This blog was started in connection to me (Joe Charogoff), my books, and the Human Understanding Group (HUG). They all relate to one thing, which I consider to be of ultimate importance… us.

To make a long story less long- I had trauma to my brain when I was young. It, and a medication I took for it, caused negative mental and in turn physical effects. I was clearly a little slower and stranger than average children in school. They noticed I was different and I noticed I was different, so I got put in that category all by myself. By the time I got off the medication, and my brain started operating ‘normally’,  I was in middle school. I began fitting in with other kids and even made some friends. I wreaked some havoc with them and had a pretty standard middle-school experience as a recognized misfit. Then in high school, I became secluded once again as my middle-school friends all filed into different groups, and I didn’t fit with any of them. I didn’t have likes or dislikes that coincided with the groups in school, and I wasn’t strong enough to just try something new on my own.

My 4.5 year high-school journey (I failed pottery my senior year and missed 82 days- I’m serious)  ended up seeming like no more than a sentence to a very liberal prison. Which might not be that horrible, unless you’re one of the few people with no friends who opposes everything they try and teach you. I didn’t know my bearings. I didn’t define who I am. While other kids continued learning about History, Language, Science, Math, and Art, I wandered off daydreaming and scribbling. While they adapted to ‘becoming’ rockers, punks, athletes, or nerds, I didn’t adapt at all. I just wished things were different, and I began observing why they are the way they are; why we separate ourselves, and where it comes from within us. I was so filled with fear I couldn’t act to fix it, but I saw how we are all the same and don’t act like it.

My solitary existence continued for the most part as I grew up. I lived with my siblings in Colorado before moving to Los Angeles on my own. I met and moved in with a woman who I ended up getting married to. I still didn’t have any friends, and I’d only really do anything social with my wife and/or her boys. I would still think about humanity and how and why we act how we do, but I was very comfortable living with her, so it wasn’t something I spent much time worrying about. We were together for about 7 years, but then I left, after the two of us grew very far apart.

I moved in to a small studio apartment with my dog. On the second day I had a unique and indescribable mental experience. It was, at least so far, a once in a life-time ordeal. My life didn’t flash before my eyes in terms of circumstances I’ve been through, but mental mistakes and the potential progressive choices I could have made, did flash through my mind. In other words, I relived the most important points in my memory when I could have overcome my automated decision making process (subconscious), but did not out of fear. I connected my knowledge of human weakness and potential to my own existence. And I did it for the first time in thirty years, despite that I had thought about it, and seen it in others. I showed my self how flawed I’ve been and how incredible I can be. And I soon realized that messing up (making subconscious determinations for comfort) so often hurts me more than anyone else partly because it always limits my humanity. It was really tough to come to terms with how my default humanity hurt my wife and others around me, but it was (and is) exponentially tougher to deal with how I hurt my self. But because I deal with it, instead of pretending it’s not there, I have changed my humanity for the better. I have a long way to go, and I realize that it’s a never ending conflict, but life means a whole lot more when you are what you’re fighting for.

In a relatively short post, that is what this blog, my books, my group, and I are mainly about. It is really hard for some people to recognize that they are the reason for everything they want, and there’s more to them then what they assume, but that doesn’t change how true it is.

HUG Website