every action has an equal and opposite ________

we are all acted upon by the world outside of ourselves.

no amount of self-determinism, existentialism, humanism, introversion or even insanity can break us free of the forces that other people apply to our little, individual spheres of reality.

my family, friends, even people i simply nod to while walking to my car - all of these are in a relationship with me and i with them. obviously, there are differing levels of relationship, but what is constant is that we contribute to and derive from one another in this dynamic cloud of emotional, intellectual and spiritual interchange that we call "life".

usually, this condition benefits us because a typical person seeks an exchange with others which is mutually beneficial. this is a natural result of the fact that most people are pursuing stasis, or stability in their lives, and we tend to oblige one another in this decent pursuit.

sometimes, people abuse the capability to act on others and use it as a way to cause great pain, destruction and irrevocable harm. this innately human ability, unfortunately, has been the curse of mankind from the first moment one of us decided to waver from a simple command.

the gift of language and the ability to convey ideas to other people brings with it the potential for the most lazy and ineffectual people to cause a lot of damage with little effort.

on July 17, 2008 i found myself in the middle of a perfect storm where an unprovoked eagerness to be destructive combined with a great ability to lie and recruit others to blindly abandon their sworn responsibility to be gatekeepers, the protectors of civility and of law.

my family and i have been forced to live under the burden of false accusations that i am a criminal, a thief, a hacker, and worst of all, my name has been associated with child pornography.

in warrants and court documents i have read that apparently i had a huge collection of pictures of guns, drugs and children being victimized.

because of the words and actions of one man, his company and those around him who have remained silent i lost my dream job, i have had to spend thousands of dollars on a lawyer who didn't do anything. once i fired him i had to spend thousands more to hire someone respectable to take over. thousands of dollars of our property has been taken from our home without our consent and none of it has been returned. my photography business was basically shut down because i couldn't in good conscience charge anyone for photography work when i was being prevented from completing work that i had already been paid for. since the state has taken all of those images away i am unable to provide dozens of clients their wedding albums, portraits, portfolio images and more. all of my creative work has been taken away, family pictures, emails, personal documents, everything that was in my digital world is gone. because i have not been charged with a crime i am in this weird, legally paralyzed state where all the so called "rights" and "due process" i used to believe in don't really exist.

thankfully, none of us are left completely at the mercy of the world when we rely on the One who created this world. there are a few good people who listen with their heart, trust their gut and faithfully exemplify how to live, "not to judge, but to love." who they are, and, most poignantly who they are not, has been eye opening to say the least.

yes, there have been many lessons during these incredibly difficult years but i am convinced that among the most important is that we must determine not to let the action of the world determine our actions.


Psalm 37:32-33

32 The wicked lie in wait for the righteous,
intent on putting them to death;
33 but the LORD will not leave them in the power of the wicked
or let them be condemned when brought to trial.