Trying to keep perspective

It's been a loooong time since the last time I wrote.  Partly it's facebook consuming my online time, partly it's work, partly it's that I haven't felt super inspired to write.  But in any case, I'm back, at least for a few moments.

The last time I wrote, back in May, I wrote about the principles I try to live by.  This is particularly striking because lately I've been struggling with my principles and the ways in which I fall short of them in ways I never thought I would.  It's something that challenges my self-image and my paradigm, which is difficult to cope with, but it's also something that's teaching me about what it means to be human and take part in the risky experiment that is life.  The result of this struggle right now is depression, but I'm hopeful that this will ultimately be another time I'll look to and think, "Thank God that's over," and, "but I'm so glad I went through that."  I had another trying time 5-6 years ago that I feel that way about, now that I have emerged from it and can look back -- I ended up learning a lot about myself and making a lot of connections about life in general that I value immeasurably.  In the end, we're the woven-together product of all of our experiences, millions of different things all bound up and banging up against each other inside one body.