The Aha! Moment: Have you ever been talking or thinking about something when all of a sudden everything clicks and you get why this thing is called what it is or understand the meaning behind it that you had never known until right now?  Not because it’s too difficult to grasp or you’re too dumb to put two and two together.  More because you’re so accustomed to it just meaning what it means you’ve never had to or even thought to think of the meaning behind it. Today I was chatting with a buddy of mine and I made a joke about his girlfriend’s family, referring to them as his “in-laws”,  when all of a sudden out of nowhere POW!  It hit me why a spouse’s family members are called their “in-laws”.  Now obviously this isn’t a significant discovery on my part by any means, but it got me thinking.  I had accepted this term to mean what it does with out thinking about the meaning behind it.  What else is out there that I haven’t thought about and just accepted it as is?  The more and more I pondered on this question the more I thought about how it applied to my life on a much larger scale than where the term “in-laws” came from.  What else in life do people just accept with out questioning because they just don’t think to think about?  Religion, politics, trends, what your favorite blog to read is at the current moment (this one you don’t need to think about, I am completely fine with you just accepting that I’m your favorite blogger at the current moment and leaving it at that, but just this one thing)?  If you think about this, it’s kind of scary.  The one thing human beings use to most disassociate themselves from every other living object on this planet is our brain capacity.  Simply put, we’re smarter.  We can solve social, mathmatical and scientific problems.  We can design skyscrapers, weapons of mass destruction and entire civilization standards to live by…but for 27 years I never thought of why the term “in-laws” was used to describe a spouse’s family members. The point I’m getting at, is the world needs more Aha moments.  If you believe in something ask yourself why?  Not to try and change what you believe, but to figure out what it is about that idea, situation, religion, political party that makes you believe in it.    Stop believing in something for the sole reason that you were told to believe in it, or you think others will like you more, or because you think you have to.  Believe in it because you have thought about it and decided it is what you truly believe in.  And just because the next person in line may have a different set of beliefs, doesn’t mean one is right and one is wrong, only different.  The world is big, bigger than the vast picture our minds paint it out to be, big enough for more than one set of beliefs.  The sooner we can all learn this, the sooner our minds will set us free… I live, I love, I’ve thought long and hard about it, I am… -SP

The Aha! Moment:

Have you ever been talking or thinking about something when all of a sudden everything clicks and you get why this thing is called what it is or understand the meaning behind it that you had never known until right now?  Not because it’s too difficult to grasp or you’re too dumb to put two and two together.  More because you’re so accustomed to it just meaning what it means you’ve never had to or even thought to think of the meaning behind it.

Today I was chatting with a buddy of mine and I made a joke about his girlfriend’s family, referring to them as his “in-laws”,  when all of a sudden out of nowhere POW!  It hit me why a spouse’s family members are called their “in-laws”.  Now obviously this isn’t a significant discovery on my part by any means, but it got me thinking.  I had accepted this term to mean what it does with out thinking about the meaning behind it.  What else is out there that I haven’t thought about and just accepted it as is? 

The more and more I pondered on this question the more I thought about how it applied to my life on a much larger scale than where the term “in-laws” came from.  What else in life do people just accept with out questioning because they just don’t think to think about?  Religion, politics, trends, what your favorite blog to read is at the current moment (this one you don’t need to think about, I am completely fine with you just accepting that I’m your favorite blogger at the current moment and leaving it at that, but just this one thing)?  If you think about this, it’s kind of scary.  The one thing human beings use to most disassociate themselves from every other living object on this planet is our brain capacity.  Simply put, we’re smarter.  We can solve social, mathmatical and scientific problems.  We can design skyscrapers, weapons of mass destruction and entire civilization standards to live by…but for 27 years I never thought of why the term “in-laws” was used to describe a spouse’s family members.

The point I’m getting at, is the world needs more Aha moments.  If you believe in something ask yourself why?  Not to try and change what you believe, but to figure out what it is about that idea, situation, religion, political party that makes you believe in it.    Stop believing in something for the sole reason that you were told to believe in it, or you think others will like you more, or because you think you have to.  Believe in it because you have thought about it and decided it is what you truly believe in.  And just because the next person in line may have a different set of beliefs, doesn’t mean one is right and one is wrong, only different.  The world is big, bigger than the vast picture our minds paint it out to be, big enough for more than one set of beliefs.  The sooner we can all learn this, the sooner our minds will set us free…

I live, I love, I’ve thought long and hard about it, I am…

-SP