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Jan. 13, 2007 Some random thoughts on my mind: Do people who are easily offended really believe that they are never offensive to others? The older I've gotten the more I realize that 99.9% of the things I've worried about never came to be; it has been the the things that were previously beyond my comprehension which have had the greatest impact on my life. People who start a sentence with, "Don't take this personally, but...," invariably finish up their statement with something that you have no choice but to take personally. If when I was younger I knew what I know now, I certainly would not make the same mistakes; then again, I would probably not have as much fun either. When someone hands me a dessert menu, I scan it quickly for the word "chocolate". Everything else is just a waste of fat and calories. Many of us spend our younger days yearning for things we cannot afford; then we spend our old age yearning for youth. Henry David Thoreau wrote, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation..." I think Thoreau hit the nail right on the head, except for that "quiet" part. The people I enjoy being with the most are those who do not take themselves so seriously. People who are uptight and without humor are simply boring. I've heard some refer to politics as some kind of hobby. Politics impacts all of our lives, and those of our loved ones, very directly and for the long term. Building model airplanes is a hobby. When I was growing up my father used to look at the stars from his youth that he would see on television and comment about how much they had aged, often with a pained tone in his voice. I wondered why he was so concerned with the appearance of some movie star. As I grew older, I realized he may have been talking about the people on the tv screen at the time, but he was thinking about himself. In our media crazed world, there are plenty of things which are overrated and draw an inordinate amount of attention. Good pizza is not one of them. As a child I hated onions with a passion (still do). My mom would often have to sneak them into the food she cooked, knowing full well I'd throw a fit if I saw her adding them. One day, I caught her putting onions in her spaghetti sauce and asked why she was doing that. She responded in a motherly tone, "Oh, you can't even taste them once they're all cooked up." To which I replied, "Well, if you can't taste them, why do you put them in there?" Mom: "For the flavor." (It was at that moment that I first realized life is not always going to make sense and that I should go with the flow when it doesn't.) Life is a lot like the game of golf to me. It gets a whole lot easier when you're playing loose and free. Getting better requires continual effort and adjustment, and expecting positive results with minimal thought or preparation is a recipe for disaster. ------------ About the author: Ed Abraham is a concerned citizen living in flyover country, U.S.A., who happens to be truly disgusted by the loss of common sense in our society and is doing all he can to try to reinstall it. Email: eabra@myway.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
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