!Empower!

I bought some old National Geographic Magazines from this used book shop in Burbank a couple weeks ago, and I was flipping through and reading some quotes from the issues and I found one at first that I didn't think much of and didn't seem relevant to myself, but the more I read it and repeated it, the more it gave me some insight into my own thinking and how I need to be even more cognizant of others' unseen pressures, and parts of their story, and their personal history.

The quote was underneath a picture of elk in plains of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. The quote: We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills, and winding streams...as "wild". Only to the white man was nature a "wilderness". -Luther Standing Bear, Ogala Chief.

It's funny cause since I was young and I wasn't raised involved too much with nature or the boyscouts or anything like that I didn't, I had almost a fear of nature when I was younger, that it was wild and that anything could be out there, man eating animals, crazy serial killers, etc. But as I've gotten older I've come to really value the peace of nature, the wonder of it all as a whole and thriving population, the stillness, the lack of preoccupation, the serenity, just seeing life in its most natural uncontrived state of life.

Seeing both sides of a subject and being able to know what it feels like to be on both sides is interesting to me, cause I for one, constantly lose sight of how I use to feel on certain subjects, because of being caught in the current place of my thinking on topics. In a way allowing that to happen creates a definite level of voluntary ignorance, to shut out knowledge of past situations and attitudes that I could at one point in my life identify with.

I need to use that and apply that to my daily life and dealings with people. People are built each uniquely based on their own personal journeys and experiences, and I need to factor those in and be empathetic to those, even if they may not be of my knowledge. I need to work on the fact that just because I don't share the same view on a subject any longer means I should disregard that concept or those who see it that way, and I def need to be more proactive on my end these ends of finding out others' stories, and understanding people's paths, because anything less would be an unfair judgment on my part.