Things I Know To Be True

Things I Know To Be True
A Beamer Legacy

Forward: What follows are a few pieces of wisdom that I hope to pass on to my sons, now 10 and 16. May they be wiser men then their old man.


1: Know Your Self

Know your self. Everything in your life, every hard decision you have to make, ever piece of anger, every burden, all your guilts. They all can be solved by knowing yourself.

Everything starts with knowing yourself.

Everything ends with knowing yourself.

How? Question your motivations, the drivers, the hidden reason for why you do what you do.

Ask yourself "why do I do this", ask it often. Ask this of even the mundane things in life. Ask yourself why.

Why do you prefer chicken over meat?

Why are you a night owl?

Why do you laugh?

Why are you angry?

Why are you confused?

Why...ask it of everything.

Never accept your initial answer. Never. It is always wrong.

You first reaction is why everyone else does it. Or why you were told to do it, or why you fooled yourself into doing it. It is never the real reason.

Dig deep. Drill into the thoughts behind the why. You see the mind is a tricky beast. A tricky, devious, silver tongued devil who will give you many reasonable falsehoods. Do not be deceived. You will know when you have hit on the truth. I always know when I have hit upon the truth, my heart hurts, tears well into my eyes, I stand shocked for an instant. The truth of why we do even the smallest of things is powerful.

Now, here is the greatest "trick". Never condemn and never applaud your conclusions.

It is your sole task to understand and accept why you do what you do. That is it.

This is difficult to understand so read carefully. The moment you condemn, the instant you applaud, you assume that you have found the correct answer. But you have not. Yet by your joy or hate you have made it harder to search.

DO NOT JUDGE

Accept it as being what it is. It is only a force that caused you to move in a certain direction. Like the strong wind, it encourages you to turn left, but you still have the option to turn right.

Here is a simple example:

Why do I sleep in late?
Because I am tired in the morning.

Why are you tired?
Because I stay up late.

Why do you stay up late?
Because this is the time when I am not distracted and I can do things I want to do.

What are the things you want to do?
Watch TV and drink beer.

Why do you watch TV and drink beer?
To escape from the reality of my life

It's at this point that one must stop and enter acceptance. This is you, this is the reason that you sleep late.

Do not attempt to change this. Accept it. Remember it.

Think upon it many times for mere seconds throughout your day.

Tell yourself, I now know why I like to sleep in late...It's cause I want to escape my reality.

This is the start of knowing yourself.

As a side note, if you do all that I have said, a strange thing will happen.

Because you KNOW the why, because you spent time pondering it, it becomes a FOCUS for you.

Over the next few nights as you sit in front of the TV drinking beer, something will be stirring deep inside of you and it will whisper..."What am I running from? Can I do better".

This is normal, this is the process. This is being self aware.

Be aware, you will never be done knowing yourself. We are in a constant state of mental fluidiness.

Your reasoning and logic in the heat of anger is much different than that in the midst of ecstasy. You are constantly changing.

You can't help but change and with each change comes the need to re-learn yourself.

I've given you a key and shown you the door. Your job is to find the courage to open it.