life is a bowl of soup.

On the surface, living ethically is a brain stem driven exercise in learning what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is evil. We learn this as children. Crisp and clear cut, they lean heavily in favour of compassionate morality.  What could be simpler than knowing what is compassionate and what is moral?  A five year old can tell you what you're allowed to do and what you're not allowed to do.  Be kind to others.  Share your stuff.  Don't be a bully. You're no more special than anyone else.  Everybody is beautiful. You can't have your cake and eat it too, unless it's your birthday. 

Ethics are easy to live by.  The Ten Commandments lay it all out for us to follow.  There are policies and rules to guide us in our workplaces, and laws that structure our communities.  When we stumble a little in our early learning, trying to know just how to act, all we have to do is fall back on our inherent  conscience and bingo!  We know the direction we must go.  With all of what has been scribed and legislated combined with what we have been taught in church, in our homes, in our schools, we shouldn't have any problems whatsoever in knowing right from wrong. Right? What's so brain taxing about that? Duh! Hardly even a blip on our cerebral map.

Oh, if it could only be that easy......... would life be much easier if we could carry on as robotic entities living within this framework?  On the other hand..........................

The very presence of ethics creates an atmosphere of discomfort.  They tax our thinking and put a dent in our hearts.  They stretch us with their slippery fluidity and force us OUT of our little head huts into the fire.  What I believe and try to live by may be a completely different set of rules than what another holds onto.  When you really consider the whole essence of ethics, aren't they the fuel of all conflict?

Ethics can make you.....Debate, Investigate, Contemplate, Instigate, Hesitate, Formulate, Confiscate, Prostrate, Perambulate, Frustrate....

They can be, Inspiring, Tiring, Fortifying, Terrifying, Testifying, Conspiring.....

They can leave you in a pot of soup desperately trying to figure out which way is the way out of the pot.  So much of life is a simmery mixture of choices and values we initially learn as children as the clear broth of yes or no.  Reality is not like that.  Life is not like that.  Adulthood ain't like that. There are NO easy answers because the dilemmas formulated from the crossroad questions, we quickly learn that life is a complication.    We try to grapple with the issues which begin to boil over with storms of controversy, and realize quickly that we become stretched to the max as we figure out just how to stop stirring the pot.  

I can't believe how complicated relationships become.......... and it seems to me that instead of working towards a way of communicating with love and compassion, that we choose to add more spices to the pot and keep stirring and stirring and stirring.  Ethics and what we believe in fuel our lives, but they are never ever without controversy. 

As much as I would love to live a life of simplicity, where there is not clutter of emotional insanity, where I can live with a semblance of orderly ethical beliefs, life is simply not like that.  If I'm honest about it?  If things were laid out in colour coordinated folded linen like you see in a Martha Stewart magazine, I'd probably sneak into the photo shoot and mess it up.  Having said that........................ there are certain rules I will abide by...........

Be kind to others. Share your stuff. Don't be a bully. You're no more special than anyone else. Everybody is beautiful. You can't have your cake and eat it too, unless it's your birthday.  And, don't mess with a good thing.