Cynic

You could say that a cynic is ostensibly a disappointed idealist.

They were optimistic starting out in life but were burned enough times such that their positivity melted into resignation that says "there is no point in getting one's hopes up" 

As we get older we have had our share of deception and it's very tempting to feel deep disappointment. I work on the balance point between my knowledge of human nature and the acknowledgement that fortunately it also produces the besr of us. 

In that sense I don't consider myself a cynic but instead a person who recognizes what's coming from a long distance by virtue of my life experience. 

I don't hold out false hope but neither do I dismiss things in advance before knowing what I am facing and give the benefit of the doubt first. 

Experience doesn't need to breed cynicism but that doesn't mean we don't burn off a naiveté which doesn't serve us well at all in this life.

You've met just one

I don't follow Ray Williams and his retransition but when a short pops up on my feed I click on it. 

His insistence that AGP (as part of the Blanchard taxonomy) is responsible for his transition path is interesting because instead of focusing primarily on personal wellness and wholeness it seems he is looking for solace by being categorized as a typology. 

I find it tips his hand by saying "I am doing something I cannot help" rather than stating "I am moving towards affirming my identity" which is very telling.

I don't criticize his decision and his motivation is his own only that he is just feeding into the hands of gender criticals who want sexual dysfunction to be a significant aspect of the "trans ideology". 

Imagine if we spent all our time looking at human dysfunction and variability as a whole (which is plentiful to a point I had dared not imagine when younger) so we could take aim at groupings of people for eradication. 

Human beings are highly complex and cannot be readily put into boxes. This variability ends up in every facet of what constitutes us which means when you meet a person you have met precisely one person and not a typology.

Normalcy

At the Whitehouse correspondent dinner, Trump spoke incoherently for over an hour berating people and generally being the humorless and loathsome moron we've come to expect. 

Everyone has had enough of him except the minority of Americans who are unreachable. We even have some of those here in Canada. 

This dinner is supposed to be a celebration of the 1st ammendment where in the past some good natured ribbing could be had at the president's expense.

However these are different times. 

The WSJ reporters win an award for exposing Trump ties to the child molester Epstein and, in a moment worthy a Twilight Zone episode, the winners shake the hand of the criminal president who must think by now he is untouchable for all the escaping from the law he has managed. 

Slurring his way incomprehensibly through speeches has become routine and Americans must be desensitized after 10 years of this. It's become strangely normal to have an incompetent fool at the helm. 

There was a time where country was placed over party and, despite the imperfection of political systems, people on the whole felt a sense of normalcy that no longer exists. 

Every previous president looks almost like a star by comparison. Yes, even Bedtime for Bonzo and "My Pet Goat" Dubbya.

The dangling participle

I don't recall which scientist said the following: 

"I'd rather have questions unanswered than see answers go unquestioned" 

People love certainty which allows them to sleep at night however it has the opposite effect on me. I am very comfortable with uncertainty especially if not all the dots line up. My science background won't allow me to invest in fallacy. 

When I first started blogging I took interest in theories that made conclusions about transgender people without having enough conclusive data and would have necessitated mind reading skills to resolve. 

I therefore concluded that bias was being baked in for nefarious reasons rather than be in favour of leaving things with some degree of uncertainty. 

Most world religions rely on certainty. People are given their marching papers with a set of instructions and then the brain is shut off. There is no further need to explore any nagging questions. 

If you are comfortable with uncertainty I laud you because it means you have left room for critical thinking and reasonable doubt.

You don't mind that you may be dealing with (to borrow a phrase from grammar) a dangling participle.

Don't overthink it

When you live full time one of the challenges can become balancing your masculine and feminine energies which everyone possesses. 

You are no longer wearing a masculine mask for the world and then saving up your femininity for opportune openings. This requires a deliberate reflection but one which need not involve too much stress. 

If you are transgender you will already possess feminine energy only that it may have been forced underground or entirely suppressed for perhaps years. This would certainly be the case if you are older and coming out later in life as I did. 

I no longer need to overthink things but for a while I was self conscious as to how I was being perceived. Over time however you blend yourself into one entity that has a range of behaviour and moods like anyone else. 

It becomes second nature. 

Today I had coffee with Angela who is a few years younger and doesn't know I am transgender and I found myself thinking about how far I had come in my letting go of self analysis. 

She told me she's never seen me so calm and chill which I feel is both a reflection of having retired plus grown into myself as a trans person. 

It can take a while to achieve this but the key is to have confidence that people will see the real you since you know perfectly well it's not an act. 

In other words, there's no point in worrying about what's always naturally been there.

You simply allow it to shine through.

Exclusivity

Human beings are strange. 

We create definitions through exclusivity so we can restrict others. If you belong to a tribe the idea is to make sure others don't belong. 

Find any grouping in society and you are guaranteed to find policing watchdogs to restrict belonging. This is because humans operate out of fear rather than the idea of inclusiveness. 

The people I have most admired in my life were intelligent, sincere, confident and kind. These are traits that discourage fear and insecurity which meant they also didn't feel compelled to seek safety within a group that didn't share their value system. 

Many people live their lives scared to death which ends up infringing on their personal growth. They might join a group for safety where they can look down on others and find false confidence in doing so.

They find comfort with the rest of the fearful.

Damage

We are all born clean slates but then we become somehow damaged. We have parents who were themselves damaged and we live in a damaged society. 

We learn early on that the world is far from pristine. 

There isn't really an antidote for this but countless poets, philosophers, gurus, psychiatrists and playwrights have tried to find answers to what ails us and how to fix it. 

It appears that the imperfection is baked in under the guise of what we think is free will and the natural entropy of the universe. 

We cannot repair the world but we can repair ourselves to a point. We can learn to process the damage we've been exposed to and put context to it. 

We can understand that some if not most came from the wounds of others.

Playbook

The playbook has been repeated many times. A leader takes over a party and hollows it from the inside out. He demands loyalty and anyone who doesn't agree gets thrown overboard. 

Republicans will eventually no longer exist as a party and, as part of a US reset, another party free of Trump stench will take its place. 

You cannot have a political entity act as cult of personality because you have effectively created what the US was originally founded on: to escape the control of a monarch. 

The GOP no longer creates policy, they simply are a legion of whiny and vindictive moaners trying to derail social progress as a vengeance on what they call "woke culture". They do this while genuflecting before a leader whose tantrums they deeply fear.

The damage Trump has caused is so severe and the anger so pronounced among millions of Americans, that they will never vote GOP again. 

Well deserved.

WTF?

If you make the mistake of placing bets on humans having high intelligence, you will lose money every time..

10 times over

If I repeated the word psychology to you 10 times over it still wouldn't be enough to convey and emphasize its importance in our lives. 

Our success around grappling with issues and conflicts depends on it. Who we think we are revolves around it completely. 

When I was young my life was centered around immature psychology. I hadn't lived long enough to separate problems into order of importance and to analyze the world properly into what was pivotal versus trivial social invention. 

Needless to say, dramas were created out of nothing. As an example, walking in a mall dressed in feminine clothing as a young person was a gauntlet which now makes me laugh in retrospect. What I was wearing at the time was completely trivial.

What changed was my psychology and nothing else. 

We cannot wait to be permitted by society to do something because it often operates by irrational concensus. People do what they think is allowed and even then desperately copy in hopes of being accepted by the herd. 

Our work is about societal detachment, self-respect, kindness and critical thinking. 

All of it is contained in psychology.

The other cheek

The Christian message says to love your neighbor and even those who persecute you which is a tremendous challenge. 

Turning the other cheek is probably the hardest thing we are asked to bear. It's certainly a difficult one for me. 

As I got older my cynicism increased but so did my ability to see behind facades and into people's suffering. Life isn't easy and many take the road of aggression as a short cut to temporarily alleviate their pain. 

It doesn't work but for a time they can feel superior to someone else. 

If we recognize this we can be empathetic and not take glee in their suffering. 

Trump voters are finding this out the hard way and there's no point rubbing their faces in it for some may still draw a lesson from it.