Compassion

It's amazing the things that will invoke in you a feeling of compassion, unexpectedly doors will open that originally you would have never thought to look inside. When you do look inside your eyes are opened to perspectives you didn't know existed. In the year since I have moved to Salt Lake City my life has been changed in ways I would have never expected before, and my eyes have been opened to concepts that I had never contemplated. I don't savor every memory I have made here, but I know every one of them can build me making me stronger for my future, even the things that I wish I could lock away. I have made decisions I haven't been proud of and I have made others that I know I will be grateful for, for the rest of my life.
But one of the greatest lessons I have learned is compassion, the desire to understand those who seem impossible to understand. I have learned to try to see that everyone does things for a reason, and chances are the reasons are more noble that we may first assume.
Humans are born with innate desire to love, and almost every persons actions are built in some way or another around that desire. When people lash out usually it's because they have been denied of that which is most essential to their life: Love. I don't know exactly what I have blind to all this time, but I have realized just how much people need to be loved, and how much people need to be excepted and supported, sometimes all people need is one person to believe in them for them to take flight.
I have also learned however that you should never allow yourself to be controlled or manipulated because you think that will show someone that they are cared for and loved. You never have to do that! You are less able to love yourself and in turn love others when you are controlled by others and circumstances. Love is not love unless it is accompanied by freedom, becoming a slave to someone else's desires is never a sign of love, it's a sign of selfishness.
It's hard finding a balance and as beings of passion we more often than not tend to go to the extremes in what we do. But I am truly understanding that it is by the small and simple things that great things are brought to pass. It is through small and simple acts that the greatest signs of love are reflected. In time I know our thoughts become our actions and I hope that regardless of my past, my thoughts will become the strength behind my actions.

Intertwined

Our lives are intertwined, who are we to say and determine where one life ends and another begins? Every life in some way flows into another, every life affects another in some significant way. No life is singly lived, or ever should be. Our lives are like a tapestry each thread woven into another, and each life part of a bigger picture. The minute you start clipping strings, and ripping threads you start loosing the bigger picture and things start to fall apart. We need each of those around us for the larger picture to be meaningful. And to attempt to live life singly and separated from those around us leaves life meaningless, with little color and in pieces.
~Carrie Cox

Human Complexity

Human complexity is something that over the last little while of my life I have been observing, and analyzing. People aren't just one soul of simple purpose and meaning, but I'm starting to realize that they are hundreds of pieces of all of the souls that have contributed to who they are. The reason that it is impossible for us as mortals to judge anyone is because there is so much complexity to each individual and the moments to their life than we can ever understand. Like a detailed painting we each have strokes of all of the colors of life, which colors we focus on is up to us, but the colors are still there.
There are so many complex emotions within each individual that it is impossible to make a judgement of character just based on one encounter, but's only after a life of encounter that you begin to even glimpse the depth to who someone is. It takes tears and laughter and awkward silence and moments of comfortable flowing conversation, silent communication across the room knowing your both saying the same thing in your hearts. Some communication isn't even described with words but with the emotion you feel in someone presence.
There is so much to people that goes unknown, but I do believe there is no such thing as an all good person, or an all bad one, there are tiny pieces of good in the worst of people, and there is a tug of temptation even in the strongest people. And everyone has moments of weakness when they become the thing they fear the most, even if only for a moment, whether or not they stay that way is completely up to them. But I know that I cannot judge someone based on that moment of weakness, because I have the same capability to fall the same distance if I am to proud to take note of the path I choose to walk on.
People are capable of giving love if only someone will take the time to show them they love there is to give. You can not judge the loveless soul that was never taught to love, especially if we are just another person denying them of that love. I don't always understand people and I won't pretend that I do, but what I do know is that it's the tiny and unnoticed details that make the most breathtaking pictures. And I believe that people are the same