Knowledge that matters?  Well that's right.  The kind of stuff you don't learn in school, the things that will really matter in your life, the kind of knowledge that actually makes the world a better place.  I do have kind of a lot to say this time, although I hope you listen and learn something.  I'm going to try and keep this as coherent as possible, by tying my topics into each other.



LOVE
First off and most important, everyone needs love.  Everyone deserves love as well, and people always strive to do things that will make people love them.  Partly this is because unconditional love is horrifyingly rare, and people don't love themselves as a result, feeling the need to do these things to fulfill themselves or others.  Also this is because people are basically good and want to love each other and themselves.  As a person who had just about become "evil", I can truly say that people are basically always doing what they think is best.  Best for themselves, best for others, people are always doing the best they know how.   Even if it is in a counter-intuitive warped way.  

It's about time people started learning new ways to love each other.  People are happy when they love themselves.  Leading from that, loving others helps you to love yourself, therefore being happy.  Love and the need for love is the driving source and power of every habit, behavior, and possibly thought of every living soul.  People, especially family, should all love each other unconditionally.  That means no more being judgemental of others.  People should listen to each other, and be understanding, empathetic, and do their best to care for each other.  



LISTENING
That brings me to my next thing, which I said I would have an entry about a while back.  It's listening.  Listening is very possibly the best way to show caring towards another person.  If anyone learns anything from this, I hope it's how to listen, so you can properly love someone.  I'm going to make this as complete as I can.  This could be seen more as a way to prevent mistakes of communication, rather than a step-by-step guide to communicating.  

1. Be objective.  Clear your expectations and opinions away before you interpret any information.  Otherwise you will judge the person by your standards, and skew your judgement and outcome.  Every single person has gone through different experiences and learned from them differently and in different ways.  No one person is better or worse than another.  Everyone has been through hardships and can learn from anybody else.  Every single problem is unique because of the context in a person's whole life.  Never assume you know more about the problem than the other person until you truly understand and empathize with the problem in it's entirety.  Never, ever, try to force your standards or opinions upon another person.  Both are selfish, disrespectful, and rude.

2. Take in information.  Think about what the situation is.  Make sure to keep being objective. What things the other person is going through, and implications of them.  Try to figure out and agree with the other person, what is causing the problem, what the source is.  Know the circumstances surrounding the things that anyone does.  People do things for a reason.  Make sure you accurately gauge the problem and it's importance to the person, and why.  Never decide why something is important to someone else.  That will make you act like an asshole.

3. Focus.  Let the other person say what they would like to say.  Interrupting is also extremely rude and disrespectful, and shows that you aren't listening or caring about the other person.  You can't even listen to the other person if you are just busy thinking about what you are going to say next.  At that point you would no longer be a listening, understanding, or caring person.

4. Wait.  Hold in your reactions and thoughts on the matter until you are absolutely sure you understand and empathize all of the things going on.  It's much like being a good doctor.  Don't prescribe solutions until you understand the problem.  Otherwise you risk preaching or giving out bad solutions, much like a bad doctor.  Doing that to loved ones is something people should be especially careful of.  

5. Empathize.  Know how the other person feels about this.  And respect their feelings.  Try to understand why they feel this way, how and why they came to where they are now, and what they are doing now.  It's not enough to just know what's going on.  Understand what the issue makes them feel, and come to an agreement on why.  Don't try to compare their feelings with your own, because you are not having the same experiences as them.  That will make you be insensitive towards them.  Make sure that their feelings are your absolute top priority.  This is the way to being caring.

6. Understand.  The best way to do this is by asking questions, to make sure you are absolutely clear on everything.  If you can understand the other person, and feel the same way they do, and understand why they feel the way they do, then you really know what the problem is.  You don't really know what the problem is, if you can't even agree what the other person's feelings are, and what the circumstances are that are causing and surrounding it are.  Confirm with the other person that you are understanding the same problem.  Make sure everything makes sense to the both of you.

7. Purpose.  Understand why the person is trying to communicate this with you.  They may just be venting, or it could be something they need your help to change.  Try to understand what the person wants from you and this discussion.  Do your best to help in the way that the person needs and wants from you.  What the other person wants is extremely important.  Not respecting this will doom you to failing to ever solve the problem, and will probably make things worse.

8. Support.  Let the person know that you support them and love them wholeheartedly.  Make sure they feel like you are listening throughout the conversation.  A good way to do this is by asking questions, or by giving small feedback (just to show you understand, not what you think, remember #3 and #4), as in just showing them that you're paying attention.  Be reassuring to show that you care about this person.  People need assurance and love from others.  If you think you have anything to say that could genuinely help them feel better about solving the problem, it would be a great thing to offer up.  The point of this is to help the person feel more able to solve or come to terms with the problem.



TRYING
I believe it was Yoda who said, "Do or do not.  There is no try."  Of course, this was said on a planet made entirely of swamps, where he lived as the only person on the entire planet, living in hiding after a little oversight of his probably got every single jedi in existence killed.  I could go on about how the whole star wars tragedy could have been prevented with minimal communication skills, but it's fiction anyways, and I hate to leave out anyone who isn't star wars savvy.  

I don't see many genuine quotes.  Perhaps "A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought." would be best left.  If you absolutely have to have one, it should be "Always try."  Always try.  It's all anyone can do, and all anyone ever does is try their best.  Never doubt yourself or let fear get in the way of trying, ever.  If you try and fail, it doesn't mean you didn't do anything, like many people take the whole Yoda thing.  

It's important to listen to yourself.  Ignoring yourself, basically amounting to denial, will only every make everything worse, and will never stop until you stop doing it.  Only this way will you find your own problems, to be able to solve them.  Think about your problems, and your feelings, and try to solve them much the same way you listen to another's problem.  Always ask yourself why, why something is happening to you, why you feel the way you do, why you came to the way that you feel, only by such questioning can you really solve the mysteries of your heart and find the source of your problems.  Then you must try the hardest that you can.

If you've failed and tried, you've accomplished a thousand times more than you ever could have by not trying.  Learn from your mistake and move on, don't feel bad for it, know that you did your best at the time, don't feel bad for your best not being good enough, just pick up the experience and get on with your life, try again so you can do what you want to get done, and know that your best will be ever better than if you stop now.   Then you'll really have tried, and done everything you could.  More importantly you'll get the things you want done in your life.  And you'll be happy, being able to really make peace with your failures, and to do the things that make you and others happy.  Because like I said before, you deserve to be happy, and to be loved, no matter what happens or what anyone or anything tells you, including the part of you that reflects these outside things.



KNOWLEDGE
So what knowledge matters?  Like I said before, I believe it's the things that make the world a better place, that make people happier.  That make life better.  Realizing problems and working to solve them.  Contemporarily this is called wisdom, although there is much confusion over what wisdom and knowledge and intellegence all actually amount to.  

What knowledge is valued as these days, quite honestly, disgusts me.  History has become a sham in particular.  No longer do we value the lessons of the past, to learn from the mistakes of the ancients to avoid being doomed to repeat them.  History has become a collection of dates and the ceremonial festival of the supposed triumph of the perfection humankind.  We know of some things that have happened in history.  Never do we stop to think and figure out why they happened, what went wrong where, and how to prevent further tragedy.  Because that's what human history has become comprised of.  The parade of humanity's supposed triumphs of the problems they themselves caused.



SOCIETY
School has become a factory in which trivial knowledge, meaningless work, and cultural divides are conditioned into young america, through simple rewards and punishments.  Very many people in the world today work in this way, slaving away, destroying themselves, because they want to be accepted, because they want people to love them and praise them.  Otherwise you are punished, outcast from the family, shamed, hated, and ignored.  This continues throughout life, the free products of your being conditioned into working at an unfulfilling and completely self-sacrificing job being considered the fruition of society.  The supposed progress of the happiness of mankind.

This has to stop.  Slavery for love and acceptance, to me, is unacceptable.  People need to start caring about each other, regardless of beliefs or deed.  Love is the only way to solve any problems.  It is my strongest belief that any problem can be solved with love.  This is what love conquers all should really amount to.  It's about time people started acting on it.



WISDOM
So what is wisdom exactly?  Wisdom is what you learn from life.  Life's experience.  Your maturity.  Being older does not lend to wisdom, life experience, or maturity, if you do not take the time to learn from the things happening in your life.  To try and understand and learn from the things in your life.  Many people do not, and can go their entire lives doing such.  Learning from problems is one of the main things people lack.

Here in america, it is dismally rare for people to learn about what is happening around them.   To search out information themselves, read the news from different sources, to make problems known and to hear them out in general.   Many americans will never know what problems are surrounding them, affecting them, and what the source of any of them are.  It inevitably leads to us not being able to solve any of our problems.  Many countries look down on america for our ignorance of the world and our magical thinking.  Ignoring and rationalizing and justifying problems that should not even exist, rather than letting them be known as they should be.  People feeling bad and being self-conscious about having problems, rather than presenting them to be fixed and helped as they should be.  Keeping us occupied and saturated by making even more problems to distract us from the important ones.  Things that should not matter, like appearance, race, age, sex, and religion, are still holding an extremely disturbing amount of peoples' attention.

People all struggling to try to be better than others so that society will love them more.  People looking down on others and becoming bitter over their own struggles, rather than learning from them and helping their own kind.  Life has become hell on earth, a horrendous war of people struggling for the love they so rightfully deserve without the need for such a fight, and the every-man-for-himself that society has become is no longer going to work for anyone.  Being a selfish asshole who refuses to listen will forever make the world a more miserable place, spreading throughout humanity and forever impeding our progress and happiness.

Wisdom is that very power.  To learn from struggles and failures, your own and others', and to rise above adversity better, happier, and more helpful than ever before.  It is what this world desperately needs to be able to overcome the adversities that we are now presented with.  Because everyone who has ever lived has tried, to try, that most important of acts, whether a failure or a triumph, no matter from what angle or problem, similar or not, we can all learn from each other and become more wise if we took the time to share, listen, and learn.



LEARNING
Learning, not math or science or trivia is what makes a person smart.  Intellegent.  Knowledgeable.  Wise.  This is what matters for life and happiness.  I am twenty years old.  I have learned the important things I know from my lover, who is maybe a year older.  We are still but wiser than many people who can never admit mistakes.  I am sure that we both wish you love, and true happiness in your life as we have found.  Think, question, and learn from everything in your life.  Never, ever stop trying, or be afraid to try, because you will always learn something no matter what happens.  And always do your best to love each other, so that humanity can become better.

    With love.
    ~The Dethy