Greetings people!! I hope the New Year is bringing you happiness and fulfillment so far! If not then maybe there is a way to let 2017 bring you happiness more so than 2016 did.

If you follow social media and/or mainstream media you’ve no doubt heard that 2016 was considered by many to be “the worst year ever.” It seems half of the country is walking around with their feelings upset and in a state of contempt at the many things that happened last year. The election of Donald Trump seems to be up on the top of the list of the things that make so many ready to pack their bags and move across the borders. Why is that? Why are so many people up in arms about the election of DJT to the presidency?

The 8 year term of President Obama arguably brought the progressive liberal movement further in this country than any other president before him. There were so many strides in bringing equality to the American people these past years that with the election of Trump, many progressive liberals are up in arms that they will lose everything they fought so hard to bring about. I heard President Obama say in an interview just last week that he thinks racial relations are better than at any other time in American history? Do you believe that? It’s kind of hard to believe that with the bombardment of stories that come out of mainstream media with cop killings and just last week 4 black youths binding and beating a white man, that racial relations are better than ever before. But before this post takes a complete political vibe I’m going to stop right there and point out some things that should be obvious to everyone.

People are different. So many people want to be unique from everyone else. This desire alone should be enough to point out that people are their own individuals and differ from those around them. No matter what culture your family tree derives from, the ancestors and people in those trees differ in many ways from other cultures around them. I’ll point out some of the more obvious ways that cultures differ from one another.

Hispanic cultures share a propensity to be very religious and hold strong to their mostly Catholic beliefs. They share a love for brown rice, shredded meats, flour tortilla breads etc.

Asian cultures share a propensity to come from a totally different religious background and then there is a large difference of religious beliefs among the Asian people themselves. In Japan the largest religious beliefs come from the teachings of two different religions. Shinto and Buddhism. Shinto is as old as the Japanese culture itself while Buddhism was brought in from Southeast Asia many centuries ago. And yet in Japan these two religions co-exist very peacefully. Now across the Sea of Japan off the southern end of the country is China. China has different religious beliefs stemming from Taoism, Confucianism and again we see Buddhism in there as well. Bottom line is we see a fair amount of diversity within the Asian culture itself and I didn’t even point out the countries of Vietnam, Korea, Indonesia etc.

Next we move to the southern end of Asia and into the Middle East where we find more cultures of people. In India we have the birthplace of two more major religions. Sikhism and Hinduism. Move a little further to the West and now we get to one of the fastest growing religions in the world Islam.

Now I don’t want to get into a geography in anthropology lesson so I’ll stop right there. I didn’t even get into the diversity of Caucasian and African-American cultures. So to say the least we have this huge diversity of cultures from all over this planet converging right here in the United States. The U.S. is known as the “melting pot.” Our forefathers envisioned a place where all people, regardless of race or religion could live peacefully to practice their religious and cultural beliefs without persecution from government. It was meant for all these different cultures to set aside cultural differences and live peacefully along side each other. But that is pretty far from what the mainstream media is perpetuating right now when day after day we hear nothing but negative stories about hate crimes going on around us. How are we to peacefully coexist when the only things we see, hear or read about are cultural hate crimes happening over and over again?

This is the great conundrum happening. We want to hold true to our cultural beliefs and yet still live along side each other. If you’re of Hispanic decent you are meant to be proud of your ancestry and celebrate it. If you’re of Asian decent again you are meant to be proud and hold on to your beliefs. The same is true for every other culture on the planet except one here in the United States. I know as soon as you read that last sentence a large majority of people just cringed when the culture of people I’m talking about came to your mind. The Caucasian culture. Or better known as “White” culture. Right now in our time if you show pride of your Caucasian heritage you are under attack from many other of the other cultures and you are immediately thrown a label on yourself. “Racist.” No other culture can openly show pride in their ancestry and be given this label. Again before I get into a whole other topic I’m going to stop right there.

It has been put out in alternative news agencies that there is a tactic being waged in America that is bringing about the fall of our entire governmental foundations. It is called “Divide and Conquer.” Many people believe that the wealthiest people on the planet are trying to unify the globe and bring about a “New World Order” where one set of rules and laws will apply to the entire planet. Of course the people that believe this are given another label with a stigma attached to it. “Conspiracy Theorist.” And now the Alternative news agencies that are showing evidence of this divide and conquer strategy are being given another label in mainstream media and you’ve been hearing this label come down from the President himself. The label being given is “false news.” or “fake news” agencies. They are attaching another stigma to any agency that reports anything other that what mainstream media is reporting. over 90% of all media in America is under control of just 6 corporations. Just 25 years ago there were over 200. When everything you see, hear or read about is under the control of the wealthiest people on the planet, you can see it isn’t hard to come to the conclusion we can easily be manipulated into a group think. Whether this is true or not is not what I’m discussing in this post today. Truth is a matter of perspective and I already had a post about that in this blog. Refer to This post if you’d like to read that.

So with everything I’ve pointed out today, how can we live a life of happiness and joy? Well the easiest way to do this is to lower your expectations of everyone around you. The easiest way to be upset, hurt or let down by another person or even yourself is if your expectations of everyone else or yourself is too high. Think about it, how many times has someone you know directly or indirectly let you down over and over again? If this constant let down is repeating itself then I’d like to point out that maybe your expectations are a little too high. Why live your life in a state of constant let down when all you have to do is not expect things to be a certain way or fit into a criteria that yourself or someone else has made? There is a loose definition of the word insanity  that simply says: “Insanity is repeating the same action over and over but expecting a different result.”  So you go to the refrigerator to look for that leftover piece of pie you know you put in the back but you can’t see it because the light burned out. You close the door and open it again expecting that the light will come back on. It doesn’t so you repeat this over and over again but nothing changes. That is insanity. The same concept is held true when your expectations of other people’s behavior is not meeting your expectations. You’re never going to change another persons behavior especially if it’s a person you don’t directly know. So why in the world are you going to let yourself be let down by this person, event or situation over and over again when all you have to do is lower your expectations of the person, event or situation?

When you go out into public and are trying to enter or exit a building and the person in front of you isn’t holding the door open and this is starting to upset you? Then why are you letting it upset you? How many times does someone or something have to upset you before you just lower your expectations? Before you go out into public again and think, “I’m going to go to the store and someone better hold that damn door open for me today,” why not just expect that nobody is going to do it? This scenario can be applied to so many things in our lives. Instead of getting all hurt and emotional that so many people wanted Hillary Clinton to win the presidency and are upset about her not winning, how about excepting the fact that people wanted her to in the first place? Same thing goes on the flip side of this. Instead of getting so upset that so many people are showing their pleasure at Trump winning and talking about it on social media and public, why not just expect that fact that people wanted him to win? Are you sitting at your computer and about to log into facebook and thinking to yourself before you do it, “So help me if I see another pro Trump post I’m going to lose it!”  If you go into facebook ready to get riled up for seeing a pro Trump post then you’re in for instant displeasure. It’s going to happen and you can do NOTHING to stop it. But you can do something to soften it. Expect it to happen. To expect everyone to be Democrat or expect everyone to be Republican or any other party affiliation they may hold, is expecting too much. Lower your expectations of others and you won’t be so let down. This is easy to control. It will take practice to change a behavior you already have but you will get it if you keep working at it. And above all else, expect yourself to stumble in your thinking every now and then.

I’d like to go back for a moment to something I said in the beginning of this post. I pointed out that President Obama’s term in office has brought about more equality in the US than any other President before him. Think about the strides in marriage equality and the influx of Islamic culture and building of mosques all over the US. All the while we have all this diversity trying to be melded into one. Do you see why maybe, just maybe we have all this tension in America today? With so much diversity around us in this country are you really all that surprised that there is also tension along with it?

Do you know why stew is delicious? It’s the diversity of all the different ingredients that make it so good. The chunks of beef, the carrots, the celery, the potatoes, all the different things that make it so good. But what happens when you add more and more ingredients? You see eventually you’ll get to a point that you have so many different things in your stew it now becomes a compost pile of food and is no longer delicious and is now garbage. You’ve added so many different things you’ve just created a trash pot full of diversity. Diversity can be good but too much creates a problem.

Do you see where I’m going in this post? I went into some detail about the diversity of all the different cultures that have descended upon the United States. Every culture is different in their beliefs, traditions and thoughts. Why are you getting so upset that they aren’t fitting into your mold? It should be celebrated that there is diversity. If you believe that every culture should have the same thought process, belief system or customs then you’re in for instant let down.  You are NEVER going to change thousands of years of ancestry and customs in your lifetime. IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN. I said it should be celebrated that there is diversity because to think otherwise is an open door for expectations not to be met. The easiest way to change something doesn’t come from doing it. It comes from how you expect it to be done. If you want change, do it from within. Stop expecting others to fit into your mold. Nemaste people.

Until next time…..