A Kernel of Truth: Lend Me Your Ear or I'd Rather Be Restrictive Than Corny

For many years, it has continued to perplex me that people who don't know me well (and some who think they do) have charged me with being a radical restrictivist, party-pooper, kill-joy, picky, a worshipper of food (lol!) and other like unfavourable judgments based in ignorance.

Since we moved out west, this has subsided substantially as we have met many more open-minded people in the ten months we've been here than I can recall in my whole life combined. Granted my desire for such people may not have been manifest then as it is now. Anyhow, in spite of the overwhelming majority of people we meet being quite open to how others live, we still have encountered some resistance and imposition of judgment here too. Why, when we've been successively unfettering ourselves, seeking and attaining to greater planes of freedom and consciousness, are we still accused of radical restrictiveness?

*Lest any one person think this is a backlash on you personally, it isn't. As I wrote above, you would just be joining the masses of people who've concluded on the same thing about me for decades, so not to worry, you're well-supported. :)

The answer came to me for the first time this evening. I'm going to use that word that has become the unnecessary recipient of the assumption of perjorative when others hear me use it... mainstream. It is invariably mainstreamers and mainstream-wannabes who make these judgments of us and the reason is now clear to me. A mainstreamer, being predicated in his/her actions on conformity, sees others in terms of what they don't do. They lack any aspiration to take full and utterly conscious responsibility for their thoughts, actions, and life, and view someone who does as a threat to the comfortable system that affords them this sloth. I am just such a person and I threaten just that.

So what about me? What is my role in inviting such criticism? Well, as far as I can tell, I am party to my own accusations in that I haven't severed my ties entirely with people lacking consciousness in their living, so I'm an easy target. Aside from that though, I am not so accomplished in the complete shedding of mainstream's influence that I have been able to ward off such attacks on my life, character, abilities and efforts. When I've matured to that point, my presence will no longer be permeable to low criticism as I've seen that trend already in other areas of my life. In a way, my whole person, being whole, won't have any holes or spaces for intrusive or demeaning commentary, much like the soil in a healthy garden doesn't allow pests to take up residence; the presence of beneficial beings is purposed and recognised, but the absence of harmful ones is only incidental to the health of the garden.

My own perspective regarding others is the precise reason why I continue to be taken aback and surprised by the accusation of being legalistically or radically restrictive in my life. Unlike mainstreamers, I view others for what they DO, not what they don't do, because I am not concerned with conformity or the perpetuity of sloth-enabling life systems. 

So when I think of people I know, I am affected and influenced and impressed with what they DO. I don't give any thought whatsoever to what they don't do unless it is obviously and insidiously negligent or dangerous. I'd notice if my friend didn't ever speak to her children, for instance, or if another didn't... I can't even think of another example because that sort of thinking is so unnecessary and unhelpful to me.

When I first began to question the mainstream, I also had a long list of what-I-don'ts. This was a natural progression from recognition of what I had previously been doing and what I wouldn't do anymore. In that transformation, it became necessary for me to switch paradigms though, to examining what I do and not focussing on what I don't do, which wouldn't allow for me to authentically change my life. Lifelong alcoholism in spite of a cessation in actually imbibing alcohol should make focus on the don't-do's an obviously ineffective strategy for change.

So initially, my list was full of what I don't do anymore, but that was years ago and I no longer even have such a list because my life is full of what I do, not what I don't. When my days and weeks and months are full of things I value, there simply isn't need or desire to consider what I don't do. The fact that upon being asked, I can answer that 'yes, we don't do that' is not a confirmation of an obsession with what I don't do. It is almost exclusively within the context of answering the mainstreamer's questions about what we don't do that I can even think of such things. In my own life and from my own perspective, I wouldn't even think of formulating such a question as that.

I want to examine some of the charges though, because this is all talk and no action so far:

Will the accused please stand. You have been charged with the worship of food and health and radical restrictivism of such of life's pleasures as edible oil whipped topping and pop tarts.

In my defense, I would like to propose a comparison and contrast of my diet and approach to health to that of the mainstream.

I will begin by introducing the foods and principles upon which my family bases decisions about what we DO eat.

We eat mostly a traditional European diet. By traditional, I mean that we use home-rendered fats from chicken, duck, bison, etc... and we cook with the bones in and use those bones to later make gelatin-rich broths that we use for gravies and sauces and stews and in place of water for cooking other foods.

We eat whole vegetables and fruits and only indulge in tropical fruits and vegetables as treats occasionally. We eat fatty unpasteurised yogurt and milk (can't find raw just yet, but hope to by next summer even if that means by having our own dairy goat or cow). We eat loads of butter. We eat whole grain breads in a very small proportion to the rest of our diet. We eat olives and home lacto-fermented sauerkraut, broccoli stems, garlic and hot peppers. I make my own cheese and we also buy some that is cultured and unpasteurised. We eat raw veggies dipped in garlic/yogurt/mustard/apple cider vinegar mixture.

We drink litres of herbal and green tea every day and eat a pound of raw, microbe-rich honey every day too. We eat this fresh-from-the-field and personally delivered from down the road  honey on our homemade baked home-ground whole oats, eggs, and raisins squares with butter served warm.

We eat eggs every morning on toast or in our oat squares. We use 6 dozen eggs each week.

Everything is as local as possible and almost always organic because there is no point in eating something that is so full of chemicals that it will take more nutrients to detoxify it than it will provide to the body. In this way, we could eat all day long and still starve, gaining lots of weight if we eat too much because our bodies are trying to conserve what little nutrition we are receiving ,or losing weight because we don't eat enough to fulfill our nutrient requirements.

So, we eat naturally cultivated, free-growing foods in their whole state, which also goes for our meat. It is all pastured (truly, not industrially) on naturally growing grasses and insects and given no antibiotics or vaccinations. The animals live according to their nature- chickens in flocks, ducks in pairs, bison in herds, etc...

To achieve this, we have to talk to a lot of people, go a lot of different places and try a lot of different ways of preparing our foods when items are not available or when there is a variation of what we expected (unlike boxed, processed foods, the earth doesn't produce cubic vegetables with uniform innards and outards by its own initiative, so we go with what we're given).

Diversity is an encompassing principle in our food acquisition. Not purposed in all ways, but definitely incidental, at least. We have a diverse experience in our eating, preparation, meeting and speaking to new and becoming familiar people, excursions we wouldn't otherwise experience to farms and homesteads along the highways of our territory, and abundantly healthy children whose ailments are healed with this diet and herbs, homoeopathy and home remedies as needed.

Now in contrast, the mainstream diet, which is the non-restricted one, remember?

Based upon my highly unscientific observations, I am going to generously presume that the average mainstreamer eats about 1-2% of his/her diet in whole, locally grown, industrial organic and truly organic foods, all being vegetable and none being from the meat category of the food pyramid.

I will generously then presume a 98% diet of variably 'value-added' (read: processed) foods that include various fruits and vegetables, raw and in boxed dinner-type meals; boneless and skinless meats along with some breaded, some seasoned, some fast-food, some in pies and burritos and other freezer 'meals.' They eat boxed crackers, cookies, confections and treats of all kinds, baked and fried and slathered with edible oil frosting and fried, flavoured, and candied nuts and cereals; breakfast cereals, jars of jams and nut butters and margarine and 'not-butter'; flavoured and sliced processed cheeses, low fat milk and fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt and canned soups and beans and 'whole wheat' and 'french' bread; 'vegetable/canola oil' for cooking. They eat cream puffs and potatoes baked and in bags for baking and frying, and salads made with mayonnaise and macaroni and coleslaw too. A package of pudding cups for the kids and a jar of baby dills and carrots sticks with dip for lunches. Who can live without a bag of Doritos and a pop on the way out of the self-check-out at the grocery store?

The meat came from animals living in deplorable conditions such that anyone witnessing this would quickly lose his or her appetite for them, but onto my point: eating corn. Cows, pigs, chicken, and even fish, all eating corn for their breakfast, lunch and dinner.

They are cut up into pieces and the 'value-added' ones are severed from the only hope that had in being nutritious- the bones, and variously prepared with CORN-DERIVED monosodium glutamate, malto-dextrine, glucose/fructose and high fructose corn syrup, regular old corn syrup and corm meal, modified corn starch and plain old corn starch, corn oil, di- and tri-glycerides, lecithin, leavening, etc... and is then wrapped in shiny corn-derived packaging with corn-based dyes emblazoned on reading 'healthy choice!'.

The chickens lay their corn-fed eggs and sometimes make new corn-developed chicks that make more corn-eating chickens to be cut up and covered by and marinated and fried in more corn.

The milk and milk products from the corn-eating cows are also corn-produced, bearing its trademark genetic C4, in case anyone doubted the presence of corn in milk.

Their veggies and fruits have been sprayed with corn-derived pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and waxed with corn-come-wax and boxed in corn-waxed boxes treated with more corn-derived chemical compounds for 'freshness'.

A quotation from The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan (to whom all credit goes for the above list of corn-derived products, which is not exhaustive by any means): “There are some forty-five thousand items in the average American Supermarket and more than a quarter of them now contain corn. This goes for the non-food items as well-...” (page 19) And this does not account for the items which are produced via corn-dependence through spray fertilizers and 'cides' of all sorts. Almost everything edible in the grocery store is a product of the constituents of corn.

Now onto the experiential part. Mainstreamers are very open and diverse in their experiences of food, right? Well, once/week they jaunt to the grocery store staring mindlessly (who wouldn't? What's to ponder?) at the shelves upon shelves of flashy boxes and cans, knocking one of them every so often into the cart, cruising the produce section for bags of apples, lathed carrot sticks and some fruit and dip combination packages, the dairy section for eggs and milk and milk products, bread and bakery- grab and toss, meats in styrofoam with no bones and fat trimmed, and then the snack aisle on the way out (was going to skip that one... oh well, what's the harm?) and waiting in line for the self-check-out, putting groceries into bags (corn) and carting them to the trunk of the car, stopping for gas (more corn) on the way home, then to the pharmacy to pick up prescriptions for the kids (and corn again), and then unloading at home only to do it again the following week.

But no matter, meal preparation is usually a snap, 20-30 minutes for dinner, tops, and lunches are packaged fruits and veggies and some cheese strings and a juice box. Breakfast, easy- cereal in low fat milk. WHY would anyone want to do more work than necessary to feed themselves and their family? So glad not to be a pioneer or in a tribe. Food preparation would take over life!

Please, PLEASE, share with me how my diet and outlook is restrictive when it consists of diversity in food, relationship, preparation, source, and health-giving qualities, when the mainstream diet consists mainly of CORN and requires pharmaceutical supplementation to allow the body to function, while no or nearly no attention is paid to the source of the food and no relationships or few are forged in the process- a complete lack of diversity- the very definition of restriction in this context?

We eat whole foods, meet the farmers who produce them, meet other conscientious eaters in little shops tucked away in the corners of the city and rural areas to obtain their wares, chat, make contacts and share common understandings, engage our children in understanding how their food comes to their plate and in the end, eat very rich, flavourful foods that few other than celebrities and the very rich enjoy nowadays as the old ways of preparing tasty food have been lost and forgotten in favour of spending more time at soccer games and eating micro-waved meals trays.

HOW, when my experience surrounding this aspect of life is so rich and diverse and open to new experiences on-going-ly, am I restrictive??? 

If refusing to be a giant walking manifestation of corn and cold-stranger-procured formed and flavoured food-like products called edible is being restrictive, then I guess I am.

I am also restrictive in my refusal to treat my children like ninny-heads who need adults to 'teach' them how to 'act' like children, and my rejection of chemical band-aids for ill-health, and general ignorance. 

I guess I am highly restrictive, but from my perspective, MY whole world is WIDE OPEN, free and full of possibilities and potential, unlimited and unhindered by fear and it's cousin: 'this is how it's done.' 

In my mind, the world (cosmically) is a gigantic sea of wondrous potential and loving possibilities and fulfillments and the mainstream exists as the tiniest speck outlying the boundary of that sea. 

If in refusing the limitations of that speck, I seem restrictive, having instead chosen the whole sea, then so be it, but I don't see myself that way. I never will. I cannot; I know too much and I'd have to kill myself if I did.

I am free, and conscious of that reality. If the manifestation of that reality in my life seems restrictive of options that fetter me with ideologies that would stand in my way to fulfilling who I am here to be, then I'll restrict with wild abandon!!!

Default to Real Life

Underlying the very non-mainstream and counter-cultural-seeming decisions that I make is a practice that few others themselves undertake to explore. Because so many issues come up on this blog and in my life where my decisions seem rebellious or unnecessarily difficult to others, I thought it might be helpful to share the philosophical process in short-form that I use to determine my course.

When a question arises, I immediately default to another set of questions which form the foundation for my philosophical examination. These questions are the following:

1. What is the anthropologically established norm (AEN)?

2. Does this conform to the anthropologically established norm?

3. Is it beneficial, as in does it meet authentic needs?

4. Is it personally beneficial, as in does it meet needs in the way that the person for which this is being considered will appreciate?

5. Does it improve upon the anthropologically established norm? (I've NEVER seen this occur that something outside of the anthropologically established norm leads to true progress, so it is a theoretical question that I keep for the purpose of allowing for a missed understanding on my part)

Some definitions are probably helpful to others who don't know the particulars of my loaded questions.

'Anthropologically established' means that human beings are observably built for and have predispositions that anticipate the meeting of such needs as are also observable. These needs are not limited to but include aspects of the human being that we would label physical, emotional, spiritual, mental, intellectual, instinctual, creative, expressional, etc... So, it is a wholistic evaluation of the needs and expressions (also evaluated through needs assessment), which is always open to expressed needs according to timing and maturation, circumstances, etc...

It is my macrocosmic view of a microcosmic organism relative to the universe. It is primarily an intuitive and instinctual assessment that I confirm through study, and not the other way around, which would obviously completely defeat the definition if it were reversed that way. Abstract enough? I'll run a test demonstration later in this post.

'Beneficial' means that the decision would yield an affirmation of or realignment of a wayward quality according to the AEN.

'Authentic need' means that the need is established as essential to the well-being and functionality of the human being within context, and that context includes the proper order of the human being- family, community, etc... Human beings have an essential need for community which is demonstrated by the qualities we possess that anticipate response- speech, creative expressions such as music, art and dance, etc...- and the more visceral utter interdependency of the human race for its survival.

'Authentic need' is distinct from 'manufactured/synthetic need' which includes things like weight-lifting shoes, which are not an authentic need, but reflect the synthetic grasping after what would otherwise be the authentic need- to use our bodies for physical work. Case in point: fire-wood collecting in the woods leaves little necessity for weight-lifting exercises at the end of the day. Can you imagine collecting straw and clay and sand all day to make bricks and then thinking, 'well, I better do some weight-lifting or my body will be weak'? So saying, weight-lifting is a synthetic substitute for an authentic situation and need, and so the shoes 'needed' to support the outsides of the feet to prevent ankle roll-overs are also a manufactured or synthetic need. This would not pass my test.

Because Sunday School is becoming and has been for over five years in my life, a hot topic, I thought I would use it as my example of how this works for me. Please understand that this is not comprehensive, so you're going to have to trust that in the past six years of my research and study, contemplation and observation, I may have already come across the accepted and mainstream defences of Sunday School's presumed merit. You'll see at least a portion of why it doesn't pass my test in the following:

What is the anthropologically established norm (AEN)?

Human beings need beneficial education.

Human beings receive beneficial education through common experience with parents first, siblings, family and bonded community members.

Human beings need to worship God.

Human beings learn continuously and are innately equipped to do so in the most efficient and beneficial ways.

Human beings worship spontaneously and are innately equipped to do so .

Does SS conform to the anthropologically established norm?

It does not provide a common experience for the parents, siblings, family and community except in retrospect. It requires the subdivision of the parents from the children and the children from their siblings in most cases and the family from the community.

It does not provide worship; this is a human expression and does not come from anything not specifically human such as a curriculum or program. Worship will happen there; worship happens everywhere and is not limited to location or activity.

It does not connect to or seamlessly coincide with and work within the natural learning rhythms of the human being, given that it is a time set apart and includes outwardly prescribed activities that the participants do not choose and may or may not be (likely not) relevant to the authentic needs of the participants.

It is like 'school' in all ways and for this reason any defence of SS is also a defence of mass schooling- both being completely outside the anthropologically established norm.

Is SS beneficial, as in does it meet authentic needs?

If it does, it is incidental and in spite of its utter inefficacy to meet the individual and communal needs of the human being. A human being's needs are met through relationship and that within family and community. SS doesn't offer either, and requires the separation of the child from the family and community as they spend their time elsewhere, excepting the 'teacher' who is not an adequate substitute for the richness of relationship that naturally occurs in a family and community. The education received under this circumstance can't be better than utterly inadequate.

Is it personally beneficial, as in does it meet needs in the way that the person for which this is being considered will appreciate?

Not authentically, but most people's manufactured needs are met in this way.

Does it improve upon the anthropologically established norm? (I've NEVER seen this occur that something outside of the anthropologically established norm leads to true progress, so it is a theoretical question that I keep for the purpose of allowing for a missed understanding on my part)

Absolutely not.

The anthropologically established norm is easily observed in the order of the human being. S/he is born from the mother whose body provides his/her nourishment and comfort, temperature regulation and heart rhythm regulation, amongst other hugely important aspects of well-being such as security through emotional and spiritual confidence and openness, etc... The child and mother are meant to be skin-to-skin as much as possible and both experience stress when this is not the norm or it has been stopped even for a few minutes. The father and siblings provide a support and network of interesting and familially/culturally relevant information and acceptance to the child.

As the child grows, s/he chooses to wander in increasing increments from his/her mother's body. The distance that occurs in every way establishes first independence in the child from the body of his mother and her direct control over his/her activities (since they do everything together initially), followed by the mature phase of the human being which is the consciousness of and contribution to interdependence. There is no phase-skipping. If the child is removed from his/her chosen incremental increase in space, the child loses the ability to learn and mature in that phase. A child who is required to separate from his/her mother will not gain independence, but survival coping strategies which are not at all the same thing. This child will not move into an understanding and maturation that is encompassed by the consciousness of interdependence until and unless s/he can pass through the phase of independence first. This doesn't ever happen out-of-order. It may take 12 or 56 or 99 years or never, but the order remains and the human being is meant to have moved through these phases in the opportune time when s/he is primed instinctually for such maturation- as in the earlier years of his/her life.

Any action of society or the surrounding community must reinforce the bond and purpose of the individual family units within its context, and where that doesn't occur, where the importance of marriage and the bonds between parent and child are not recognised as primary for the well-being and survival of the community or society, a break-down of both family and society or the community is inevitable.

What are the mechanisms by which a family is reinforced in its primary role in the nurturing of both its members and the community? Firstly, it is assumed that the family remains as a whole- nourishment, education, skill-building, socialising, creativity, play, all occur as a wholistic and integrated mechanism of the natural outflow of the family dynamic simultaneous to the contribution of the community toward the family. In other words, when the community has a party, everyone is invited, not as special thing, but as a matter of course. Nobody says 'you can bring your children' because there is no opposite, nothing that relates to the separation of children from their parents, not to mention the obvious problem with if the children were left at home, who else would be assumed to be uninvited while looking after them?

Education comes from being in the presence of parents doing real work and building real relationships with the people around them. This means that the children also learn from the other people. The potential for education is then exponential. No school of any sort can provide anything that even merits comparison to this.

Nobody learns anything of true value under constant duress, except how to cope with constant duress. That seems a sad goal for a human being of immeasurable worth and potential for love and expression such as we are. Schooling has nothing better to offer than duress, and it cannot because the essential bonds that provide the security within which the human being learns most effectively and happily are assumed to be absent and strategies for coping with this are abundant, but still woefully lacking in substance since it turns out that there is no true substitute for parents and community.

This topic for me is vast and to really give it the time and justification for the years of my life that I've spent studying it, warrants a book, so I'll leave off with a simplification of the practice that I find so useful and effective in determining the natural course for myself and my family.

When something is presented to me, my question is not 'why shouldn't I?' as is generally asked of me when I deny something mainstream, but 'why would I?' Why would I send my children to Sunday School? Why would I give them antibiotics and flush out their gut flora? Why would I force them to wear shoes? Why would I feed them boxed white flour pasta products with chemical approximations of the flavours of real food? What would the potential benefits be? Why WOULD I?

I presuppose that the human being is equipped to live a human life. I wasn't born with a disposition to receive disconnected instruction or to have my natural gut flora removed, but rather strengthened, so when I ask the same question of the naturally occurring way, I come up with the answers that make sense. I would and do eat microbe-rich foods because they keep me healthy, those microbes being interconnected with my own body within the larger living organism which is our home- earth. I would and do go barefoot because the human foot is our equipment for walking and does so superbly well. I educate my children as we walk along the road, as I go about my work, as I sit with them observing our geese's foraging habits, as we eat free-range organically-raised roasted chicken, etc... They are continually cognizant of the gift that the Lord has given us in whatever we are enjoying, and even suffering.

Default to nature, not to the mainstream. Ask questions that probe to the core, and not just to below the surface. That's not deep enough. Not even close. At least not for me.

Children and Worship (Old Article)

On July 19th, 2008, I published an article concerning children and worship.  I think it bears reviewing since the topic of Sunday School has come up as a specific concern in the article "Bad Christian".

My wife just pointed out, interestingly enough, that the terms 'children and worship' and 'Sunday School' illuminate the giant chasm between what I am concerned about in present day evangelicalism, and what evangelicalism typically offers as an answer to that concern.  And after reading the article (which is still due for its second installment), I hope that anyone interested will have a better understanding of my thoughts on children and worship and the inadequacy of Sunday School as part of the vocation of the church.

The 'Good,' the 'Bad,' and the 'Useless'

From a discussion with some radical unschoolers and pertaining to principles of 'moral relativity' and 'moral pluralism' expressed in child-rearing, and why I don't have any 'good boy's or 'good job's or 'bad' behaviour in my home (and am still neither a moral relativist nor a moral pluralist), I give you this...


I wanted to share that while I don't have an aversion to the use of the words 'good' and 'bad' in regular parlance, when I began a study of nonviolent communication, I realised that I had personal baggage relating to those words. I do have a strong moral compass, though, so navigating my language and thoughts to incorporate my values and also honour the intentions of others while still having the freedom to evaluate- well, that was a task!

What I did discover about myself is that while I am innately a creative person, I was very uncreative in the way I was viewing and expressing my evaluations. It also became clear to me that this limitation was not very helpful to my children when they were trying to solve difficulties and communicate with me and others. So, I eliminated 'good' and 'bad,' and forced myself to use more accurate words to describe my evaluations. Instead of 'bad' I used 'harmful,' 'injurious,' and also completely reframed of my view of behaviour that included much more observation, validation, and exploration of potential options- behaviours to try, empathy/sympathy with intention, etc....

Through having done this, I became more selective about what adheres to/contravenes a code of morality. In my opinion, there are very few actions that can be evaluated within a moral code- at least the one I understand. Most actions are derived of preference. I think that intention must accompany any act that directly contravenes what is moral; for instance, killing a man could be either moral or immoral depending on the intention of the one killing. I have a moral impetus to defend my children, and if that necessitated killing, I would do it and fit within the precepts of what I think is moral- even though if my intention was malicious, killing would most certainly be immoral. With this sort of thinking, it becomes much easier for *me* to evaluate what others are expressing through their actions and words, and to communicate in ways that are much clearer to everyone.

I would not do away with morality as though it were simply a matter of personal value; but I am still much more selective about what-fits-where now than I was previously. That, and it has been very freeing for me to not hold others hostage to my preferences.

It is also interesting to me how personality plays so much into how this process unfolds. I am INTJ with developed feeling (I'll spare you the unfortunate circumstances that necessitated this albeit valuable trait), and strong tendency toward extraverted judgment. My natural tendency to evaluate and 'judge' the validity of everything outside myself was crippling me and my relationships. It was necessary for me to learn the appropriate application of morality vs. preference in order for me to grow and mature, and necessary for me to take a hard line with myself (via self-evaluation, beyond my extraverted judgment) to enact the essential habit reformation.

Ds1 is like me, and has needed the same training, although in a very different way since with the knowledge I have acquired, I can make the environment so much gentler than I had as a child, and within which I had to enforce my new-found values, and he learns without shame. Ds2 and ds3 seem to need none of this because it comes to them naturally and they just tend to view themselves and others with compassion and willingness to observe (rather than judge) and participate when they feel inclined; ds2 is also an amazing 'judge' of character. Ds3 will probably need the most guidance with choosing friends because he is so willing and trusting; he'd probably believe someone who told him to come and that they wouldn't hurt him.

The interesting thing is that I don't think that I'll use the words 'good' and 'bad' to help ds3 with this since they are so vague as to not really be of use except in casual (or philosophical, lol) conversation. Certainly the concepts of what is ultimately 'good' and what is ultimately not must be clearly delineated, though, and maybe my vocabulary will end up being more graphic, and potentially more concerning than the use of such vague terms as 'good and 'bad' might be to some. Maybe I miss out on the 'short-hand' effect of those words and expose myself, or lose some, but in any case, in my commitment to change my communicative habit, I also committed to attempting to build-in understanding between people through creative vocabulary where not doing so would have rendered the point of communication useless, imo.



So Suneal, ask me how I am today, lol!