Clarity...

This won't be about machining.  This is more personal.  If you don't want to read it, that is fine.  I'll be back to machining soon.

 

Pintrest

 

I have begun to crave clarity.   I know I've mentioned it before.  Seeing clearly is such a gift.  As I've aged, my eyes have started to do what all old eyes do.  One eye has gotten better at distance, while losing near vision, and the other has done  just the opposite.  Vision changes as we get older...

Did you ever think that vision could be painful?  I had a close call last year with a detachment of the vitreous in my eye.  A big purple streak in one eye, like an arc flash, on a cloudy day while I was driving.  No reason to have that, and it lasted for well over 90 minutes.  I had two laser treatments since, as I have a family history of detachments of the retina.  Both eyes are doing well.  But those treatments were very nearly torture.  The bright flashes of a green laser and pressure on my eyeball were tough to endure.  But I still have good vision.  Clarity cost me a bit of pain.

Clarity of position this year has been quite painful too.  Seeing family members suffer without any ability to mitigate it put me in my place in January / February.  God is the only One who can mitigate that type of suffering.  Slamming headlong into my own physical weakness through the head injury was sobering.  Having family abandon me in the midst of being unable to care for myself showed me their priorities.  It also showed me that I could manage just enough to keep body and soul together, God gave me strength to do that.  I didn't have it in me to.  Having a coworker submarine me was harsh, but I needed to negotiate for myself. And I was successful, but only with God's intervention.  Watching the .gov abandon all pretense of integrity has clearly shown me that God is the only one that cares for the people under His authority.

I follow scripture as best I can understand it: "a man shall leave his father and mother, cleave to his wife, and they shall be one flesh."  I started a family, and they are all adults now.  I've had setbacks, but they have brought clarity.  Knowing where you stand is priceless.  It's painful too, but I'm not focusing on the pain.  I'm focusing on the clarity.

So, here I present something I have shamelessly borrowed.  I found my path coming close to this already.  It was oddly prescient.  Prescient: adjective, having or showing knowledge of events before they take place.

Manifesto

1. As I am a Christian and as such will continue in my Christian beliefs and expect myself to live in the confines of orthodox Biblical Christianity, seeking like minded believers.  I must never be complacent in study and reading of the Bible as it is the revealed Word of God, Himself.*
   

2. As I am an adult responsible for providing for myself, I will live, invest, and save in the expectation that no-one can or should support me.

3. As the power to tax is the power to destroy, I will do everything in my power to legally minimize the amount of taxes that I have to pay.

4. As the growth of government is the growth of the ability to control the individual and impede freedom, I will do all I legally can to slow or deny this growth.

5. As physical fitness enables all other aspects of life, I will do all in my power to maintain my body in as healthy and strong a state as I can.

6. As privacy is the ability to live one’s life free from interference and oversight, I will do all in my power to eschew public and social media attention.

7. As money is the ability to act in an economic world, I will buy only that which is needed and planned for, buy used before new where sensible and possible, and seek to use, reuse, and extend the life of all items I own as long as possible.

8. As independence from the cash and debt based economic system is the ability to act freely, I will seek minimize my needs and to provide as much of them as is possible.

9. As we have become a society which values number of contacts over the depth of those contacts and has given those contacts the right to judge the individual, I will seek to narrow my relationships to like minded individuals with whom I share an active, ongoing involvement instead those based on a distant, social media relationship or those who feel even a vague acquaintance gives them the right to judge my fitness to participate in society.

10. As as student of Holy Writ, I will seek to continue to train my body and my mind to live in harmony with the precepts of it, seeking the enlightenment that comes from truly understanding the Author of it, as He reveals Himself through the Word, in me, to affect my sphere of influence.*

     *edited

     You are reading his blog every day, right?  

     Feel free to ask how the progress is progressing.  I welcome accountability.

    To those of you who commented last year, the encouragement you gave was needed and appreciated.  I can't even tell you how much.  I'd punch you in the arm if you were standing next to me.
    

    Okay, back to normal, scheduled programming.

    

    borrowed image