This is http://www.essayz.com/a9311091.htm Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay Click HERE on this line to find essays via Your-Key-Words. {Most frequent wordstarts of each essay will be put here.} ========================================================== %LIVE LIVES LOVE JOURNEY PILGRIM PROGRESS LOVE+931109 %PLAN CONTROL SYSTEM REASON LOGIC RATIONAL PROCESS+931109 %EXPERIENCE INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS SEX MORAL TABOO+931109 %DECISION ACTION BEHAVIOR SUCCESS FAIL LEARN KNOW 931109 We live our lives as journeys in one, two, three or multi-dimensional spaces, according to our conception of the possibilities of our lives, journeys, and travelling companions. We may conceive our journeys as well planned trips where we presume to know well in advance all the roads, junctions and decision points which we will encounter, and what decisions should be made at each junction point and for what reasons. If so, our journeys are very logical and highly controlled ones; or so they may seem to be to us who conceive them, if we conceive them successfully. We may experience our journeys as free-flowing realities which we do not conceive in advance, and of which we know neither the roads nor the junctions at which decisions will occur; nor do we know or control who will play significant roles in the making of those decisions. Our journeys through our lives may be solitary journeys in which we have only the companions of our imaginations, if we have companions of any kind. We may not meaningfully travel any significant roads or rest intimately with any other free travelers at any junctions or wayside inns. We may try to plan our journeys fully in advance and seek to be fully in control of our journeys through our lives; and in so doing so we seek to be fully in control of the journeys of fellow travelers whom we meet along the paths of our pilgrimages. Our journeys may be very logical affairs controlled by rational considerations, decisions and judgments; or our journeys may be very affective affairs which flow with the incoming and outgoing tides of many emotions over which we have no control and which we may not even attempt to predict or understand; flowing with the tides as they come and go in ways and at times which lie beyond the horizons of our imaginations and conceptions. Our journeys may be filled with duties, responsibilities, injunctions, prohibitions and taboos which dominate whom we may travel with, what roads we may explore and what junctions we must avoid. If so we are bound to be preoccupied with planning, control and judgements regarding how successfully we and others on our journeys are in fulfilling prescribed duties, responsibilities, injunctions, prohibitions and taboos. On our journeys we may learn much from creative role models who openly and honestly share with us their journeys of imaginative faith, trust and love. Or we may learn virtually nothing from such creative role models because they are absent from our lives or because we so fear their nonconformist creativity that we refuse to recognize them and learn from them---even when they are present in our lives as invisible spiritual companions. Our journeys may take us only along the objective paths of the impersonal interactions between the objects of our lives; or we may travel in intimate relationships with close friends with whom we share the most personal details of our lives. Our journeys are many and varied, and many of us are totally unaware of the diversity among our journeys; or we may be preoccupied with making superior judgments about the adequacy or level of perfection of our diverse journeys and/or travelling companions. How fulfilling, meaningful and satisfying our journeys are depends greatly upon how we conceive our journeys and how we regard them in the company of our travelling companions. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================