. You can convert your code to Boo with this online tool if you want to play. Here's some Boo examples versus C# 2.0.

Right now the best and easiest way to write Boo is to use SharpDevelop, the Open Source IDE. Boo is a first-class language within SharpDevelop, along side VB and C#, and includes all the usual good stuff like debugging and what-not.

The OpenID .NET Library, as I said, is written in Boo, very likely because the original library was written in Python and Boo offered not only a clear porting direction, but also made the developer comfortable. More on this later guys. I  figured this evening I'd "port" the Boo source for this library over to a "proper C# library" so the masses wouldn't have to sweat Boo. This experience let me through the :>

1. SHOCK

I was of course, like any religious zealot C# programmer, shocked and offended and looked on with disbelief that anyone would use any language that wasn't the One True Way® to produce perfectly viable and runnable IL. Microsoft's whole multi-language, single-runtime was just to prove a point to the Java guys right? I looked at the code with disdain

Shock is often accompanied by numbness...

No curly braces? Duck typing? Is this how these people live and code? Freaks. Toy Languages, man, toy languages.

2. Denial

At this point, I don't think it'll be hard to port this. The library includes NUnit Tests, but as the library is structured with a lot of things marked internal to the assembly, there's two libraries. The main one, and the test one - but the code is also compiled into the test assembly. I started marking things public, and separated the two.

I've already missed the forest for the trees here, and I'm happily stepping on butterflies in my quest for the big game.

My goal was to use the Test library, as is, to test my glorious new C# library - the one I hadn't started yet. If the same tests passed on my C# version, shiny. I started poking around the code, trying to get an idea on where to start. The library includes a Server and an Consumer, and since I just needed the Consumer in the short term, I figured I start there. 

3. Bargaining

There's not THAT much code in the consumer, but there's not only a number of utility classes, but there's also a bunch of Boo language-specific collections and such. Also, as .NET 2.0 doesn't include Diffie-Hellman support (Orcas does, BTW), the OpenID library referenced Mono.Security to get there BigInteger class and Diffie-Hellman support.

ASIDE: Be aware that Mono is GPL'ed Mono Libraries are MIT X11. Mono produces IL, and Mono libraries are CLS compliant, you can reference them in your Windows .NET applications happily, and they'll work fine 99.9% of the time. Adding a Mono library to my Windows .NET CLR program doesn't make it run under Mono, it's just referencing a library. Some people, like myself (yesterday) look down on this like we look down on C# programs referencing Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll, but hey, it's tested code I didn't have to write...you'll no doubt see my own personal epiphany coming later in this stupid Blog post of mine...

I thought I might write my own Diffie-Hellman [D- H]... 

Note that I'm getting totally off the main task-at-hand already here...but I've not noticed it...yet...

or find one that was already done. If I could just remove that Mono.Security reference...

4. Guilt

I started to feel bad, who am I to remove this library? Someone's worked hard on it, it shipped, let's leave it be, and get to the real work. Maybe I can find a better way to port this...ah, yes, Reflector!

I'm completely delusional...lack of sleep?  Analysis paralysis or just complete lack of thought? Ah, too much club soda, perhaps? High blood sugar?

I'll just reflector the assembly and decompile it into C#. Heh, maybe I'll use Denis Bauer's FileDisassembler. There's probably some Boo specific stuff, but I'll yank that, no problem. It might be sinful, but no one is looking.

Of course, Boo assemblies include dozens of anonymous generated types and adapters to make Boo's closures work (it was designed before Anonymous Delegates could be used for closures) as well as for type inference.

Gosh...this decompiled C# code isn't even close...this may express the intent to the computer, but it doesn't reflect the Programmer's Intent at all. damnnn..

5. Anger

Stupid piece of crap Reflector! Man, Lutz can't even decompile to something I can freaking read!

Remember that IL is the applesauce on its way to becoming apple juice. Note that Stupid Shiv is pissed here because Lutz's Reflector can't turn applesauce back into an apple. Darn Reflector and the Laws of Abstraction.

Shoot...this is going to take longer than I thought. Now I've got to just freaking write thing whole thing from scratch by actually thinking and understanding what the code is intending to do! Man, I wasn't planning to think tonight, I just wanted to get OpenID on my blog.

6. Depression

I'm not a good programmer! I've been coasting on charm for at least the last three years. I remember what closures were in college, but I've been using .NET for the last five years and it dulls the senses...I might as well just give up and become a male nurse.

7. Acceptance and Hope

Wait a second. I've already got a library that works. It's got unit tests. It depends on a tested and released Mono library and a 3 year old non-mainstream language, but it works. It's been used and implemented live before and someone has already wrapped it into an even better and more useful abstraction. Maybe it'll work after all. 

The moral of this story is that my time would have been better spent learning Boo, reading the source, and using the Library. The source came with a NAnt Task, but I just created a Boo Project in SharpDevelop - THAT wasn't wasted time. 

After I'd learned enough Boo, if I really wanted a C# version, for whatever reason, I should have just written it from scratch using the public interface as a template and the Programmer Intent, written in Boo, as my algorithmic scaffolding. Hindsight is 20/20.

NOW, HOW DO I GET MY EVENING BACK 

???????????????????????????????????????!!!!#@%#^%%$%^&;(**&;%$^%$@%!!!!!!

What do you want from life?

The Tubes ask in a song "What do you want from life?"  It's an odd tune, as most of their stuff is, but it still got me thinking.  

There are a few things that I believe people are very lucky/fortunate/blessed to have.  Some days it saddens me that I don't have these things.  Call it jealousy, call it envy, call it whatever you like...I call it wistful.  I do have many things for which I consider myself lucky.  But there are some things I just can't seem to get away from missing...these are them...

 

- Family. I put it First because * FAMILY COMES FIRST *. As a potter moulds clay to form a beautiful creation, so does the strong bond of family and good values. Family bonds are a link to our beginning and a guide to our future. Early influences are fundamental to our individual development. We all want to "belong" and feel accepted. A sense of belonging is derived from the strong bond of family. Family is where our roots take hold and from there we grow. We are molded within a unit, which prepares us for what we will experience in the world and how we react to those experiences. Values are taught at an early age and are carried with us throughout our life. From trusting that someone will pick us up when we fall, as a toddler, to someone being there for us as we experience the storms in life - family bonds help to instill trust and hope in the world around us and belief in ourselves. Rituals of bedtime stories, hugs, holidays and daily meals shared together, provide a sense of warmth, structure and safety. These rituals and traditions, not only create memories and leave a family legacy, but create our first path in life - one that is positive. 

Big family gatherings, phone calls, holidays, people to care for and who care about you. Being a part of something bigger than yourself; a source of identity; a place of trust, comfort and protection. 
A family. 

"Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one." - Jane Howard 

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- Friends.  In my experiences with both good and bad friendships, I would have rather a friend with me at the time instead of being alone. At the time of each friendship, I have made good memories and would never want to change any of them, for me, each of them have taught me a lesson. Whether it was a positive or negative lesson, I learned from each friendship and grew to be a better friend.

The conventional wisdom is that good friendships enhance an individual's sense of happiness and overall well-being. But a number of solid studies support the notion that strong social supports improve  prospects for good health and longevity. For me, I think..

1) Good friends encourage their friends to lead more healthy lifestyles;

2) Good friends encourage their friends to seek help and access services, when needed; 

3) Good friend enhance their friend’s coping skills in dealing with illness and other health problems; and/or 

4) Good friends actually affect physiological pathways that are protective of health.

Inviting people over, going over for coffee, making plans for parties, nights out, and dinners. Such a wonderful source of love, care and support.
 Life is more fulfilling.  

"We can live without religion and meditation, but we cannot survive without human affection."- Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

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- Health.  Probably the most important thing in life. The concept of being healthy is a composition of different facets of life. It includes physical well-being, which can be brought about by a healthy diet and exercise; it constitutes the maintenance of health through proper precaution and cures for physical ailments. The conveniently ignored facet of being healthy is the mental well-being. One's happiness and positivism are highly influential in the maintenance of one's health.
To progress in life, one need to receive some sort of formal or practical education and then earn one's living. To meet one's basic needs in life and survive; one needs to be healthy. Different streams of education involve different amounts of physical and mental activity. Physical and mental activity is an integral part of every profession or field of work. To perform these activities effectively, one needs to be healthy. At almost every walk of life, one needs to socialize. During one's years of education, one is required to socialize with one's classmates. Similarly, human interaction accompanies every form of work. Most of the professions need collective efforts of teams. For each individual of a group to be able to give his/her best, it is important for the individual to be healthy. 
As a part of society, every human being has a set of duties to perform. Each individual has certain family responsibilities as also some responsibilities towards the society. For an individual to be able to shoulder these responsibilities, it is important for him/her to be healthy. To make progress in a society, to work towards the betterment of society, to contribute to an overall social welfare and thus be a valuable asset of society, it is extremely important to be healthy.
As one grows from a child to an adult, one's set of rights and responsibilities expands. In order to perform one's duties and implement one’s rights effectively, it is absolutely important to be healthy. To raise a family, to bring up your children, to take care of the aged in your family, you need to be healthy. 
Health and happiness go hand in hand. To live life to the fullest and enjoy every bit of it, it is extremely important for us to be healthy!

If you are Healthy, You don’t have to suffer frequent or chronic physical pain and disease. This, by itself, is already a huge incentive! You do not have to live in constant fear of developing (or having already developed) a life-threatening illness.

You can save time and money on doctors, drugs and hospital visits. You will have more energy and vitality, and thus can do more things with the same amount of time i.e. increased productivity and efficiency. As you fall sick less often, time spent recuperating and “out of action” will be lessened. You will probably live longer. The time saved and “gained” can be spent with your loved ones. The time saved and “gained” will also enable you to do things which you otherwise would not have the time for. The increased energy and vitality means you can do things, including your work and hobbies, better i.e. increased quality. You will be able to better enjoy what you do. Again, this includes both work and play. You will be better able to enjoy physical activities, such as your favorite sports. You may in fact be able to stretch yourself and do things which would otherwise be impossible, such as climbing a mountain. You will be able to enjoy more and better sex. You will be able to think clearer. You will enjoy better emotional wellbeing. You will enjoy better spiritual health, and have a closer relationship with God. In old age, you will be able to keep up and play with your grandchildren. By not being ill, you will not have to be a burden on your loved ones, and on society. In fact, by being healthy, you will be better positioned to take good care of your loved ones. Good health will also make you physically more able to extend a helping hand to others.

"It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver." -  Mohandas Gandhi

  

Of course there are other things like money, fame, real estate....but those are bonuses that sometimes just aren't in the cards.  They aren't necessary to one's well being.  Other things, like being thin, piloting a plane or writing a novel, can be worked at, striven for and quite possibly attained.

But some things, well, some things just aren't ours for the taking.  We are dealt a certain amount of our circumstances and we must work within them.   The trick is learning how to do that.

Do you have any of these kinds of wishes?  Circumstances you'd love to change but realize that they never will?  How have you learned to live with them?

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And now for truly strange....I looked up images for "circumstance" after writing this blog and found the following.  The wildest thing of note >> 

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Teaching the caterpillar to fly

"I would like to be just like you" - said the young caterpillar to the butterfly. "Everyday I dream of having beautiful colorful wings that will allow me to go places I've never been, in speeds I never thought possible. If I had wings like you I'd explore this vast land, dance with the afternoon breeze, have fun while being chased by innocent children and bathe in the sun by the river while kissing every flower in the neighborhood."

The flamboyant butterfly gazed at the caterpillar and responded with wisdom - "If that's your heart's true desire nothing on this earth can stop you from reaching your dreams. But before that happens you must be willing to face the challenges ahead of you."

"What challenges may that be?" - the caterpillar squirmed with fear 

"Well, first you gotta practice crawling before you're able to fly. You probably will be chased by hungry birds before you agile enough to escape from playful kids. From the heavy rain and strong winds you must protect yourself before you can surf the breeze and sunbathe near the water. And most important, a time will come when you'll need to retreat inside a cocoon on your own".

"A cocoon?!" - questioned the caterpillar now having second thoughts about his dreams

"The cocoon experience is inevitable, unless you want to be a caterpillar all your life. It's dark and uncomfortable inside and you will feel isolated and trapped at times. Stay strong and you'll experience the miraculous metamorphoses that will set you free. During the process though, you must let go of your identity as caterpillar and your life as you know. Only then you'll be strong enough to breakthrough the cocoon."

Then will I finally be able to kiss the flowers? - eagerly asked the caterpillar

"Yes. But we butterflies don't kiss flowers for our own sake. Sure it is fun but we do that so the pollen spreads across the land. Then new plants and trees can grow and their leaves will be food and shelter to other young caterpillars just like you."

   

[Track - Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)  by Melanie]

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