(no title)

Again the witching hour approaches, and I'm typing away. Less cool here, some clouds tonight. 
One of the things I'm trying to write (won't call it a book, don't know where I'm going with it) is about the "power of personal choice". It really is a powerful thing we humans have, the freedom to use our wills however we want, within the limitations of time, space, genetics, and other factors in our immediate environment. We can choose to lie, cheat, steal, fake stuff, be an idiot when you know better, etc. And we have the power to do otherwise, to make better choices. Plus, we have the additional power to respond to those who do either -- something good for us, something bad to us, and the like.
Once upon a time, a guy chose to take some of my personal identity (not account numbers, it was other stuff -- I need to be vague here) and use it to acquire status that I at that time could not have. When a relative informed me of this, the situation was that I could basically do nothing to retaliate at that point. I felt powerless. I got angry for a while, but then I realized something that has helped me ever since. It was this: I had something worth stealing. Some phony took from me something I had made, and was pretending he could do the same things with it I could. He could not, because it was my creation: my God-given ability to create inhered in it, and I could still use that power to do more. After maybe a year, the guy disappeared from the scene. Because what I did once I realized I still had power -- the power to create something even better in the place of what he'd taken -- made it so. I employed additional skills I'd honed from other God-given talents to create something much better, and something no one could ever take away -- because this time, I created something that had more of me in it. It was inimitable. It was either me doing it, or no one. The "secret ingredient" was that the process itself was the secret. Once I realized I had something inherent in me that created something worth stealing, or copying, or whatever -- that meant I could make something else to replace what I'd lost, more of it, and make it better than before. The power of love (I loved what I was doing), the power of insight, the power of self-help, the power of honest work -- all essential. But none of them were worth anything until I used my power to choose.


LJ orig: 11/05/06