Category Archives: Life In General

end of the road

April 11, 2019 8:29 PM , Leave a Comment ,

(Adapted and expanded from a Facebook post from May 2018)

I don’t quite remember when I first began doing these “end of the trip” personal summaries.  Certainly as far back as the turn of the century when I was coming back home from Baltimore though I might have done it prior to that. I just remember that particular time sitting in a mostly empty Baltimore airport terminal scribbling some random thoughts about the trip into a notebook. Since that time I have done summaries for most personal vacations and some work trips.

I’m standing in front of my hotel in east London at 4 AM waiting for my Lyft to arrive. On the last day in the UK I finally get to see just a wisp of one of those famous London fogs that everyone goes on about.  Not impressed. I do however suddenly have a craving for a cigarette.  Maybe it’s the urban setting that’s doing it but the craving passes by fairly quickly.

I decided to give myself a treat after two weeks of ‘roughing it’ and got a room at an upscale hi-rise hotel. A glass and steel spire with nice new streets, expensive roof top restaurants, and all night bars and clubs where the current crop of stylish 20somethings hang out. So this is how the other half lives.

The temptation to stay another two or three nights was strong but all vacations have to come to an end and soon the night wound down fairly quickly as I had a dawn flight out of Heathrow.

The next morning up pulls an E-class Mercedes and the driver comes out wearing a peaked cap. I didn’t ask for a fancy car and I suddenly felt rather scruffy in my travel-worn clothes and my travel backpack.

We whisk down the empty streets of London towards Paddington station. Even on empty streets it would take about an hour to get to Heathrow. The Paddington express would get me there in fifteen minutes.

The driver turns on the radio. A morning DJ is doing what morning DJs all over the US would do. Playing songs, talking to callers, getting people pumped up for the work day to come.

I could live here. I could get used to using the underground and walking everywhere and the smaller houses and running from one small store to another to get things instead of finding everything in one store.

I could probably make a go of it in any of the countries that I visited. You can learn local languages and customs fairly quickly if you want to or are forced to.

At the Airport I swap out the last of my English pounds, Euros, and Korunas for good old American dollars.

I’m thinking about how I’ll get home once I step out from Hobby airport in Houston and what the weather will be like.

My mind is shifting back out of vacation mode. I planned everything beforehand so I had little to think about during the trip. I just went to my next destination and it was there waiting for me.

While people around me went about their jobs and lives I wandered round with nothing to do. Except… joggers. Walking around London and Paris in the middle of the day I would encounter joggers and I would wonder what kind of job that they had that allowed them to take a jog in the middle of the day.

For the last two weeks my room was cleaned, my bed was made, my food was cooked, and my transport was arranged but now I’m going back to the real world.

Bills to pay, appointments to arrange and keep, checklists and schedules to make. Beds to make, meals to cook, places to drive to. A life.

My first real vacation in four years. My first real mental break since my dad died. I have come to terms with the fact that he will no longer play a part in my decision-making process.

For the past five years I’ve planned my life round his needs and now that chapter is closed. I can now put my needs in the forefront. The thought frightens me a bit.

I feel a bit like a soldier that’s just come home from a war with no clue about the future.

I had my daily routines, my schedule, the course of my life all built around him and putting him ahead of everything else so that he’d never want for anything or that his health might suffer. But that’s gone now and I have to do things for my benefit and I find that hard to do.

During the vacation I tried to remember what my ‘life plans’ were before I committed myself to take care of my parents. Those notions of what was “going to happen” seem like they belong to some other person.  My life path has gone onto a totally different course.

Twelve years ago I realized that my dad would need care and what and who I could depend upon to help. Ten years ago I bought a house to take care of both of my parents, a big Four bedroom house with front and a back lawn. Totally impractical for a childless bachelor but something that would give them the space that they had been accustomed to.  Five years ago they came to live with me.

I gave up a normal social life. The invites to events and parties trickled down to a few and then to none. No point inviting me if I always said I couldn’t go. I’ve become contented with a movie or a play on the weekends.  The parents and the job filled most of my waking hours.

The job I didn’t particularly like but it would let me work from home and stay close to them so I had to keep going. This came in particularly useful in the last year of my dad’s life when I had to rush him to the hospital more than once.

But now I’m coming home tabula rasa, with a clean slate. My dad is gone, my job is gone. I lost my job in March.

Maybe my mind couldn’t concentrate on the work anymore, or maybe I didn’t see the point in staying at a job I didn’t like with no compelling reason to stay, or maybe after 15 years of doing inside sales I just burnt out.

Sales was never a good fit for me. I’ve never been a born salesman. Somehow I kept it going because I had to. But I don’t see myself going back. Not to that company at least and probably not to the sales field.

Don’t ask me what’s to come for me. I don’t know. I’ve got savings so I’m okay for a while. I told myself that I was taking this trip to get some inspiration or some new idea of where to go and what to do. I think I knew that wasn’t true.

Truthfully I just needed time away from me.

Maybe now I can force myself to look at my situation and see something that I wasn’t seeing before. Get a clue about what to do.

Landing in Ireland and running to my next destination.

(Errata – June 2019.  One of my British correspondents rightly pointed out that Lyft does not operate in the UK. I went back through my Uber ride records and confirmed that it was Uber.  All I can say is that it was 4 in the morning and I earnestly remember that it was a Lyft but I was mistaken.)

Posted in: life in general, memories, travel, vacations, work

2016 and moving forward

December 13, 2016 6:26 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Last time I did this I was at a tea house.  That tea house is long gone now and my oh my how things have changed since then but then again some things haven’t changed.

Let’s rewind a bit before the tea house.  I was at a coffee shop with an acquaintance.  She noticed that I was limping round because of my ankle injury.  She told me that her husband had the same thing and that it took him over 6 months to recuperate.  I mentally winced.  6 months!?!?

It turned out she was pretty dead on correct.  The injury was the centerpiece of the first half of my year. A daily nagging and painful reminder of how things were in general. I worked my way back from the injury and in fact I ran a 10k race in November.  The ankle is not fully healed.  On cold mornings it still hurts and I still don’t run on a daily basis.  But perhaps given more time it will one day heal totally.

This year has in some ways been a wake up call and a reminder of how time has passed.  Injuries like this that I could shrug off now take time to heal.  Beyond that I find that some of the interests of my youth no longer hold the same allure that they used to.  The science fiction novels, the action movies, the loud music just don’t interest or thrill me as they used to.  From time to time I still indulge but I find that I am far more picky as to what I spend my time on.

The business part of my life has picked up during the course of the year.  A 4 month-long sales doldrum finally broke in February and I’m slowly returning to form.  I find that the sales arena is now much more competitive.  We live in leaner economic times and I have to do my utmost on each and every sales opportunity and lead to try to convert them into projects for our company.

But of course the big news of the year was and still is the election. Along with millions of others I stayed up that Tuesday night in early November and watched dumbfounded as all the election polls were proven wrong.  The implications of what this election might mean to not just my life but the country and the world in general began to sink in that sleepless night and for many nights to come.

Panic has given way to anger and then determination.

In the past couple of weeks that determination to stand up and resist the new administration and to work to oppose the dismantling of our freedoms has become more and more pronounced.

It’s curious.  Thinking about the effects of this election and my need to speak up and act has made me think more about my life and my life goals in the last month than I have for a long time.

I’ve begun to realize that in some ways my life goals in previous years have been somewhat shallow.  In general, those life goals consisted of maintaining my employment, paying off my house, building up a retirement nest egg, and finally selling the house and moving to a retirement spot.  Possibly some place in Europe or maybe the southwest US.  Not the worst life but not the best either.

But now, now I feel that this election has given my life a certain focus.  I feel that this is a call to take action and to become more involved. I can’t just sit idly by and just go to work while things are occurring right in front of my face and not take action.

I’m not blind and I can see very clearly what is happening and that I have to lend my voice to those that oppose the changes coming to our country.  I’ve never been what you would call hugely political but then again I’ve never before felt such a threat to our democracy.

I don’t imagine that the next few years will be easy and I don’t think that we’ve hit rock bottom yet.  But I do think that if I hold on with steadfast determination that things will change for the better.  I also think that no matter what happens that my life will be the better for having participated and having done my part.

My life will at least be more interesting.

Posted in: aging, goals, life in general, politics

How did we manage to live before….

August 23, 2016 7:42 PM , Leave a Comment ,

For a couple of years now it’s been my habit to wind down the working day by logging onto all my social media sites at the same time and catching up on everything as I finish my work day.

Online social media has made itself ubiquitous and to some degree almost inescapable in the last 3 or 4 years.  You can log into your social media accounts in so many ways that it almost seems that you can’t get away from it.

If you have some sort of event or some sort of business that is in any way related to the internet it is almost compulsory for you to become involved in social media.  Even if you’re just an individual you are almost obliged to get on and find out what all your friends are doing else you risk falling behind in the latest events and not knowing what is happening in your little social domain.

Lately however it has been become overwhelming.  Disasters, news events, the elections, gossip, they all get bandied about by one contact or another on social media sites.  You see the same piece regurgitated in a seemingly endless stream of story overload.  Then of course comes the incisive commentary from your contact list.  People on the left, on the right, people from one group and another.  Lastly comes all the fighting and bickering.

And of course a friend of a friend (and possibly of a friend) posts about some tragedy in their life.  I want to empathize with their plight but when you have so many people on your news feed demanding your attention it all becomes too much to process and I feel that it actually drains my emotional batteries to the point that I just don’t want to know any more.

I feel like these social media sites aren’t so much communicating with me as they are yelling at me.

So I just left.  At first it was for nothing more than just to get away from it all and take an online vacation.  To let all the cyber babble die down and give my mind a break.

Surprisingly it was easy.  I thought I would want to constantly check and get updates but I found that the first day went off pretty much without any hassle at all.  I can’t say that I found a ton of “extra time” or made great personal discoveries by being by myself.  I didn’t even take time to wonder how easy it had been to not log in. It was just, quiet.

Instead of logging in I read, I watched a couple of movies on Netflix, “The big short”, a highly entertaining and thoughtful movie.  I just went about my daily life without the nagging feeling that I was missing out on something by not checking in.

By day 3 however something curious happened.  Social media missed me.  Not the individual people mind you.  I don’t think they even noticed I was gone honestly.  No, the social media websites themselves started sending me emails and telling me how many new notices and notifications had happened since I had last logged in.  Another website sent me suggestions for new people to follow that I might enjoy reading about.

By day 4 I had accumulated 99 notifications and then the spam emails kept repeating themselves.  Apparently 99 notifications is the upper limit the programmers set.  Perhaps they couldn’t believe that someone would let more than 99 notifications go by without checking in.

The only time I was somewhat tempted to log in and post something was when I went to a cafe on the east side of Houston and I wanted to post a picture of the cafe.  But as I sat in the cafe I began to think about this and wonder.  Does posting about the cafe experience make the experience any better?  Why share everything?

Andes Cafe

Andes Cafe

I had decided somewhere at the beginning of the “experiment” to come back in a week.  A week passed and I found I had absolutely no desire to log back in.  I was somewhat apprehensive to tell the truth.  I finally relented about ten days in and logged back in.

Like someone coming back from vacation that has a mailbox stuffed with letters, I had to wade through all my old notifications and messages.  After about 2 minutes I just hit the “read” button on everything.  Nothing had changed.  I honestly don’t know what I expected to have changed.

Perhaps one thing that has changed is that I no longer feel that having an online presence is as de rigueur as I once thought that it was.  A world without social media is not unimaginable.

I will continue to log in but I no longer feel as invested into the whole social media experience.  I don’t feel that I have to share every moment in my life or react to everyone’s news anymore.

You can live your life off the net quite well and find a satisfying life.  You can leave.

Posted in: internet, life in general, news, social media, social networks

Clearing the slate

January 1, 2016 8:12 AM , Leave a Comment ,

December 19, 2015

Sitting at Té one last time.  Having a cup of tea and looking around.  Remembering and thinking.

I’m going to miss this place so much once it shuts down.  So many happy afternoons and evenings spent here in all sorts of weather.  Just writing, thinking, and relaxing.  Places like this exist to nurture the soul.

But time moves on and things change.

At the end of each year I come up with a list of goals for the next year.  I’m sitting here reading a copy of my goals for 2015 on my smartphone and shaking my head in dismay.  Such an ambitious plan and so many things that went wrong almost from the start.

I think it’s fair to say that 2015 was not a good year for me.  Strangely enough I find that most of the people who I know concur with this viewpoint.  I know of almost no people who consider 2015 to have been a good year.

This particular year began with a financial investment that went bad and barely broke even, to work challenges all year-long, to a very painful personal relationship episode, to a seemingly endless series of small but annoying mini-disasters that I had to work my way through, and finally to some health related problems at the end of the year that persist.

So here I sit with the weight of it all crushing down on me.

Despair is a narcissistic state of mind.  In a way it’s pleasant to lose oneself to despair and let your worries and fears take over.  No responsibility, just let things happen as they may.  But after a while you realize that it’s not getting anything useful done. So you stand up straight, square your shoulders, and look your problems right in the eye.

Or that’s what I normally do.  This time though I have to sit back for a second to take a deep breath and let out a deep sigh.  Middle age makes it a bit harder to pick up the pieces.

Okay, one more time.

An extremely trimmed down set of goals for 2016.  Sixteen  pages were way too much.  Focusing on the core fundamentals of my life and loosening up my goals as to what constitutes a “win”.  Normally I would council doing the opposite and tightening up goals and making goals harder to achieve.  This however is going to be a rebuilding year.  If I can get back to the state that I was in at the end of last year I will be ecstatic.

Looking back at last year’s goals I think that I was trying too hard to please other people in my life.  To make their lives better.  I was also trying to use other people’s goals in my life and in a sense live up to their expectations.  I need to live my own life and fulfill my own dreams.

So I start off fresh and cast away everything that isn’t useful or is in fact hindering me.  Firstly I will try to fix my broken body so I can then mend the rest of my broken life.  I have few extended goals that I want for myself this year.  I don’t know if I will be able to reach them but they’re there for me to aim for.

Two years ago I wrote about the barren landscape and how we craft the future.  We also craft our problems and the situations that get us into those problems.  But, we can also craft the solutions to those problems.

I finish the last of my matcha and buy a bag to make my own at home.  I leave Té for the last time.

Thank you for one last memory.

Posted in: goals, habits, holidays, life in general

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and the bah humbugs

December 18, 2015 8:14 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I’ve been on a theater kick for the past couple of years and we are right now at the tail end of the 2015 Fall theater season in Houston.  I just have to say that the theater scene in Houston keeps getting better and better all the time.  Houston has gained a national reputation for its fine dining choices and I can see a time when it gains a name as a live theater mecca as well.

But anyways, some of the local troupes that I follow put on Christmas and holiday related plays to cap the year.  Stark Naked Theater put on “Ho Ho Humbug 2.0“, Bayou City Theatrics put on “The 12 dates of Christmas“, and the Classical Theater Company put on “A Christmas Carol“.

The last is of course the classic Charles Dickens story and I wanted to see it as I’ve never seen it performed live but the other two were contemporary stories set in or near present day America and dealt mainly with how we perceive and deal with this time of year.

For better or for worse, people in this country have come to associate this holiday season with certain things.

  • Religion of course.  This is a christian holiday and at one time this was a predominantly christian nation.  Whether you agree with it or not you can’t deny that there is an influence there.
  • Traditions that bind us to certain European countries where Americans originated from
  • Commercialism which is more of an american tradition.

From the late 19th century till about the Mid 20th century this was the Christmas season (the term “holiday season” wasn’t in widespread use).  Government, Church, and commercial interests helped spread and foster the season and developed it into what we came to know as Christmas time.

But then in the mid 20th century we began to see this change over time.  People started to notice that this time of year didn’t resonate with everyone.

One of the earliest examples was the Peanuts Christmas TV special where one of the characters proclaimed that Christmas was a racket and controlled by some company “back East”.  This illustrated the disconnect that some people had always felt around this time of year.

Mass media began to notice that besides the Christian majority that there were people from other faiths in this country and that more and more new Americans were arriving from non western European lands.

At the same time, commercial interests were moving to leverage the holiday for all it was worth.  Store displays are now put up as much as two months in advance and even though there has been some consumer backlash over this, they don’t seem to care that much.

I thought about all these points as I attended the plays I mentioned up above.

Christmas Carol is of course the original story about someone who has disconnected from the holiday.  Scrooge had consciously made a decision to set himself apart from humanity.  The spirits show him that this was not always the case and that he still had time to fix this condition.

12 dates of Christmas was a story about a woman who loses her fiance at Thanksgiving time and for the next 12 months has disastrous dates with various men.  She reflects on how “family centered” that the holidays can be and how single people can feel ostracized around the holiday season.

Ho ho Humbug 2.0 was the most poignant of the three.  A writer, that hates the holidays, needs a temporary job to make his rent and by accident winds up playing a store Santa Claus.  Through some soliloquies the writer explains that even as a child he had never connected to Christmas and that he felt that this job was a farce.

As the play progresses and he interacts with his co-workers and with the customers, he comes to see that Christmas means so much more than the commercialism, the decorations and customs, and even the religious aspect.  Christmas had a distinct meaning to everyone he met.  In the end he doesn’t embrace all the aspects of the holiday but he comes to find a way that he can celebrate the season and make it his own.

I think that last point is the most important.  I see some people decrying the holidays as being too commercial, too religious, too superficial.  But then I look around at people from other parts of the world cheerfully celebrating the holiday and pretty much just ignoring the bits that they don’t like or understand.

For example, Christmas is huge in Japan for the gifting aspect.  Not many Christians there.  I know some Jewish families that put up Christmas trees and focus in on the gift giving and celebration aspects.  Last year I was on vacation in the tropics at this time of year and I saw some of the locals decorating their hut with a Christmas tree.

I guess what I am trying to say is that you need to make the holiday your own in order to enjoy it.  Most people enjoy the season out of habit.  But for those that find the season to be a chore or a bother, I think that if you look more closely that there is something there for you to enjoy as well.

 

Merry Christmas

Posted in: Christmas, consumerism, culture, current events, holidays, Houston, life in general, pop culture, theater, thought , Tagged: ,

Lacuna

September 13, 2015 9:21 AM , Leave a Comment ,

 

No, that’s not quite correct.  The word lacuna suggests a chasm or a cavity.  Something that was there but isn’t there now.

 

Break?  No. Much too pedestrian.

Coda would be an ending.

Discontinuity? Interim?

 

I suppose I will have to go with hiatus.  Which is what this is.  As of this post, this blog is going on an indefinite hiatus.

 

Why? Several reasons.

I began this blog as a way to express and collect ideas and thoughts, to explore and strengthen my writing muscle, to centralize bits and pieces of my writing that I’ve done over the last 20 or so years in one spot.  I think I have accomplished all of this.

However, I’ve been re-reading some of the posts in the last six months and I am less than satisfied.  In some cases I’m appalled that I published some posts.  Admittedly some posts have been very good but on the whole I don’t like what I’ve turned out in the last half-year.  Bad ideas, bad execution, and ultimately a bad return on the time invested.

I have over 450 posts written over the last two and half years.  I can’t really expect to stay at the top of my form and fresh for such a long period of time.

Staying fresh and relevant is another point.  I find myself thinking of old ideas and things that I previously wrote and then reviewing my posts and finding that I already wrote about this or that.

I find that taking the time and energy to write this blog on a regular basis has come to sap my will and strength to write other more meaningful and worthwhile pieces.  That, certainly was never the point of this blog.  It is in fact nearly the opposite of what I intended.

Lastly, I don’t feel the joy of writing this blog anymore.  It’s become a tedious chore that more often than not I have begun to dread.  That’s no way to carry on.

I need time to digest and process the last few years of my life and all the changes that have and are taking place. I also need to get out there and live a little.  Reflection is fine,  it’s necessary and I find that on the whole people don’t do enough of it.  Although reflection is a good thing, a mind needs new ideas, new experiences, and new perspectives from time to time.

So I’m taking time off from writing this blog.  Maybe a few weeks, a few months, a few years.  Well, doubtfully a few years.  But you never know.  I need time to find something new to say.  Maybe with time I will come to find the joy in blogging again. In the meantime I will drop in from time to time to answer any comments and clean up any spam.

 

Till then,

W

 

Posted in: blogs, life in general, writing

The story of your life

September 11, 2015 7:06 AM , Leave a Comment ,

“We are the sum of our experiences”

I’ve heard this quote in several different versions in various books, movies, and plays.  Usually it is being offered up as advice by an older character to a younger character to take the long view of life and not just dwell upon a single event as the defining event of their life.

“When I asked for strength, God sent me hardships to make me grow stronger.”

Possibly a Hindi, native american, Jewish, or christian saying.  Possibly just some universal wisdom that transcends time and culture.

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.”

Shakespeare from As you like it.

I’ve had to think about and take some comfort in these sayings this year.  This has not been the year that I contemplated or planned for.  Don’t get me wrong, this has been far from a disastrous year but definitely not one that I would like to repeat and we’re not even done yet. But I’ve been trying to make sense and put a positive spin on what’s been going on.

So going in order:  “We are the sum of our experiences”

I am more than a mere biomechanical construct set down on this planet to move dirt around till I wind down.  At least I hope so.  The things that I have done and experienced, the things that have happened to me, the events that I’ve lived through, have shaped and changed my perspective over time.  More than that, the people I have met have altered my outlook on life and given me new things to think about.  I look back on the difficulties that I’ve lived through and see how they have prepared me for some of the challenges that I have or am living through right now.  Without those experiences and the people related to those experiences I would not be me.

Which leads me into the second saying; “When I asked for strength, God sent me hardships”.  I don’t see any of the bad times that I’ve had in my life as tragedies or pointless events or as some sort of punishment.  At least I try not to.  I mean I know it’s tempting to look for fault or to curse and spit when things are going wrong.  I know that I have succumbed to that temptation from time to time.  But over the long haul I see them as scars or marks of experience that remind me that I have survived in the past and that I can continue to survive no matter how much things change or what life throws at me.

And life does change which leads me to the last saying “All the world’s…”

Sometimes I think that life is like a book.  The experiences, the facets of life, are the chapters.  You are the protagonist and your life is the main plot line.  Of course you don’t get to guide or control the plot or the other characters.  Everything and everyone writes the totality of the story but it all comes together in the end.

The people you know are the other characters.  Just like in a long novel some characters make entrances, they affect the story, and then they leave and so ends a chapter.  None of them are truly evil or truly good.  They just play out their parts in your story while living out their own story, of which by the way you are a character in.  We affect and counter affect each other and the resulting mess is what we call life.

I am now trying to look at this year as a learning experience, something to grow and build upon, a facet of my life preparing me for the next chapter whatever that may be.  I have to believe that the people and experiences in the last year have imparted some sort of lesson or wisdom or something that will lead me to the next part of my life.  Which leads me to one final quote.

“We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” – Joseph Campbell

That’s the hardest part, letting go and stepping out into the darkness, possibly stepping out into nothingness.  You can get so wrapped up in your dreams and plans that letting go is physically painful.  Facing a new reality without a specific plan or a dream is frightening.

In the end though whether I want to or not, the chapter comes to an end and I have to turn the page and begin writing the next sentence.

Posted in: faith, family, friends, life in general, personality, philosophy, relationships

The extremes

September 9, 2015 6:56 AM , Leave a Comment ,

You can really get depressed reading articles about the upcoming national election.  Pedagogues and extremists are in style and everyone is competing to outdo everyone else in how far that they can push the national dialogue to the extreme edges of reason and good taste.  The most disturbing part is how much the public is eating it up.

Maybe it’s due to a change in perspective over the years or maybe the political environment has changed over time but I don’t believe that I have ever seen the politics of the nation as sharply divided as they are now.

I don’t see any spirit of cooperation or a genuine desire to do what’s best for the nation instead of finding advantage or benefit for the party or even just for single politicians.

Like I said it’s depressing.

The funny thing is that on the whole we need to have extremists out on the edges of the party.  You’ll never find new and innovative political thought in the center. Or at least not much.  It’s out on the extremes where new solutions or new approaches or new tacks are to be found that will solve problems that come up.  Usually we can derive great benefit from people along the edges as long as they’re controlled and their energies are channeled for the greater good.

Lately however there has been a dearth of leadership at the top of the large political parties and these extremists have taken the opportunity to seize power and to alter the trajectory of the political parties.  In true political fashion they have also taken care to keep themselves in power and in control.

So the longer that these extremists stay in power, the harder it will be to remove them.

I don’t hold out much hope for 2016.  I said previously that no new solutions or ideas can be found in the center.  For the most part this is true but one old idea may come back in vogue.  The idea of mutual cooperation and bipartisanship.  A rather old and not at all glamorous idea but I think if the old party leaderships want to oust the extremists that they will have to turn to each other and support each others bid to wrest power back from the new leadership.

Otherwise we will find ourselves in a gloomy future ruled by those that can spend enough money to get their candidates into power and by those that can yell the loudest.

Posted in: life in general, politics

Never be afraid to share

September 7, 2015 6:59 AM , Leave a Comment ,

One of the guys on my Facebook feed always posts up quotes from a pop philosopher.  I suppose all of us have that friend, the one that’s not afraid to share posts from someone who inspires him.  Maybe we even are that person.

Most of the advice that my acquaintance posts is fairly generic stuff.  Things like “Don’t judge a book by its cover” or “Always be kind to one another”.  Of course it’s all delivered in this philosopher’s own style and for some reason that really spoke to this friend of mine so he thought he ought to share it with everyone else.

Honestly whenever I see one of these posts I just cruise past the post.  I don’t find it to be particularly sage-like or inspirational. But I don’t mind if this person posts this.

Someone did however.  Someone on this person’s friend list took him to task for posting these little inspirational memes.  My friend gave a very spirited and well thought defense of his posts.  He wasn’t shy about his beliefs and his need to share them and as he pointed out if this other person didn’t like those posts then he was always free to unfriend him.

What really struck me though is how my acquaintance stuck to his beliefs and showed that he wasn’t ashamed or afraid to share them.

I feel that in the modern age that we’ve become too apologetic and almost ashamed of the beliefs that we hold.  Whether those beliefs are religious or not doesn’t seem to matter.  We try to accommodate other people and their beliefs so much that we shy away from promoting what we believe.  I don’t advocate for those beliefs that are hurtful or exclude others.  I also don’t believe in being obnoxious and insisting on sharing my beliefs with those that don’t want to hear about it.  Don’t let me be misunderstood about that.

But I do think that there is a lot of good in the world that can be shared and we simply don’t because we are either too shy to express those beliefs or are in some weird way ashamed of them.

In The Merchant of Venice a character mentions that the quality of mercy blesses not only those that receive it but those that give it.  I think it’s the same with sharing your beliefs with others.

Posted in: advice, education, inspiration, life in general

Hard truth

September 5, 2015 7:04 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Sometimes people don’t listen.

You can be all logical and present your arguments in a well thought out fashion and still they won’t listen.  I’ve found that when people have an idea fixed in their mind that nothing will push them away from that idea.  No matter how well-reasoned out your statements are, no matter how large the preponderance of evidence.  They will stick to their position no matter what.

Maybe it’s an important matter, maybe it’s a difference of opinion.  But whatever the case may be, this person won’t listen to anything that you say.  So what to do?

Sometimes logic and reason just won’t do the job.  You have to think of this as a sort of sales pitch or a play or a presentation.  You have to think about the audience and what might motivate them.

Sometimes you might try a shocking statement.  Something to snap them out of their train of thought and make them take notice.  Sometimes humor will work.  Make them smile, put them at ease.  They might be more receptive this way.  Sometimes you might have to sneak your point in the back door through some convoluted logic or go the roundabout route to get them to see things your way.

Sometimes it’s fierce yelling that will do the trick.  Not very much in vogue these days but sometimes you have to do what works.

Again, not everyone is like you.  You need to consider the person or people who you are talking to and consider what their point of view is.  If they’re being defensive, what are they being defensive about?  Avoid that and go round.

They won’t all respond to the same stimuli or logic and if the matter really is that important and you really do need to get your point across, then isn’t trying an alternate method worth it?

Posted in: communication, ideas, life in general