Surgically Tweaking Our Personal Identities

For most of us, the older that we get, the more aware we become of who we are as individuals, made up of our own thoughts, emotions and behaviors. We come to learn what we enjoy, what makes us tick and ultimately what we want in life. All human beings quickly discover as children and teens their likes and dislikes, though learning our true identities takes much longer. It is easier to discover our dislike for spinach than to make sense of our tumultuous pasts. It can take decades to identify the core of our beings, including our personalities, weird beliefs and quirky behaviors. Up to that point, we are our own worst enemies, seeking people and things that do not benefit us, while ignoring worthwhile activities, such as poetry, blogging or learning a new language. Self-awareness ultimately leads to personal growth and happiness. I think of these things as I embark on my my 36th year. I may not be the wisest person, but I am determined to become the most productive, happiest version of myself.

My own journey of self-discovery and mindfulness was delayed and very late in coming. During my twenties and early thirties, I wandered aimlessly through life, not motivated to find myself or plan for the future. I have long suffered low self-esteem, and many of my life circumstances, including my mental disorders and family background, limited my personal growth. However, I should have been much more vigorous in helping myself, striking my own path in the best way possible, crawling out of the debilitating muck that I was mired in.

During my years of emotional and intellectual vagrancy, I encountered many people doing the same thing. Some of them formerly had structure and stability, before a loss or major disappointment sent their lives spiraling into chaos; they may have lost a child or gone through a messy divorce. Others lived a chaotic youth before successfully building their own lives; some of these young men and women had not been taught discipline as kids, or were rebelling too hard against an overly strict upbringing. Still others were lost souls who are lost to this day, sociopaths and drifters rejecting any form of structure or personal growth, opting instead for never-ending social conflict and frequent incarceration. This has taught me much about the paths each of us tread in the search for sustainable happiness.

  

In order to grow and change, it is absolutely critical that we become aware of our personalities, the core of who we really are. Our personalities rarely change much throughout our lives. As mentioned in my blog post about personality types, people can and do have catastrophic life experiences that radically change their personalities, but this is quite rare. Hopefully, we learn to channel them toward positive outlets, creating results that work well for us. Aiding these necessary transformations are the acquiring of new beliefs and values, as necessary. For example, the political conservatism of my childhood didn't fit my inherent personality traits of extroversion, sensitivity and compassion.

To avoid moving along the road of life like a robot, it is crucial that we think deeply about what we believe or value, and why. From our childhood, we have beliefs and values that are instilled in us by our parents, the education system and society in general; there are readily apparent social norms that children everywhere pick up on. Many things taught or handed down to us are useful in our quest for survival and pleasure, but we are also bombarded with multiple untruths that make life miserable for many of us. It could be religious beliefs that are forced on us, or various forms of bigotry that are handed down in our families. As teens and young adults, though, we have hopefully used our skeptical, rebellious tendencies to gain the skill of discernment, to separate truth from fiction, and to develop our own worldview that combines the best of our upbringing with the truths that life experience has shown us. A lifetime of trying new things will accelerate this process. Who said experimentation is always bad? 

For many of us, our belief systems change radically throughout our lives. I, for example, rejected my dogmatic Roman Catholic upbringing when I was in my early-to-mid twenties. As in my case, the more untruths we have been taught as children, the more radical the change has to be. Conformity is the easiest way to go in the short-term, but it causes great harm over time. This can be seen in the 46% of American voters who cast their ballots for Donald Trump in 2016, or in the great many people who believe that the Bible is the literal word of God, just because it's what they've always believed. If we learn to be skeptical, to question everything, we will become our own best allies, even if it means not being part of the "in crowd."

Nothing impacts our ability for personal growth more than how we behave toward other people. If we honestly recall our personal pasts, we will identify ways that we have always behaved, both generally and in certain situations. Maybe we are prone to lose our temper or, like me, to shy away from any type of interpersonal conflict. These patterns of behavior that have not served us well are our personal weaknesses. Such character flaws need to be addressed and overcome. We also look back on our strengths, the things that we like and admire about ourselves. These are things that we should capitalize on.

Thoughts and emotions control behavior, so we need to eliminate negative thoughts and feelings; anger and resentment never produce desirable results. We must focus on positive thoughts and emotions that lead to happiness. Once these are geared toward happiness and success, we can use our Impartial Spectator (our detached, analytical mind referenced in Dr. Schwartz's book) to select the actions that will benefit us, and then implement them. We need to ask ourselves if we need to merely tweak a few things, or to bring about a complete personal metamorphosis.

Once we know the direction we wish to go, we can motivate ourselves by formulating game plans for success. Like anything in life, we must develop detailed plans for remaking ourselves into the happy, productive adults we were meant to be. Creating a timetable for these plans will likely affect positive results. We can hard-wire these things into our brains by writing them down in a spiral notebook or on a word processor. This is largely what I am doing in my life right now, typing away late into the night. I am examining things that I have learned in my 35th year, and thinking about the personal changes I want to make in the next year. I hope to be the Phoenix that rises from the ashes, but that remains to be seen, as my blogging and social goals will take a lot of work.

In conclusion, we may have made mistakes and done bad things in our lives, making day-to-day life miserable for ourselves and the people around us, but it is never too late to change and to start a positive new phase of our lives, in which we experience tremendous personal growth. We can't control fate or prevent the consequences of our past misdeeds (such as fleeing to North Philadelphia), but we can make changes that will guarantee better results in the future, and a positive attitude that will make the storms of life much more bearable. Even common people like me can change their destinies at any point in their lives; it is never too late! Start being happy today!

Why I am a Birthday Person

As with most human beings across the globe, I have enjoyed my birthdays since I was young. It has always been a day that I have celebrated with family, good cheer and enjoyable activities. For me, it is a celebration of my person-hood and of the people who support and encourage me as a person. These themes have been a constant each June 5th, from early childhood to now in my mid-thirties. It is an excuse each year to let out my playful, exuberant side!

Like many of you, my birthday was always a load of fun when I was a child! It was a blast having my cousins over for birthday parties as a kid. I loved playing with them, since I was an only child and always felt it was a treat to be with other kids my age. I have twenty-four first-cousins, many of whom lived nearby when I was growing up, and were close to my age, so I had plenty of company! I loved the presents from many generous family members, along with money in birthday cards, making me feel special.

I can remember cool toys that I got for my birthday, including a kid's bike with training wheels when I turned six, an oversized bucket of LEGOs when I turned seven, a Micro-Machine set when I turned eight, and a Super-Soaker 100 when I turned nine. I am sure that some of you can remember those toys. Each toy kept me occupied the entire summer, until school resumed in September. A few of my toys were broken within a few weeks, but that is a different story!

In my teenage years, each birthday felt like a milestone, as I changed so much as a person from year to year. When I turned 13, I was in my awkward pubescent stage; everything was new and challenging. My birthday meal took on much greater prominence, as my growing body craved pizza, soda, pasta and other treats. For my 14th birthday, I received the PC game Warcraft II, which launched me deeper into the world of nerd-dom and medieval fantasy. For a couple years after that, I was somewhat bored and lonely on my birthdays, due to social isolation, but I really enjoyed my birthdays again once I turned 18!

As a twenty-something, I used my birthdays as opportunities to party and to spend time with friends, celebrating the onset of summer with the warm glow of alcoholic drinks, after a fun-filled, euphoric day. My parents paid for cable to be installed on my new TV on my 20th birthday, for the TV purchased with money earned at my Red Robin job. I loved all the channels that I got and sampled a variety of new shows! My 21st birthday was celebrated with my cousins at the original Starter's on 309 South; we played together as kids, now it was great fun having drinks together as young adults!

  

In my mid-twenties, I started my long-standing annual tradition of having my birthday dinner at Texas Roadhouse. At that time, this was followed by a night of raucous drinking and partying with my friends at Ripper's and at other places, including Bethlehem Brew Works and Starter's Riverport, where I held a large, memorable party on my 25th. I wore my new red Hawaiian shirt for a tropical-themed birthday party attended by twenty-five people; I still wear that shirt each summer. I wish I could relive those days; who doesn't!

I have always felt that my birthday rolls around at a great time of the year. June 5th is roughly halfway between Christmases, so it is an awesome way to split up the year. The weather in early June can be mild and showery, the last gasp of spring before we head into summer. I don't mind, because, as an adult, I despise the unrelenting heat and humidity of summer. As a kid, my birthday was near the end of school, so my big day was followed by the joys of summer vacation, spent playing with my toys, with my cousins, and with kids in my West Bethlehem neighborhood, very close to Martin Tower. With a June birthday, once summer ended, I would start looking forward to Christmas and visa-versa. I was a great system!

My birthday is my favorite date on the calendar, more important to me than Christmas; it is a celebration of me! Let's face it: we are all narcissistic and our birthdays are days on which we focus on ourselves and celebrate our lives. I definitely enjoy the attention and the presents that are bestowed upon me each year, along with delicious food and desserts. I don't expect these things, but my family is very generous with me, my parents in particular. I may have differences with my family, but they are very generous people. I take time out of my birthday celebrations to recognize their role in creating the man I am now and thank them for their generosity.

Knowing what I like, I now have my birthday ritual down to a science. I start my day with lunch at the Lehigh Valley Mall, followed by coffee and reading at Barnes & Noble. Later in the day, my parents treat me to Texas Roadhouse, where I savor my favorite meal of prime rib, medium rare, with baked sweet potatoes, Caesar salad and cinnamon bread; I even get up on the saddle afterwards and let the servers give me the "Big Texas Yee-haa!" after telling everyone how old I am. My chosen dessert is ice cream, either cookies n' cream or chocolate chip cookie dough. After a round of cards with my parents, I enjoy a new DVD or book. I surely make the day as enjoyable as possible!

Since I am socially aware and concerned about other people, I realize that birthdays are important to the people I care about. Every individual needs to have one day set aside just for them and their preferences; it is their birthright! Most people would agree with me; this is why every year a ton of money is made on birthday cards, cakes, dinners in restaurants, etc. I always send heart-felt birthday greetings to you, my Facebook friends, because I know how important my birthday is to me; I want you to feel good on your special day!

Let's drop the shame and just enjoy our birthdays to the maximum, not caring if the people around us judge us for it. It is important for our mental health and our overall level of happiness and self-respect. Miserable people are the ones who resent others for celebrating their birthdays, so let's be happy and stick it to the toxic people around us!

On Being Homeless, but Not Without Hope in North Philadelphia

In a defining experience of my life, I was homeless in North Philadelphia for three months, from November 2015 to February 2016. I was in an unfamiliar city, thrown in with people I had never met. This period of my life was terrifying, yet often exhilarating. I stayed at two homeless shelters; the first was Our Sunday Breakfast, just north of Center City Philadelphia; the second was the Station House in North Philadelphia's Glenwood neighborhood. It was an uncomfortable mode of existence, though there were inspirational things that I will remember for the rest of my life. Philadelphia can be rough, gritty and dangerous, but it welcomed and nurtured me during my three-month ordeal on its cold, gray winter streets.

I first became homeless due to a horrible home situation, in which I was partly to blame. My parents and I have had a rocky relationship since I was nineteen. I have long sought adult autonomy for myself, and for years I've felt that my parents have fought me on this. My parents are very upset that I rejected the strict religious upbringing that they pushed on me, including their ultra-conservative political views. When I was in my twenties, my parents vehemently opposed my going out to bars to drink and socialize with friends, despite the fact that everyone my age was doing the same thing.

They believed that I would be condemned to Hell because a night of drinking with friends was viewed as a mortal sin by the Catholic Church. Our frequent arguments led my parents to avoid me for days on end, especially when I came home at 2 or 3 in the morning after a night out. I always took a cab home, so I really didn't see the problem; I didn't appreciate the crushing Catholic guilt. I would go out two or three nights a week, not every night like some hardcore alcoholic. My parents also didn't provide the emotional support for me to tackle some minor mental health issues at the time.

When I reached my early thirties, my parents became even nastier about the fact that I had rejected their conservative values and very strict rules; they refused to let me grow up and to become my own individual person. I started cutting down on my partying, but occasionally when conflicts with my parents really came to a head - about once every year or two - I would spend a night abusing alcohol in order to get back at mom and dad, due to lingering resentments. This never accomplished anything, and I have since learned to avoid this self-destructive behavior. In the autumn of 2015, however, all of these factors came together to create the perfect storm that tempted me to make one of the worst mistakes of my life.

So, on the first Sunday in November 2015, I put a few personal belongings into my black book bag, which I took everywhere; it was perfect for a dirty urban vagabond. Being that it was November, I took two coats, along with a winter hat and a pair of gloves. I definitely needed those items! I believed that my parents had filed a missing person's report with the police, since I left without letting them know where I was going and because of my mental health issues; my family had used my mental health issues against me in the past. When I fled the family home, I therefore sought a remote place where the police would have trouble locating me.

I decided that Philadelphia would be the perfect place for a newly minted transient such as myself, that a large city would have more hiding places and an entire network of underground drifters with which to settle, communicate and exchange resources. I figured that surveillance videos of bus stations would be turned over to police, so I decided to spend a few days walking to Philadelphia from Bethlehem, a distance of over seventy miles on the Delaware & Lehigh Canal Trail. My ATM card provided some cash to purchase cookies and sodas at convenience stores along the way. I avoided sleep, so as to avoid dying of hypothermia, even though this made me very tired and irritable as time went on and I continued stumbling along in the rain.

When I got to Morrisville, I took a SEPTA bus into the Frankford section of North Philly, where I bought an all-day pass and traveled SEPTA trains and subways around the city, getting a feel for the Philadelphia cityscape. Sleeping on the streets in the bone-chilling dampness would either get me killed or arrested, so I made an extra effort to get accepted into a homeless shelter. I found one listed on informational sheets obtained from the Philadelphia library. In the meantime, I spent a few nights sleeping in train stations and subway platforms. After those harrowing experiences, a weekend in the Station House, a shelter in North Philly, felt like a stay in the Waldorf Astoria.

By that point, I was very dirty, smelly and unkempt-looking. I was only allowed to stay at the Station House for three nights, so that on Monday I had to meet with a person at a social services office to be placed in a new shelter. Because I had refused to provide a previous address to social workers, I got sent to a private, Christian homeless shelter, called Our Sunday Breakfast, for 30 days. It ended up being a smelly, dirty, cramped experience, but one which was highly educational for me. I saw up close and personal the social injustices heaped upon many Philadelphia residents, as well as the relentless scourge of the American criminal justice system.

I very quickly adjusted to my chaotic, difficult life in Philadelphia homeless shelters. I learned to score toiletries and supplies at Love Park, and through social contacts within the shelter system. At Our Sunday Breakfast, the Christian homeless shelter run by black ministers and funded by private charities, we slept with the lights on all night, cameras trained on us from the ceiling. This was to prevent shootings, drug use or homosexual activity, which was explicitly and emphatically prohibited by the critical, homophobic clergy. We were two hundred dirty, smelly men forced to sleep in one large room overlooking Philadelphia's Center City skyline. It was most unsanitary and disgusting, but I learned to cope with it, and was glad to have some time away from my family.

One of the hardest things was finding activities to occupy my time. When I was staying at Our Sunday Breakfast, near Center City Philadelphia, we were only allowed in the facility at night, so we had to find things to do in the city during the day, without any money! I would spend the morning hours walking around Philadelphia, exploring the city on foot. In the late-morning, I would enter the Free Library of Philadelphia when it opened, part of a large crowd of homeless people that would ascend the stone steps to an enormous building reminiscent of the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C. I would read books in every section of the library, staying active and trying my best to appear as a nerdy, urbane bibliophile, instead of the lonely vagrant that I was.

Soon, my thirty-day stay at Our Sunday Breakfast was up and I had to find another shelter to call home, so I got myself assigned to the Station House indefinitely by the City of Philadelphia. It total, I had two months residing there, with a reasonable degree of safety and security, at least for a while. I spent many of my nights reading On the Road by Jack Kerouac, which was the perfect novel for my situation. In this North Philadelphia shelter, I was housed with five other men in a small, relatively private room with a cleaner, more accessible bathroom. There was also a common room where many of us would socialize and watch TV, though we sat on butt-numbing benches, attached to the tables on which we ate our horrible meals.

As I took comfort in the warmth and increasing familiarity of the Station House, I solved internal issues by examining my life, my situation and my personal relationships. With each day, I began to think more about my family back home, though I was still very angry with them. By that time, I was back in communication with a few of my cousins on social media, met up with one of them, and then was informed that no police report was filed, so I felt more at ease and more free to rethink my complicated feelings about my family. I started to read more at both the Temple University library and at the Free Library of Philadelphia, definitely feeling better about myself.

Things took a turn for the worse at the Station House in late January 2016, however. During the pre-dawn hours of Sunday, January 17th, a disgruntled former resident of the shelter, John Brock, who had been expelled for drug use at the facility, returned with a gun and shot two members of the shelter's security staff. The one security man, Lamont Barham, survived the shooting. The other man, Edward Barksdale, a good, caring man, was brutally killed in what was a very grisly scene; one of my newfound friends, Bobby, witnessed the whole thing, to his horror. I slept through the incident, but I heard a metallic sound like a mental chair being dragged across the floor; it was incorporated in my dream, which was abruptly ended when Bobby came stumbling into the room, clearly very distraught.

After the shooting, conditions at the shelter deteriorated very quickly. The director, a sadistic former official of the Philadelphia prison system, started bearing down hard on us. In February, my case manager at the shelter also started asking probative questions about my background, not trusting the fantastical script I had stuck to for three months, which inevitably contained a few falsehoods. I also feared being expelled from the shelter, which would indirectly lead to my incarceration in Philadelphia County Prison, an extremely violent, overcrowded jail that many didn't survive. Living through a shooting and facing future imprisonment prompted me to mend fences with my family and move back home for a while. My cousins were urging me to do just that in mid-February 2016, so I did the reasonable thing, swallowing my pride in order to create the best life possible for myself under the circumstances.

I finally returned home on February 15, 2016, Presidents' Day, and was very happy to sleep in a regular bed in a private bedroom and to be spending time again with my parents, whom I realized that I deeply loved, despite our not seeing eye to eye on many issues. My cousins had been informing my parents that I was alive and healthy for the preceding two months of my absence, but they were glad to have me back in the home and in their lives. It was a pleasure to be able to visit my favorite coffee shops again, and to reconnect with friends, whom I greatly missed. I felt like a normal person once again!

I learned a great deal about life and society from my experience of homelessness on the streets of Philadelphia. The two worst men that I encountered during my ordeal were registered sex offenders just released from prison after many years behind bars. One man, Jerry, was a repeat child molester who was my assigned bunkmate at the Station House; the other guy, Steve, was a convicted rapist. The other three men in the room were sociable, caring individuals, quickly becoming friends of mine. Bobby was my best friend of all, providing me with clothing and moral support, in contrast to the cocky nastiness of the two sex offenders. Jerry and Steve had created their own hell through their horrible decisions, whereas the others were merely good men down on their luck.

I learned that we still have Apartheid in this country, despite the fact that state-sanctioned segregation ended in 1964. I saw firsthand how many African-American men born into poverty live a vicious cycle of addiction, incarceration and living in other punitive institutions. On a personal level, I learned to enjoy the simple pleasures of life and to rely upon a positive mental attitude to get me through life. I learned that I had to rely on myself in this world, and that nothing given is actually free. You have to pay for it one way or another, even when money doesn't change hands. By remaining positive, you create a better environment for yourself and everyone around you, affecting beneficial social change as you focus on the big picture, looking at some of the problems that lead to homelessness.

Solving the problem of homelessness is an important social issue that we need to tackle. When society incarcerates its rapidly increasing homeless population it spends much more taxpayer money than it would to provide meals and rudimentary shelter. This is true in both the immediate term and in the long-term. The City of Philadelphia is providing more homes for qualified homeless individuals, but it still relies heavily upon a model of incarceration, institutionalization, and then re-incarceration. This vicious cycle is greatly aided by a violent, repressive police department, with the very worst officers assigned to the poorest neighborhoods, which are overwhelmingly African-American.

In conclusion, homelessness is a worsening problem in America, but it will abate in the post-Trump era, when people stop demonizing the many individuals who are down on their luck, targeted by a broken criminal justice system or victimized by the forces of growing economic inequality in the United States. Seeing first-hand how homelessness actually works teaches you much more than a book or online article. It has led me to reorder my life and see the larger picture, how our destinies are all interconnected, but are all put in peril when we ignore individuals that we are taught to view as "undesirable." The trials and tribulations of our current social and political climate will create a new social awareness once we reach the springtime of the new era.

BAPL, My Second Home

The Bethlehem Area Public Library (BAPL) was an important part of my personal history, and continues to be a beneficial resource that I often make use of. It keeps the community informed and engaged, serving as a meeting place for students, senior citizens and everyone in between. I frequently run into friends, acquaintances and family members while searching the stacks for my favorite read or finding that perfect movie for the weekend. For a blogger and autodidact like me, this library is ideal, making it my home away from home.

The Bethlehem library has a large collection of useful books, magazines, newspapers, DVDs and CD's. The books cover every topic imaginable and are in good condition. I don’t look at magazines there, but the library has a sizeable number of magazines for anyone interested. They do provide many arts magazines and publications of local interest. The newspapers are also numerous, including the Express Times, the Morning Call and the New York Times. These are great resources for conducting job searches or for catching up on the latest political news and sports stats. Every category of inventory is well-stocked and kept reasonably up-to-date.

I have been using and patronizing the Bethlehem Area Public Library since I was a toddler in the 1980's. I remember playing and running around as a 4 year-old in the children’s section, climbing on the mini wooden sliding board. I attended arts & crafts for kids, for three summers in a row, from the ages of 8 through 10, at the Southside Branch. It was there that I first laid eyes on rows of PCs in June 1991, after these pro-typical units had just replaced card catalogues. As a kid I loved reading about the weather, dinosaurs and outer space, among other things, though I had a hard time finishing any one book - I still have that problem.

As I got older, the library became a favored hangout spot during my adolescence. I began walking to the Bethlehem library when I was a 15 year-old living in West Bethlehem. I would walk up West Broad Street and take the bridges over Route 378 and the Monocacy Creek; it was a route that I would often take for the next twelve years. At that age, I started indulging my nerdy interests, reading about medieval history, meteorology, photography and modern art. As a horny adolescent, I even perused photos of nude women that were present in photography books in the late 1990s and early 2000s. I never did anything too crazy, like a co-worker that I had years later; this dude had been busted as a teenager for having sex at the Allentown library, and banned for life from the place. Talk about finding love between the stacks!

In my twenties, I started going to the library even more frequently. At age 25, I started visiting almost every day because BAPL was within walking distance from the other places I frequented at the time: Bethlehem Brew Works, Ripper's Pub, Wired Cafe, and the Moravian Book Shop. I surfed the Internet at the Bethlehem library’s computers, reading up about religion and the occult, as I made my final break with my Roman Catholic upbringing. On MySpace and Facebook, I shared party photos from my wild nights on the town, at places such as the Bethlehem Brew Works and Ripper's Pub. The Bethlehem Area Public Library is a great spot for young adults to find themselves.

Now, as an adult, I visit the library twice a week, still using the computers with Internet access that are provided by the facility. I use social media, perform interesting Google searches, listen to music on Pandora, watch music videos and work on my blog. I am always on the lookout for interesting feature articles, memes and videos that I can share with my audience, as well as selfies and memories that may intrigue them. It is central to my life and at the core of my efforts to establish myself as a social media personality.

In recent years, I have gotten more into using multimedia resources provided by the library, in the form of movies, seasons of TV shows, music CD's and Wi-fi hotspots. The library has cool, interesting movies from every era, along with TV shows of each genre. I've taken out seasons of Seinfeld, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, and Breaking Bad. This has provided me with countless hours of entertainment, as well as giving me a little bit of a cultural education. I most recently rented the movie The Social Network, which I watched for the first time, opening myself up to a whole new world of Ivy League schools, privileged undergrads and theft of intellectual property.

  

The Bethlehem Area Public Library (BAPL) is situated in the heart of Downtown Bethlehem, in the city's historic district, complete with pristine Victorian homes and the modern stone buildings of Payrow Plaza, including Bethlehem's City Hall and other municipal buildings. It is in the oldest section of Bethlehem, founded by the Moravians in 1741. History buffs will enjoy the Kemerer Museum of Decorative Arts, Central Moravian Church and the Moravian Museum of Bethlehem. During the Christmas season, it is even possible to pay to ride a horse-drawn carriage through the downtown, creating a true 18th-century feel.

The Bethlehem Area Public Library is very close to restaurants, coffee shops, a major bus terminal, as well as the Fahy Bridge leading to South Bethlehem; Southside has its own charm. The Bethlehem library has a Southside Branch, which has a small collection of books, videos and DVDs. From Payrow Plaza itself, you get a great view of South Bethlehem’s skyline as it climbs up South Mountain, including many beautiful, historic buildings that are part of Lehigh University's campus. On the whole, Bethlehem is very old, quaint and European-looking, reminding one of a town in Germany or Switzerland.

Parking can be a problem on Church Street, so walking to the Bethlehem library is often your best bet. The Bethlehem Parking Authority is very aggressive with ticketing cars the second that the meter expires, leading to hefty parking fines. The best bet is to park a few blocks away on some residential street and get a little exercise, or walk there from other downtown destinations. It is especially a great thing to do on a rainy Saturday afternoon, when a comfortable, well-lit library sets the perfect mood to counter feelings of melancholy.

I prefer Bethlehem's library over those of Allentown and Easton for a few reasons. BAPL is laid out better, with everything all together, in neat rows of stacked books, all arranged perfectly by the Dewey Decimal System. The book selection in Bethlehem is better as well. The view from the Bethlehem library is also far superior to that of either Allentown or Easton, taking in the green of South Mountain and the historic grayness of South Bethlehem's buildings. The Bethlehem Area Public Library is cozier and less impersonal than the Free Library of Philadelphia, which has the feel of an art museum. The staff at Bethlehem is much friendlier and more helpful, as well.

The library was an invaluable resource for me during my recent period of unemployment, as I began to regain my footing after dealing with personal struggles. I was rootless, lost and lacking a purpose in life, until I used BAPL for thinking, relaxation and study. It had all the books, movies, TV show seasons and online resources necessary for an autodidact like me. I learned a great deal about writing, social media, how to search the Internet; I even delved into some dark, obscure aspects of life and segments of society. Now, I am comfortable with who I am and confident in what I believe. I expect countless opportunities in the future for learning and enriching my brain, as the Bethlehem Area Public Library (BAPL) remains the second home that enables me to become the man I was meant to be.

Why I Became a Progressive Democrat

As some of you already know, I am a fairly recent convert to the Democratic Party after many years of being a Republican. I was raised in a conservative family and identified with the GOP from the time I was young, in the same way that a kid grows up being an Eagles fan or Giants fan. As a Republican loyalist, I accepted the tenets of Republican conservatism, without really questioning those beliefs or looking critically at the statements, jokes and attitudes of most Republicans, especially rank-and-file conservatives. It is far easier to adhere to the teachings of one's childhood than to question everything and to seek the truth with a skeptical mind.

I was raised in a very conservative, devout Catholic family and I identified with the Republican Party from a young age. Unfortunately, most of my family members espoused racist and bigoted views, causing me to be far less sensitive to social injustice than I should have been. Adding to my ignorance and cluelessness in my early years was the systemic racism and inequality present at all levels of American society in the late 80's and 90's. From the time I was a little boy, these injustices were ever-present, sometimes seeming right and natural to a certain degree, as horrible as that was.

As I got older, I espoused many theoretical tenets of conservatism, namely smaller government, fewer regulations, lower taxes, opposition to abortion, a discomfort with same-sex marriage, favoring a strong military, etc. These doctrines I accepted at face value and didn't really question until much later in life. In my twenties, I even watched Fox News for a while, believing the "facts" provided by Bill O'Reilly and others that supported my uninformed, twisted world view. This was many years ago, in the 2000s. Despite my conservatism, I did reject my Roman Catholic upbringing, favoring an increasing degree of separation between church and state. I was put off by the fear used by the Roman Catholic Church to gain greater power over society and more control over the political process.

I did have some other liberal sensibilities, though, that increased as I grew older and wiser. I was never a fan of overt bigotry or cruelty, trying to treat people of other races with respect, as equals, and opposing racist jokes and statements by others. Getting along with other people was always important to me, so I avoided unnecessary conflict while trying to understand where people were coming from. I also became much more accepting of LGBT individuals after meeting and befriending some while experiencing the bar scene in my twenties. In 2012 my understanding of man-made climate change evolved after I had an online conversation with AccuWeather meteorologist Brett Anderson, debunking the myth of global warming being a natural cycle, caused by sunspots and solar flares.

Around this time, in 2012/2013, I quickly became very disillusioned by the extremes of the Tea Party and the increasingly abhorrent rhetoric coming from many voices on the right, especially from demagogues like Rush Limbaugh. I voted for Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election, but have never voted Republican since. After that election, I began to seriously question the beliefs and rhetoric of traditional American conservatism. By the summer of 2014, I decided that the Republican Party was no longer worthy of my vote or support, and that many Democratic candidates were much better, including now-Governor Tom Wolf, Congressman Matt Cartwright and other local Democratic candidates running in the 2014 mid-term elections.

By Election Day 2014, I identified with the Democratic Party, instead of the GOP. I have always enjoyed visiting urban areas and interacting with people from all walks of life; I, therefore, couldn't understand right-wing bigots who avoided diverse cities like the plague and refused to interact with blacks and Latinos. In early 2015, I finally got around to changing my voter registration from Republican to Independent. I had fully embraced liberalism and identified with the Democratic Party, but I still needed some time to finally register as a Democrat, something that I did in January 2016, in time for Pennsylvania's presidential primary. I supported Hillary Clinton in the April 26th primary, but also came to appreciate the ideas being presented by Bernie Sanders in his first presidential campaign.

There are several key issues that were central to my somewhat sudden ideological shift; these issues have now taken on newfound importance; they are: racial equality, gender equality, environmental protection, world peace, addressing economic inequality, criminal justice reform, health care reform, and the Republican Party's fondness for conspiracy theories and anti-intellectual sentiment. I want to see society as it actually is and learn about history as it actually took place. Conservatives have an overly-positive, idealistic view of American history, whereas liberals acknowledge past wrongdoings. Manifest Destiny was morally reprehensible, as it was used to destroy Native American settlements in the West. This was a continuation of the slaughter than began with Christopher Columbus and his band of armed thugs.

Race doesn't determine our worth as a person. We are all created equal, so we should all be treated with equal respect, given the same opportunities to succeed. The Republican Party has for many decades worked to perpetuate a system of de-facto racial segregation, discrimination and hostility. I grew up in this system of inequality and injustice, largely blind to what was really happening in society, and to how conservatives were largely to blame for it. Once I started paying more attention, I realized that many Republicans didn't share the level of human compassion that I found in my heart for people around me.

As a young conservative in my twenties, I was constantly exposed to media and rhetoric that was sexist, though largely subtle - at least until I got to be older - forcing me to come to terms with many things being said about women. I came to believe that conservatives really were waging a "war on women." This trend, of course, was greatly accelerated after my political conversion, when the Republican electorate soundly rejected the influx of newer, more diverse voices within the party, in favor of an older, aggressive, loud-mouthed bigot.

The environment has been ravaged and largely destroyed by mankind. I grew up believing that the environmental movement was entirely composed of lies and liberal propaganda, but eventually came to learn that we are stewards of the earth and that it is legitimately under assault, and needs protection. We are suffering from rapid, destructive, man-made climate change, as well as many forms of air and water pollution, driving animal species to extinction and wiping out the rainforests. Prominent Republicans have really known this for years, but continue to ignore this because they favor the wealthy, powerful elites, such as executives of ExxonMobil, who are responsible for raping the earth.

I started out favoring the Iraq War in 2003, but came to question it around 2005, as it turned into a quagmire. I completely turned against the war in the Obama years, as I could see what a waste it had been. The war cost 4,500 American lives and took a major financial toll. A large, aggressive military is a massive drain on America’s finances, in stark contrast to conservatives’ focus on fiscal discipline and balancing the federal budget. This is just one example of conservative hypocrisy. The cocky foreign policy of the neo-cons and other Republicans has also greatly hurt America’s prestige abroad. If our government is to spend taxpayers’ dollars, it should spend it to help people, rather than to harm them.

I read a lot of books and magazine about economic inequality in the early 2010s, facilitating my political metamorphosis. I took out a college-level sociology book from the Bethlehem Area Public Library and read The New York Times and The New Yorker Magazine at area coffee shops. I came to understand that laissez-faire capitalism harmed nearly everyone. I came to realize that the conspiracy theories spread around about President Barack Obama were just that. Obama is indeed a very wise, transformative leader; he learned many valuable lessons about American society during his years of community organizing in Chicago. He himself was the victim of a lot of racism and saw the effects that racism had on members of the African-American community in Chicago. Starting in 2014, I came to view him as a great American president, who used his power and influence to inspire people and improve their lives.

I started high school in 1998, during the era of "zero tolerance," when high school principals called police on students for relatively minor behavioral disturbances and local police forces began arresting people all over the place for minor, non-violent offenses, creating the bloated, but counterproductive, prison-industrial complex that destroyed lives and made communities less safe. We now live in a society where nearly everyone has some sort of criminal record, causing low morale among America's citizens. People are more apt to break the law when their civil liberties aren't respected.

As a Republican, I opposed the Affordable Care Act in President Obama's first term, but came to support it in his second term. Once I became a Democrat, I came to favor a single-payer system, believing that Obamacare was just the first step toward universal healthcare. An immediate overhaul of our nation’s health care system was absolutely necessary, due to rising costs and lack of coverage for many Americans. By 2008, we had a serious health care crisis in this country that needed to be dealt with at once. Obama’s plan isn’t perfect, but it was the best quick fix that could pass Congress without Republican support. In the post-Trump era, Medicare-for-all will be the form of universal health care coverage Americans will have and use, inspired by the policies of Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Once I abandoned conservatism for liberalism, I realized that I had been fed a large number of conspiracy theories over the years, starting with false stories about President Bill Clinton; I now believe that Clinton was one of our best presidents; looking back from 2019, many progressives blame him for not being liberal or progressive enough, but after the conservative thrust of the Reagan-Bush years, governing as a center-left moderate was the best anyone could possibly do in 1993/1994. As I examined conservative culture from afar, I saw unmistakably the anti-intellectual sentiment among rank-and-file Republican voters who viewed the world in black-and-white, instead of in shades of gray; this simplicity made conspiracy theories more believable. They were angered by complexity, being completely comfortable with simplicity. Truth is never simple and I always strive to discover the complexities of modern life.

The candidacy and then presidency of Donald Trump convinced me that I certainly made the right decision by leaving the Republican Party, which I did just in time! Hillary Rodham Clinton was the first Democratic presidential candidate I had ever voted. After the catastrophe of Trump's campaign and electoral college victory, I decided that I would never vote Republican again, as long as I live, for any office that a Republican chooses to run for. I learned around this time that the Right is based entirely on hateful, racist, far-right ideas. Conservatism's official tenets are merely a smokescreen designed to cover up the true purpose of conservative policies and the rightward drift of the GOP.

Since conservatism is based upon bigotry and hatred, the entire Republican Party is, as well, since conservatives took over the Republican Party in the mid-1960s, tapping into the backlash against the Civil Rights Movement. Many of the ultra-conservatives controlling the party's agenda are individuals who have been in place since that time, for 50+ years. Examples include Pat Buchanan and Roger Stone, who began their careers by carrying out the dirty tricks of President Richard Nixon. The Republican Party is now the party of hate, whereas the Democratic Party is the party of progress and understanding. Conservative Republicans oppose “politically correct” speech, which translates into their use of offensive speech, including jokes, that offends Latinos, African-Americans and women. People on the Right don't understand the need to respect people whose backgrounds are different from their own, even though these individuals are also trying to achieve the American dream.

Conservatism is based upon emotion, rather than logic. It is reactionary, nasty and irrational. It's tenets work as a smokescreen for nearly every form of bigotry, which have been stoked by right-wing American demagogues since the days of Father Charles Coughlin in the 1930s. It is a 90-year tradition of hatred, cruelty and ignorance. It is unbridled aggression, which threatens the very foundations of American society. Liberalism, instead, is built upon the success of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment; it is from this liberalism that progressivism flows. We as human beings can always work to better our lot in life, instead of returning to the violence and oppression of the Dark Ages.

Now, at this point in my life, I like to learn more about the history of modern conservatism. It has a dark, disturbing history that needs exploring, if one is to properly understand the core of conservative Republican thought. As it turns out, conservative thought is flimsy at best: Obama and the Democrats are well-educated and extremely intelligent while conservative Republicans tend to be much less educated and intelligent. They are often bumbling and inarticulate, while believing all kinds of conspiracy theories, especially related to their irrational fear of communism, the Clintons and their unfounded belief in white supremacy; Sarah Palin is a prime example. Conservatives are fascinated by the Cold War mentality of the 1950, including the red-baiting of Senator Joe McCarthy.

Liberals and progressives I now admire include Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I believe that both liberals and progressives can work together within the Democratic Party for creative policies and more effective government. It is moderate and conservative Democrats that have to be replaced by liberals or progressives. Progressive candidates in Democratic primaries can target older, more conservative leaders who owe their fortunes and political offices to corrupt, well-entrenched political machines.

I now favor Medicare for all, free tuition for students at public colleges and universities, the Green New Deal and efforts to achieve much greater economic equality. I agree that progressive solutions will benefit those of us now in our 20s and 30s, but that we should also heed the advice and learn from the experiences of liberal luminaries now in their sixties and seventies. This is why I often enjoy watching The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell; he is a 67-year-old man who is wise, enlightened and up on the world as it works today. For decades, we have had an evil order, but now is the time to overthrow that order and set up a new order that will work for all of us!

  

Any social and political revolution mirrors my personal revolution and philosophical pivot. It has been a wild, incredible journey, but I am very happy that I made the leap of faith when focusing on what I really believed and why. We all need to examine our beliefs and emotions with a critical eye, keeping in mind that no belief system or emotional pattern is worthwhile if it doesn't lift up the rest of society and make life better for all of us. When life is truly primal and cut-throat, life becomes unbearable; but when we work together to keep modern civilization intact, we all benefit tremendously, gaining a new world that is just and livable.