Category Archives: Life In General

I was at Memorial city mall the other day picking up some new running gear and stopped off at the food court for a smoothie.  I sat in the main lounge and watched people come and go.  I normally avoid malls so I had not done this in some time.

Watched people come and go.  Some shopping, some just browsing, some just taking a break from their everyday routine, but mostly trying to stay away from the Houston heat and humidity.

You could tell from the way they walked and dressed what they were up to.  The mom purposefully striding and shooing her kids along had just arrived and was on her way to Macy’s.  The 5 kids ambling along and giggling were dodging responsibility and enjoying their Summer.  The severely overdressed woman not carrying a purse and walking quickly was a sales girl for one of the boutiques in the mall possibly getting something to eat on her lunch break.  On the other hand the severely overdressed woman carrying a purse and sedately walking along was probably an exec who had come out after work to shop.

Body postures give away so much too.  People that know what they want or where they’re going to seem to have a “closed” body.  Their arms are pulled in, they lean forward a bit, they walk faster.  People out for a stroll have a more open posture, they look around more, their arms spread out, they walk upright and more sedately.

Similarly people thinking about problems sit hunched forward, their heads down, their hands clenched or their arms folded.  People just relaxing sit back, their arms spread out, they take in their environment.

Sometimes I marvel at what some people think is appropriate to wear out in public or in some cases not wear.  What is even more amazing is that many people around them don’t even notice or at least pretend not to.  Such an acceptance would not have been possible just a generation ago.

i started avoiding the mall because it didn’t really offer anything that i wanted to buy but I forgot that it did have something that I liked and that was the chance to observe people.  One day I should really take a laptop with me and describe what I see as it happens.

The movie “Repo man” is generally seen as a mindless story about repo men and car towing but it has some deep moments in it.

One of the characters describes an event that many (in fact almost all) people have gone through.  One person will be thinking about a subject and for some reason someone else is thinking about the same subject or that subject manifests in some other way.

Coincidence?  Carl Jung didn’t think so.  He described a link in the greater collective unconscious.  Students of Jung have expanded upon this and have spoken about the ability to “tune” into the universe and getting what you need without thinking about it.

Others just say it’s just a series of events that just happen around the same time.

Do we live in a universe full of random unconnected events?  Is our mind just trying to make sense and order out of senselessness and disorder?  Or is there “something” out there that we still don’t understand?

2004 and it was a drizzly early Saturday night.  About May I think it was.

I was dressed up, I had a date (for once), and I was late.  I stopped at the turn light waiting for the light to change.  A homeless man was on the median with a sign asking for money.

He was in his late thirties or early forties, lean and tall with dirty blond hair peeking out under a filthy baseball cap.  A worn out yellow rain coat with torn grey pants and old sneakers covered his skeletal frame.  His face was a study of the rough life he had lived.  A light grey beard, with light blue eyes and a deep tan outlining deep crags on his cheeks and brow.  Thoroughly beaten down by life.

He came up to my truck expectantly and looked in hoping I would roll down my window.  I looked at him and wondered how he could have let himself get in this state.  Out of an arrogant whim I reached for my wallet and opened it.  I had just stopped at the ATM and had nothing but fresh new twenty dollar bills.  I shrugged and pulled one out.

“Your lucky night, bro.  Here you go” I exclaimed as I handed over the twenty.

He looked at me and then at the twenty in his hand and he began to sob.

“Thank you mister, God bless”  The light changed and I took off.

So later that night here I was sitting in a fancy restaurant with fine company and I can’t stop thinking about that old man.  Couldn’t stop thinking about what one little piece of paper meant to both of us.

To me that twenty dollars was nothing.  To him it was probably the first twenty dollar bill he had seen for weeks or months.  To him it was food, possibly liquor or drugs, but maybe a long distance call to someone who could help him, someone who cares. maybe a cheap comb and mirror to fix himself up.  Maybe just a temporary lifeline of hope.

I tend to follow the advice of homeless advocates and only donate to charities and homeless shelters.  I know that there exist “professional” panhandlers that go out and ask for money on regular street corners.  But there are also people out there that are in trouble.  For some reason they won’t go to shelters (pride, not knowing where to get help, fear).  I see them on street corners and busy streets and sometimes I can’t just drive past.

One of my profs once quipped that before a test you only have a finite amount of time to study and that therefore everything else should be postponed till after the test.  After all you could always go to a bar or a party after a test just as well as before.  But you couldn’t study or prepare for a test after it happened.

This holds true for so many other parts of my life.  I therefore get easily annoyed by people that seem content on frittering away time specially if it’s my time.

Time is a commodity.  We can buy or sell it, we can borrow money against it.  The one thing that we can’t do is recover it. Once those particular seconds tick away they’re gone for good.

The average human has about 42 million minutes in his or her lifetime, and in those minutes you will have once in a lifetime events happen.  A comet might pass by, a world event might occur, or something as common as a first date with someone special.

I sometimes look back on my life and think about some of the frivolous things that I have spent my time on.  How I have had to pass up opportunities because I had other commitments I had to honor, how many hours I have had to spend in waiting lines or on hold.  What could I have done in that time?

I then think of my present life.  How am I investing my time?  What time commitments do I have that I have to honor and which can I drop?

I am just a little past my halfway point right now.  All things being equal I have about 20 million minutes left.  Morbid?  No!  It makes me appreciate my life more.  I spent a little over the first two decades of life getting ready to live it and the last two decades living it in a slightly better than average fashion.

I want to make those last four decades count!  Get the most out of them for as long as possible.  I don’t want to waste them away on waiting lines and in regrets.  Make it a life that will be worth looking back upon.  After all you can’t live your life after it ends.

When I was in college I would drive into Bryan and visit the local Half Price books for paperbacks.  They actually had a better selection than the regular bookstores and even back then the price of paperbacks was starting to get ridiculous so if I wanted something to read it was a good choice.

Sometimes I would pick up good thought provoking books and other times just time filling mind candy.  I once picked up this techno thriller book.  One of those Tom Clancy like books dealing with the military and set in the middle east.  The story wasn’t anything special but a line in the book stuck with me.

A general was dealing with some tough choices concerning a battle that his army was engaged in and losing.  A subordinate could tell that due to pride and bravado that the general didn’t want to take the prudent course and save his command.  The subordinate took the general aside and said “It’s time to save the army”.

I used to have a problem with pride.  I would get into bad situations where I had no good choices and the only prudent course would be to cut my losses and quit.  Yet I would persist, even knowing that nothing I did could change the situation or make things better.  I reasoned that if only I invested a little bit more into this situation then I could turn the tide.  Inevitably of course I would lose and become despondent.

During one of those situations this phrase popped up in my mind.

“It’s time to save the army”

I rolled it over in my head and thought about what was going on and suddenly realized I was persisting not because I could change things but due to pride.  I didn’t want to lose or fail.  I immediately quit the situation and felt better about my choice.

I always applaud passion and drive but sometimes we get so caught up in the moment that we lose the big picture and our perspective gets warped.  We get fixated on an objective and don’t see things logically.  Some voice, maybe from inside, but often from outside has to stop you and say “It’s time to save the army”

It has always been an oddity to me that the fourth largest city in America wasn’t all that popular.

At best when I told out of towners that I lived in Houston they would get this blank expression on their faces as they tried to come up with something to associate with the name.  “That town with the Astrodome right or NASA?”  At worst they might say “Ugh, George Bush!  How can you stand living there?!”

When I was growing up I described Houston as a modern factory town for modern factory workers with shiny office buildings instead of factories and dockers and button down shirts instead of overalls.

It’s not a showy city.  It’s not right on the coast with big beaches, or nestled in lofty snow-covered peaks.  Movie stars don’t live here, and it doesn’t have the cachet of a New York or Chicago or the cool of an Austin or Seattle.  But it is a livable city.

I have lived here for 35 years and have watched it grow and take on a patina of cool over decades.  I remember very well how some of the most sought after and trendiest places to live in used to be crime ridden pest holes.  Downtown was once eerie and silent after dark.  But now it’s full of activity and people actually live there. We have actual places to go and things to do and see now!  We have music venues, museums, old distinguished universities, international quarters, and more stadiums than we know what to do with.

Recently Houston has been gathering recognition and accolades in the press and going by in migration numbers coming from across the US and overseas it seems we are finally on the brink of achieving true coolness.  These new immigrants will bring their own contributions and if anything accelerate the coolness process.

To be totally honest here, I once considered leaving Houston.  I was disenchanted.  My life plans were that one day I would retire  and sell out and leave for “some place interesting”.  But now?  I don’t know.  It certainly bears a rethink.  In the meantime I will enjoy my little bayou city.  I will appreciate what I have, and I will stand up for her whenever someone bad mouths her.