Malik Watkins's Bloglines

Sometimes we reach a point in our lives where we look back at a particular event or scenario and realize, as we say to ourselves, wow, those were the days…..Then with maturity, the hope is that we can get to a point where we don’t have to look back…we can realize how good things are right now…in the moment!

This was a trip such as that…where I could feel the significance of the moment in real time…and allowed myself to live it!  Living the Dream…Day-by-Day…

For me, this Begs the question: what do we need to crack open our minds…to make our perspectives and thoughts malleable for change…to make change in the world, we ourselves have to bring about internal changes.  I am a firm believer in our ability to shape our minds through experiences.  Some would even say that our minds are the sum accumulation of our experiences.

We are born into a world that already exists, and our personalities in large part our shaped by our response to what already exists. Our experiences can support what exists…. which then concretizes our personalities.  Or experiences can undermine our perceptions and acceptance of what is actually not real…this can send us in a completely different direction…. towards reality.  At times, our response to what exists gives us a burden to carry.  That burden may be shaped by culture, family, race, gender, ethnicity, religion, economics…I know mine…do you know yours?

What would it feel like to release the burdens of history, those that are real and those that are figments, and to live and experience life without the burden…like a fully grown newborn baby 🙂 The feeling of releasing the burdens of history!  No longer trapped within an idea…the idea that makes you consistently and continually relive an experience…relive a self-projected vision only taking place in our heads and not rooted in the reality of the globally human experience…

Personal experiences, at times, can narrow our humanity…focusing singularly on our own experiences makes us ignorant…makes us ignore the experiences of others…it makes us ignore the world around us…and how others feel…and how those experiences shape our interactions and engagements…that is one reason why knowing history is important…but not just our own history…this story needs to be told within the context of the history of others…

Many lessons about personal development come to mind as I reflect on the Panamanian experience…much of it is based upon the diversity of its people and its built environment…even the architecture of the old world and the new world, the meticulous nature of the old world provides the foundation for a new world…looking at some of the buildings and the streets, the size of the materials used in their construction represents the artisan…they used materials small enough for them to handle…versus the designs and the forms that represent a preference for mass and speed over individual units and patience….

Those individual units represent a person that has dedicated their life to something and it is so unique and excellent that we shall wait on their product…so, what about our own individual units.  What are we using…what materials are we using to build our own lives.  With growth comes new buildings next to old ones…a contrast…a comparison…can we see that type of diversity in ourselves.  If we can, we are growing.  If not, then our growth has stagnated.  If we are not growing and if we are stagnated then there are reasons for such…the key is to be aware of our growth or lack thereof.

To grow, there are times when we have to adjust what we are exposing ourselves to…meaning we may have to create experiences that may feel asymmetrical or counter-cultural…they may go completely against the grain.  But, when someone asks us what we are building our lives with, we have to be able to say something other than I am developing my life with nothing other than my life…I say, “I am using the experiences of others to construct my ideal life…for to me, my personality and my life are much more than a response to what existed before I got here”…

In essence, I don’t want to be a product of my environment…I want my environment to be a product of me…. (Got to Love Jack)!!!!

Thank You to all of my Panamanian friends…Thanks for the new building blocks…