I thought I’d let that last post sink in. I hoped it got you started asking questions.

About two posts ago, I mentioned how I had learned that I had identified a fear of criticism in my life. I would like to tell you a little more about what I have discovered since then. It has been very enlightening to me, perhaps it will to you as well.

Since I learned about this fear, I’ve been confronting it, learning about it and doing my best to overcome it.

I’ve learned some ways to overcome fear, such as facing the fear, learning about the fear and being prepared. I’ve also learned that others who don’t have the fear can help us face it more easily. This has been a real help.

Of course, there has been a downside as well. Since I’ve learned of this fear, I’ve been experiencing it more explicitly. In the past, I simply unconsciously avoided it. I was constantly frustrated as to why I couldn’t do certain things, but I was completely oblivious to the answer. Now I know the answer, but that hasn’t magically made the fear go away. Now when there are things that would trigger that fear, I am conciously feeling the fear. I am very aware of the anxiety I get when I try to face it and there are still many times when I find myself incapable of doing certain things, but at least I know why.

As bad as that may sound, it has actually been a bit of a blessing too. I am now very keenly aware of how this fear has been preventing me from accomplishing a number of things and I am seeing other fears in my life that are very related to it. They include a fear of success and a fear of choice.

I noticed that today actually. Because I have been facing my fear, I’ve all of a sudden found myself finishing all sorts of things that before seemed to be unfinishable. I was noticing something, however. I noticed that whenever I would finish something I would start to feel very uncomfortable. I wondered why I felt so uncomfortable and the answer that popped into my mind was that now I had to decide what to do next. I certainly have plenty to do, that’s not the issue, the issue is deciding which thing is the highest priority. All of a sudden, this fear of criticism started taking hold of me again. What if I pick the wrong thing. What if the choice I make turns out disastrous, or costing me too much time. What if what I think is important isn’t what my boss thinks is important. I dreaded trying to figure it out and the consequence was that I was getting paralyzed again. It occurred to me that so many times that I was not reaching success in my life was because once I reached that success, the comfort of the task I was familiar with would go away and I would be required to decide on something that I was less familiar with and the consequence could be something worth ridiculing.

I don’t think I had ever been so conscious of all the “what ifs” that have been floating around in my head over the past few decades.

Anyway, I picked up on a couple more fears through all of this, too. I didn’t believe it before, but I think I have a fear of poverty and death. For a long time I’ve felt like I can’t wait until it’s time to leave this world. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suicidal or anything and I have no intention of hurrying things up, but it occurred to me that at some basic level, this fear of criticism is actually backed by a fear of the likelihood that if people don’t like me I will end up impoverished and likely die from starvation or the elements.

In the school of philosophy, this type of argument is known as a slippery slope (there’s actually a more technical term for it, but I think this is easier for most to understand). I thought I was above it, but apparently not. Since I don’t really know what poverty is like, I find that I fear it. There certainly haven’t been many pretty pictures of it on TV or in the movies. The way it is portrayed, you would think that people in a state of poverty can never have any happiness. I realize that in many ways I have come to stereotype the poor. Even though I’m certain it’s not true. I hate to admit it, but when I think of poverty, I get images of people who are thieves, gamblers, drug addicts or alcoholics. I’m sure these exist in that population, but I’m aware that there is no class that is immune to these types of people. Look at how often a well respected politician, actor or business owner is found to have done these very things. Why do I fear them less?

In any case, resolve to diminish and, if possible, eliminate these fears and stereotypes from my life. I will not accept any temporary defeat in this endeavor as permanent failure. I will either succeed or die trying.

I hope this post inspires others to take a hard look at their own lives and become aware of their own fears and face them and conquer them.

bye for now

Until recently, I did not have the courage to speak up about this. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true. Over 150 years ago, “Like a thief in the night”, Christ returned. Most people missed it. Like in the day of Jesus himself, when all who were looking for the Messiah did not believe it could be Jesus, because he did not fulfill the literal interpretation of their fantasies, so too, has he returned under similar conditions. Many who missed him were the first in line to be snatched up and saved in the rapture, only to be disappointed not to see Christ descending on the clouds and the world obliterated before their eyes.

Believe it or not, Christ returned nearly exactly when everyone expected Him to. They were just too caught up in their own dreamlike superstitions to see it.

You can even see the effects of His return now. Since the middle of the 19th century, can you not see that the world has grown more in the last century and a half than it did in the nearly 2 millenia up to that point. It is no longer the world that everyone knew. There were wars and rumors of wars. All of the signs have come to pass.

Yet many have started to believe that the whole thing was a fantasy. Why is it that so many people know of His return and yet are timid to speak of it? It’s because most people would think they are crazy. That was my fear. Now I am not concerned what others think of me. This is important news and I’ve kept silent about it long enough.

If you are of those who have believed that Christ would return, I encourage you to pray to God and ask for guidance. Keep an open mind and an open heart. Ask yourself, if Christ were to return, how would you know it was Him?

I know many say that they would know because of the miracles. All I can say is that I have seen some pretty miraculous things by people who were not Christ. I don’t think miracles would necessarily have most people believing. Particularly now that they can not be witnessed firsthand. In any case, there were some miracles and people do talk about them.

Some believe that they will see Christ come down from the clouds of heaven. Realize that we now know that the world is round and the concept of “down” is relative, particularly in regards to the heavens. Even so, Christ was originally supposed to come from an unknown place, but Jesus came from Nazereth, a place known by all, and nothing good could come from there. Clearly the reference was symbolic. So too, were the prophecies concerning Christ’s return. If you are of the devout followers of Christ, who love Him dearly, think very carefully of why it is that you believe He was who He said He was. If you sincerely consider this and apply justice and fairness in your reasoning, you will be able to discover His return.

I wish you God speed in your search

This will be a fairly short post for a change. I believe I have finally found the hidden barrier in my life and it wasn’t so hidden. I have recently discovered that a fear of criticism has apparently been my biggest obstacle to date.

As I discovered with some of my other fears, it would appear that my mind has masked this fear by simply avoiding it, unconsiously. I can now clearly see so many times that I wanted to do something. I wanted to take some sort of action, but for some reason I could never seem to do so. I never seemed to be able to identify what the block was. Now I realize that it was a fear of criticism.

The reason so many of my posts are so long is that I was simply afraid that people would not understand me unless I gave ample explanation. Maybe I’ll still have some long posts, maybe I won’t. If you don’t understand, feel free to ask and I’d be happy to elaborate.

I have resolved to not be so worried about what people think of me. You may notice that I have not apologized for being away for so long. I intend to never apologize for this sort of thing again.

I feel as if I am now a completely new person. I look forward to sharing with you the discoveries I make as I follow this new path.

Thank you

Lately, I had been contemplating the creation of the universe and it got me thinking. Are the atheists really looking carefully enough at the issues? I mean, even if there was a big bang, what caused it, right?

So, I surmised that atheism is at least as highly based on faith as any other religion is, but I figured I ought not make any assumptions without doing a bit of research.

As it turns out, my question is pretty much THE question. If you head over to the Freethought & Rationalism Discussion Board and check out the Existence of God(s) section, you will find that there are over 100,000 posts just on the topic of the creation of the universe.

It truly is the “Chicken or the Egg” question, rephrased.

I strongly believe that it is impossible and will always be impossible to either prove or disprove the existence of God in this existence.

So, I’ve decided that I’m not going to make any point here in this post as to whether there is a God or not, although I will freely admit that I am biased in the belief that there is one and it is likely to be evident in what I do talk about here.

Instead, I would like to contribute some thought provoking questions as well as my own insights and observations (not necessarily answers to those questions) in hopes that this might at least shake things up a bit and with any luck, some truth will fall out in the process.

On being able to logically prove or disprove the existence of God

It seems to me that some of the biggest questions that beg to be answered are the infinity questions.

How could the universe be bounded by time? and yet, how could it not?

What I mean is this. No matter how far back in time you can imagine, you must still imagine that there was a time before that. Even if you subscribe to the big bang theory, you must ask, “Where did the matter that exploded come from?”, “What made it BANG in the first place” and even if you could find the answers to those questions, then you would have the question of “Where did whatever created that matter come from?”, “Where did the process that led to the matter exploding start? What started that? et. al.” At the same time, we must ask the question, “How could there not be a beginning? It seems impossible that time could go on forever.”

How big is the universe?

It seems impossible that it could go on forever, but even if you imagine that it had a boundary of some sort, you must then ask, “What’s outside that boundary?” even if the answer is “Nothing”, you can hardly imagine that “nothing” not extending infinitely outward. Simultaneously, it seems impossible for it to go on forever.

How small is the universe?

So next we go from outer space to inner space. We have seen that no matter how small we go, it seems that we can always find something smaller. Certainly, we are reaching the limits of our abilities to detect smaller and smaller particles, and energy forms, but just because we are unable to measure something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. I mean, even if we take the smallest particle known to man, how can we not ask the question “What’s that made of?” “Can that truly not be broken down into an even smaller particle?” No matter how small of a size something gets, it seems that it must be possible for something even smaller to exist. But again, it also seems impossible for this to go on forever.  It reminds me of the question of “How can we move?” If in order to get somewhere, we must first get halfway there, and then we must get from that point to halfway between that and our destination. etc, etc. how do we ever get anywhere. It seems that we must cross infinite amounts of space and time just to move an inch.

Logic can’t explain everything

So, one main observation I would make, then, is this. It seems apparent that there are some things, even in the phenomenal universe that simply cannot be explained logically. Therefore, it is my belief that not all things have a logical explanation.

If God did exist, why would He do that to us?

So, if we presuppose that there’s no way to logically prove or disprove the existence of God, then we maybe we can take another angle. Here are some questions I’ve seen people ask.

If God is All-Knowing and All-Powerful, how come He can’t make it possible for us to prove His existence?

I would like to assert that this question presupposes that God’s reason for not making it possible for us to prove His existence is because he “can’t”. I think it is safe to assume that if God is All-Knowing, All-Powerful and the like, then it is possible for Him to make it possible for us to prove His existence. Some people will immediately take this to mean then, that there either is no God, or that God is not All-Knowing and All-Powerful. My personal opinion is this. God chose not to make His existence that obvious to us.

This, of course, begs another question.

If God is the All-Loving, All-Merciful, Creator that He is made out to be, why would He choose to make it so difficult for us to prove His existence?

I assert that it is possible that God has put us in this situation for a very specific reason, and that reason is to learn to have faith. Faith requires a few elements that could not exist if God were to make His existence obvious and provable. First, faith is belief in something when not all the facts are present. Otherwise it is knowledge. If God made his existence obvious, then you couldn’t have “faith” in his existence. It would be common knowledge.

It is possible that God chose not to make things easy “Because” He loves us

I assert that God loves us so much that he wants us to love Him, too, but of our free-will. Let’s say, for a moment, that instead of being born into this world of trouble, darkness and uncertainty, we were born straight into heaven. Confronted by God’s glory would we truly have any choice but to know and love Him? I assert that we would have no choice, no free-will. And, if we didn’t really love God of our own free will, could it really be called love? If it could, it seems like it would be a pointless kind of love.

Does God Exist?

Obviously I believe He does, and I don’t presume to state that I have answered any of the prevailing questions here. I personally don’t need for anyone else to share my point of view on this, but I feel like I have gotten a lot of peace from these observations and I hope that they bring some peace to others as well.

My own beliefs are constantly evolving in this area, so I would like to also indicate that just because I believe something is valid and true today, that doesn’t mean I will still believe it tomorrow. My eyes have certainly been opened on a number of occasions and I want my understanding of life, God and the universe to be as true as possible, so if you have some ideas to share, I would be happy to hear them.

I look forward to any feedback. I would like to say this, however. I know that issues like this can be real hotbuttons, for some people. I am aware that some people don’t like to add anything really meaningful and just like to tell people that they are wrong or right without actually adding anything meaningful to the conversation. This blog is moderated. If you would like to share your thoughts, please keep the comments clean, please do your best to not insult anyone who would visit this page, and make sure your comments actually add value. Don’t just post a quote from your favorite holy book, or voice and agreement or disagreement without any other commentary.

Thank you

I remember, some time ago, hearing about a custom in Persia (now known as Iran), where rug makers would intentionally add a flaw to the rugs because, “Only God is perfect”.

I remember thinking at the time. How egotistical to think that if you did not add that flaw to the rug that it would somehow be even remotely close to a reflection of the perfection of God. I know that the thought behind it is one of true respect, but it still bothered me.

Lately, I had noticed in myself, how unworthy I feel to be a part of God’s creation. I was keenly aware of my faults and I had been having a difficult time letting go of them. I know that I have many perfections, however, the faults seemed to grab my attention.

It’s really strange. I can forgive nearly anyone for nearly anything. I also believe that God fully forgives me for all the mistakes I’ve made. Despite all this, the one person that I could not seem to forgive, was myself.

So the other night, I was feeling really good for some reason and a light seemed to go off somewhere in my head. I thought to myself, why do I have such a hard time forgiving myself? Why do I simultaneously hold myself to such a high standard, but also feel as if I can never actually reach that standard? It occurred to me that, at some level at least, I felt that if I’m okay, if there is nothing wrong with me, then somehow I would be ignoring my imperfections and making myself an equal with God.

I find the irony of this line of thought really amusing. My whole intention is to express more humility and respect for God, but the reality is that somehow it would appear that I am guilty of the very thing that I thought was so absurd about the rug makers. It seems, that if I somehow believe myself to have some sort of flaw, then I am not interfering with the perfection of God. How egotistical to think that even if I could achieve the perfection I am looking for, that it would in any way compare to the Glory of God. I think I must confess that it could do nothing but affirm God’s greatness.

Well, guilty or not, I finally find myself more able to forgive myself and it feels pretty good.

I guess I haven’t posted anything in a while. That’s a story I am currently in the process of rewriting. Thanks for sticking with me.

Now that I’ve been engaged with the Law of Attraction for a while, I’ve known that it is important to “Feel” what it is that you want. If you want success, you need to feel successful, if you want peace, you need to feel peace.

This was a hard concept for me to grasp. It felt fake to say that I felt peace, if I wanted it and it felt like a lie to feel successful if I wanted success.

For those of you who don’t already know, I am a follower of the Baha’i faith. There are many writings that at least hint at this concept. Some seem to come right out and say it, and even when it is not in the writings, the central figures of the faith, lived these concepts.

I had never quite understood. Abdu’l-baha, the son of the founder of the Baha’i Faith and even his grandson Shoghi Effendi, would often state how wonderful certain things were doing, or marvel at various happenings, praising people for their accomplishments before the accomplishments had even taken place. All that needed to happen would be for one person to take a step in the right direction and immediately some sort of praise would be forthcoming about the accomplishment of the goal. Imagine for a moment that you wanted your child to go make their bed and you told them, “Now go make your bed”. So the child starts to walk in the direction of their bedroom and you immediately say praise God your bed is made. That’s the sort of thing I’m talking about. Even though the task has not officially been accomplished, the mere action of heading in the right direction was enough to elicit that praise.

This is the sort of thing that so perplexed me. I couldn’t quite get that even though the task was not officially completed that praise or admiration would come out of it.

Now, here I am, learning about Law of Attraction, and I’ve heard stories and recommendations that practically say the same thing. I figure, there must be something to this, but I can’t lie. That would be wrong.

Well, that’s true. It would be wrong to lie. But now I finally see that these are not lies. They are simply a different way of looking at things that many are used to. It is the concept of seeing the end in the beginning. Even if the bed has not been made physically, in the world of reality (and some would call this the world of imagination, but please bear with me) it has been made. We do this by creating something in our minds eye. The difference is that we see that creation as true reality and physical reality as a reflection of that other reality. Law of attraction is about reflecting true reality in this physical reality and our feeling, our faith in that creation is what makes it real. Once we believe it is real, it is and it is simply a matter of time before physical reality catches up to it.

So, I am finally beginning to see this effect. I am finally beginning to believe this effect and I am finally beginning to feel this effect.

Let me describe my observations so far and I plan to elaborate more as this unfolds.

First, what I have been learning to do is want things that I already have. I grew up believing that if I want something, it is because I don’t already have it. I mean, why would you want something that you already have? But that’s practically the key right there. Somewhere it seems like an unwritten rule got put out there that you can’t want what you already have. If you have any understanding of the Law of Attraction, you can instantly see how defeating this is. If you want something, it presupposes you don’t have it and this vibration may keep you from getting it. If by some chance you do end up getting it, then suddenly, you no longer want it. I guess you can’t win for losing.

So, I’ve started by wanting the things that I have. This has already started changing my outlook on things. Now I see that many of the other things that I thought i wanted I did, indeed, already have, just perhaps not in the form I was expecting.

This has made it so much easier to now start believing that I have what I want and that is having a noticeable effect in my life.

Over the last few weeks, I have seen that I am organized, that I do have time to spend with friends and family, that I do have enough money to meet my needs and that I do finish things that I start. Indeed, these are more true than the lies I had been telling myself, I just was blinding myself to these truths.

I hope this post inspires someone to see things a little differently in their own lives.

Well I guess I haven’t been around much lately. I want folks to know that I’m still here.

I’ve recently started a new blog (because, heaven knows I haven’t given myself enough to do yet).

I’ve called it, “What to Want” and you can find it at http://whattowant.blogspot.com/ , but don’t think that I am conceited enough to know what it is that everyone should want. Instead, it is a blog about rephrasing things in such a way that they are positive (attractive) things, rather than negative (repulsive) things.

For instance, if you don’t want to screw up, what you are really saying is that you want to succeed. If you are familiar with the “Law of Attraction” as described in the movie, “The Secret”, then you are aware that what you think about the most is what you attract the most. If you think about what you don’t want, then you are likely to get more of it, so it is good to think of what you don’t want in terms of what you actually do want.

For some people this is easier than it is for others. I have found that I seem to have a bit of a knack for it, so I decided I would share my perspectives.

I hope that you or someone you know will find the site useful.

bye for now

Well, I’ve been thinking a lot about focus lately and I’ve been considering how I’d like to have more of it. As I contemplated this issue I began to consider, “What is focus?”.

I’ve seen and heard some extremely good metaphors for it over the years. For instance, I recall someone comparing it to a knife. I knife focuses the user’s effort onto a thin edge. As a result, that effort is multiplied and the knife easily cuts through many things, whereas a spoon, which is less focused, does not multiply a person’s effort as much, and would have much more difficulting cutting through things that the knife could. I remember another person comparing focus to a laser beam. Again, and again, the concept of barriers being easy to “cut” through when focus is applied comes up.

So I started asking myself more about this subject. I thought to myself, “okay, so how does focus work?” How do people sharpen themselves?

Some things began to come back into my memory. One of the first things I thought about was how vision focuses our thoughts. When we are looking at or envisioning something, our thoughts are drawn to it. It also occurred to me that questions are a way that we often focus ourselves. Asking questions causes us to focus on finding an answer.

Well, as I thought about this, it occurred to me that I focus all the time. So why do I seem to be having a problem with focus?

This is where I started to realize that while I may have improved my focus in some areas, I am not controlling, very well, how that focus is being applied. It’s as if I have a spoon in one hand and a knife in the other, and while I’m having difficulty cutting my food with the spoon, I am having no trouble, whatsoever, carving notches into the dinner table with the knife. I guess what I’m trying to say is that focus does us little good if it is not directed at something that will benefit us. Additionally, if we focus on too many things as once, we have essentially lost that focus.

I suddenly had this vision of “The Death Star” from the “Star Wars” movies. As I envisioned this, i thought about these lasers that would converge on a single point, to deliver even more power, through that point to break through whole planets, if they got in the way.

Now I’m not advocating the removal of rebel planets. All I am saying is that I am beginning to see focus as having many facets.

It seems as if, a person would have even more focus, if they were to consider a single problem at a time from multiple different angles. Rather than focusing different parts of our thoughts on numerous different things during a given period, what if we were to bring all of our consciousness to bear on a single topic. What’s more, if we were able to expand this to the concept of a mastermind group. What if that group were to get together and focus all its collective attention on a single problem. How quickly can you imagine problems being solved. I imagine pretty quickly.

I’m not sure where to start with implementing what I have just considered, but I sense that in order to achieve useful focus, I am going to have to use what I have discovered here. If anyone has any additional considerations, I would love to hear them. Please comment.

I am so excited to see a shift in my thinking. Yesterday, I experienced something that would, in all likelihood cause anyone to feel anger and resentment rather than peace and gratitude and just a year ago, I would not have been an exception to that.

Here’s the story.

A few days ago, I saw my neighbor out in front of his house when I got home from work. My neighbor is a landscaper and I have seen his passion for his own landscape, so I had spoken to him a while ago about some things I could do to help my own lawn. We had talked about making sure to aerate the lawn in Fall. So, I saw my neighbor and remembered that conversation and asked him if he could come by and aerate my lawn. He said he needed to wait for a good rain to loosen up the soil first, but then he would do it.

Well, it rained on Friday evening. So, I was on my way out of the house yesterday and there he was, out in front of my house with his aerator. I had not anticipated him coming so soon, for some reason and was mostly concerned that I didn’t have means to pay him at that moment, but I was already running a bit late so I asked him if it would be okay to pay him the next day and he said, that would be fine.

So, now I’m really started to feel rushed. I hop in my car and proceed to back out of my driveway and then, “CRUNCH”. What the heck happened? I look back and instantly realized that I hadn’t noticed that the handle of the aerator was partly in my driveway, and I ran right into it without noticing it.

The first thing I thought was, “I hope I didn’t damage my neighbor’s aerator.” I got out of my car and looked at it and saw that it did not appear to be damaged and I told my neighbor that if there was anything wrong with it, I would take care of it.  My own car, was damaged. I smashed my left blinker light covering. My neighbor felt bad that he had left the aerator where he did. To me, however, I was actually thankful. It occurred to me quickly, that in the frame of mind I was in, driving a lethal weapon was not a good idea. I realized, right away, that I could have just run into my neighbor, or even a child. How much worse would that have been? Now, I don’t want to go into all the what if’s, the point is only that, instead of feeling resentful that my neighbor had shown up unexpectedly and left his aerator partly in the path of my driveway where it would damage my car, or feeling angry at myself for being so stupid as to not notice it, I felt totally thankful and blessed to have only done a small bit of damage to my car and nothing or no one else.

Additionally, I had an opportunity to show my son, not only how to see something like this as a positive thing, but also to show him that even experienced drivers can make mistakes. I remember when I was younger, often believing that I had mastered driving and that I wouldn’t make mistakes like that. I have since come to understand that many times that I had avoided collisions when I was younger was not as much due to some sort of driving proficiency as it was due to sheer luck. Now I know better, but I needed to have moments like the one I had yesterday to teach me that. I can’t say what my son (who’s only 12 right now) will take away from this, but I did explain to him that he will need to be vigilant all the time, when he drives, in order to minimize any chance of a fatal mistake.

I am seeing so much more wealth in my life. I hope this will help others to see the good in their lives.

Okay, so I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this lately.

It seems to me that the value of money is changing rapidly. It is totally losing its meaning and as a tool, it is frequently being misused and abused.

I just saw an interesting onine video at www.storyofstuff.com. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. Annie Leonard describes the full cycle that stuff goes through, at least for folks in the U.S. and how the current process is killing us and our planet. It is not sustainable, and that I truly believe. Don’t get me wrong, I think that capitalism has its merits, and is, perhaps, better than socialism. However, I see both of these as extremes, neither of which can live on their own.

So, with socialism and capitalism failing, what might be the next big thing? I mean, how do we strike a balance? How do we motivate people to stay active and continue to serve, where the service is needed, without money or law or nationalism to drive them.

Well, ultimately, I think religion will play a big part in that, but for now, I don’t see that happening.

I have some ideas to kick start the new economy, but honestly, I don’t have any answers here. I think that we all need to start thinking about this issue and determining if we can find a way.

I had one idea recently and found that I’m not the only one. I found the web site www.favorpals.com. I don’t know how long it has been around, but it looks relatively unused, as of the time of this writing. Even so, I think there is merit in the idea.

I was thinking of a sort of favor bulletin board, where people could post favors that they need and others could post favors that they are able to provide. Initially, favors would be completely charitable. So, in essence, people would give favors to those who need them. For those of you familiar with Law of Attraction and Law of Tenfold return, you would instantly recognize that nothing is ever truly sacrificed, as it always comes back. So this would provide an outlet, of sorts, for this sort of thing.

I was also thinking, however, that something could be set up to reward those who serve more. Some sort of point system or something like that, where, perhaps people with higher points appear higher on the favor request list when they have favors they would like done. Perhaps other incentives could be worked into the system.

This system would not do away with capitalism or socialism, of course, but could potentially be added to those types of systems to augment them and make them work better. Imagine if we could get a real following. Perhaps we could prioritize favors for people who have more needs. People in lower income brackets, children, elderly, people with special needs or circumstances, etc. could potentially be worth more points to do favors for. Perhaps certain types of favors could be worth more, like education, farming tasks and other favors that directly focus on the needs of people, versus their wants.

Anway, I hope this has inspired some thought. I would love to see some feedback on this.