"You often meet your fate on the road you take to avoid it." This is an old French proverb that really can't be attributed to any one person. I like it because no one really knows how there life is going to turn out, and the more little decisions you make, the greater the chance that one of them will be life changing. I have told the story of how my wife and I started dating on numerous occasions, so I won't bore you with a deep rendering of it here. In a nutshell, I invited her to a party at a beach house on the Jersey shore and told her to bring whoever she liked. At the time, I thought she was married, so when I said she could bring whoever she liked, I assumed she would bring her husband. When I invited her, I had no intentions of trying to date her since I knew she was married. It was just that a lot of the younger people on the floor were going to the party and I didn't want her to feel unwelcome or left out. I didn't expect her to come really and I was surprised when she called me for directions. It ends up her husband had died recently and she did not mention it to many people at work. When she came to the party she had a guy and another one of the administrative assistants with her. When I said, it was nice to meet your husband she said he wasn't her husband and that he had died recently. Well, I guess you can say that fate met me on the road unexpectedly that night! I was at the party looking for a girlfriend... I just didn't have any intention that it would be Sharon since I had thought she was married. To tell you the truth, The whole situation above reminds me of one of my favorite Robert Frost poems: The Road Not Taken. Frost writes about taking the path less traveled and how it changed his life. His final lines to the poem are: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. By not wanting someone to feel left out, and inviting them to a party with no expectations, I ended up finding a girl friend and eventually my wife. Meanwhile, on other nights, when I was actively trying to find a girl, I would oftentimes end up not meeting any with a real interest in me. Sometimes the path made to attain a goal is also a path where we meet the most resistance.
I find that fate works in fickle ways across all aspects of life. I know people who started a job for summer employment or just as a temporary gig to make some money, who then went on to make that industry their life-long career. I have also seen people change their entire lives after seeing something on TV or reading something in a book. The changes were not overnight, but they were evident over a longer period of time. All said, it seem fate likes to meet up with us on the least likely paths. Keep your eyes open people and enjoy your journey!
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"We don't understand life any better at forty, than at twenty, but by then we realize it and admit it." That's a quote by Jules Renard. Jules was a French author. He wrote poems, short stories, and plays, for the most part, but also had one famous novel. His most-famous work was Carrot Top, if you can believe it.
Renard died at the ripe old age of forty six, so I guess we'll never know if he would have figured it out by sixty. I am now fifty, and I can tell you that my understanding of life is always in flux. Not in a bad way, mind you, but just constantly changing. In general, my understanding of life seems to change every five to ten years. When I was ten, my baseball card collection and my ability to play sports were VERY important to me. I played all of the sports during their seasons, and tried to be as good as I could at each of them. Sports were my world! As I hit fifteen, I became more interested in partying. A lot of the "cool" kids were into drinking, and I foolishly drank along with them. My friends and I liked to get a buzz, and we all couldn't wait until we could get in the bars. By twenty, not much had changed. I was still partying every chance I got, and getting into bars was old hat. New York's drinking age had been eighteen when I turned eighteen, and I was grandfathered in once the drinking age went to 21. I worked in New York during the summer months, so my friends and I took to hanging around Bleeker Street on Friday or Saturday nights during my early twenties. In my late teens and early twenties I stopped drinking for a bit, going so far as to joining AA for a bit. I remember I was sober on my twenty-first birthday. I was stressed out and depressed though, and went back to drinking a few months later. My drinking was different now, though. I was no longer drinking just for the buzz, I knew it was bad for me and I was drinking more out of boredom, or so I told myself. By thirty I was a functional alcoholic. I held a good job at Merrill Lynch and I was looking for a girl to settle down with. I met my wife when I was thirty three and she was only twenty three. She too, had a problem with alcohol, and she asked me to help her stop drinking. I gave up drinking the moment she told me that (July, 1999) and I have not had a drink since. My understanding of life had gone from let's make lots of cash and get a buzz to: "we can have a beautiful life together if we can both quit drinking." Two years later, my first daughter was born, and my priorities grew to include spending as much time with my wife and daughter as possible. I left corporate life in late 2002, and started my own consulting firm from my basement. My life revolved around my wife, my daughter, and my work. In 2009, my mid-life crisis began... although at the time I didn't know it. Sharon and I had decided to have another baby. Sharon had never been able to stop drinking excepts for about two years while she was pregnant with, and then breast feeding Maddie. We had originally wanted to have three children, but stopped after Maddie because Sharon had had postpartum depression and was afraid to have another bout with it. Sharon then began to believe that if she had another child she would be able to stop drinking during the pregnancy again and hopefully stop for good. Her drinking had gotten progressively worse over the years, and Madison had begun to catch on to what was happening. To make a long story short, Sharon was not able to stop drinking, and we put her into an in-patient facility to keep her from drinking while she was pregnant. She made it through the system and returned back home two weeks before she was due with Ashleigh. She started to drink again that evening and the doctors decided to deliver Ashleigh early to help protect her. I brought Ashleigh home from the hospital when she was four days old, She was two weeks premature, underweight and had alcohol withdrawal symptoms. Maddie was home with us too. At forty four, I was raising a new-born baby and a seven-year-old little girl on my own, while also trying to keep my successful business running and keeping the house in some semblance of shape. Let me tell you, my understanding of life, and what truly was important grew in that time period. I am now fifty. At this point, I think there is no one true understanding of life. All of our experiences are too different. The more we share similar experiences, I think the more our understanding of life will be similar. Not the same, but similar. Honestly, I think that part of the reason that the divorce rate is so high is because couples are not able or willing to spend enough time with each other. Their common experiences become fewer and fewer, and they eventually drift apart. So, do I understand life? Nope. I understand what I am doing in my life at this moment, but I have no clue about what awaits me in the years ahead. Lord knows that if you had asked me where I would be in five years at any point in my life from say the age of twenty five on, I would have likely guessed wrong. In the end, life is for living. Have fun, make memories with the ones you love, and pray that you will be able to see them again in the afterlife. "It's in our biology to trust what we see with our eyes. This makes living in a carefully edited, overproduced, and Photoshopped world very dangerous." That is a quote by Brene Brown.
Getting back to today's quote, I think we all know deep down not to believe what we see in the media. Even so, we all, to some extent do! Now I don't think any of you really believe in the zebra ant I have pictured above, but I think that if you saw only the edited versions of the two women above you would believe that that is what they actually looked like. So much so, that if you then met the women in real life, you may feel disappointed with their real looks, even though both of them still look great. I have had a few experiences like that in real life. Each time, I didn't know who I met or saw until after the fact. The earliest example I have of this is when I met Bruce Springsteen in a store one time while I was still in high school.
In other words, he was dressed very similarly to me and my friends, and looked about the same age (we were about 17 or 18 at the time), even though he was actually about 28 or 29 at the time. We all joked around with him for about five minutes, while we waited in line at the music store. After he paid the girl at the register, he said so long, waved, and left. None of us even knew who he was, even though three of us were Bruce fans. The only way we found out was when the girl behind the counter asked us if any of us wanted to buy the VCR slip she had in her hand. When we said, "Why would we want to do that?" She said with an incredulous look on her face: "You mean you didn't know? That was Bruce Springsteen!" In all honesty, I never would have known. He honestly acted like just another dude in high school. I still can't make the two pictures of him match up in my mind! I can say he seemed like a real good guy. He joked around with a bunch of high school kids who he must have realized had no clue to who he was. And he seemed to have enjoyed the banter as much as we did.
The other two people I saw who were a little different were Mary Tyler Moore, and Connie Chung. Both of these women were still very pretty when I saw them. Mary Tyler Moore was in an airport and was talking to the person next to her. She was pretty, but I would not have known it was her if someone hadn't pointed it out to me. I had noticed her as a very pretty woman though! As for Connie, She is extremely pretty in person, she just seemed much shorter than I ever pictured her. She worked in the same building as me in New York during the mid- to late 90's. Sometimes I would be in the same elevator with her and I felt like I towered over her, even though I am not the tallest person myself.
Now that I have made this post longer than I wanted and rambled for a few paragraphs to boot, I'll get back to my main point. everything you see on TV or in print nowadays is likely photo-shopped to some extent. That's true whether it is people or events. Have you been watching the news and reading about the candidate visits to different towns? The media tries to make them look like they are all well attended. The truth of the matter is that most of them aren't. I have seen wide-angled views of some of the crowds where you can see that some of them have less than 75 people in the crowd. I have also seen videos where workers are handing out "home-made" looking signs for the people to hold. Nearly none of it is real folks! I guess to finish I will just say be careful what you believe folks. A lot of what you see on TV is there to sway you, not to inform you. "Everything we see hides another thing; we always want to see what is hidden by what we see." That is a quote by Rene Magritte. Depending how literally you want to take this quote, it is obviously true. To start, I am going to look at it scientifically, and then I will try and get a little more touchy/feely with it too. The easiest way to grasp this quote is scientifically. When we look at anything, we only see what we have the ability to perceive. Our eyes can only see color in certain wave ranges. What we can't see, we won't perceive, unless we have special gauges that allow us to pick up what is there but is not visible to us. A good example of this is found in King Tut's tomb. The tomb was originally opened in the early 1920's, but it was just recently that they discovered that there is a hidden chamber behind one of the walls. They believe it is the queen's burial chamber. It was found by looking at the chamber thermographically. This is a diagnostic technique originally used in the medical fields, where an infrared camera is used to measure temperature variations on the surface of an object. In archaeology, a wall with a cooler area implies that there may be a chamber of some type hidden behind the wall. Without the use of the new equipment, we may never had known about the chamber! It was there the whole time, we just couldn't see it. Other examples include bacteria and viruses. Although they have always been present, we didn't know about them until the invention of the microscope. To take it a step further, animals have different senses than us also. A dog's sense of smell is nearly 400x more sensitive than ours, and they can hear things in ranges a human will never hear. We interact with dogs every day, and yet they perceive the world in an entirely different way than we do. Sometimes, I think the reasons we have not found evidence of extraterrestrial life forms is because the way we perceive things are just too different than the hints that the other types of life are producing. Here is another example of what I am talking about. On the earth today there are animals that can live at depths that man could simply not handle. There are also some types of life that can live in ocean vents that are spewing boiling hot water. Man cannot live in either environment. Yet once we found a way to look at these environments, we found that there is life there. Giant squids and sperm whales often battle in the depths. At the depth that giant squids live, there is no sunlight. and yet the whales are able to find the squids and eat them. Sucker marks have been found on whales that are up to 28 inches across! These likely came from 50-foot squid. Although we can't survive under those pressures, and we cannot see in the darkness at those depths, The whales and the squid both seem to have the ability to do so. If these large creatures can be alive and yet under our line of regular site, how many other things are we missing, simply because we don't have the ability to perceive them? One more scientific example before I move on. Did you know that not only are there things that live in the depths of the sea, but that there are also creatures that can live more than 1000 meters below the sea floor as well? That's right, scientists have found bacteria in drill cores that they took up from below the sea floors. The bacteria lived off of things that died millions of years ago. It is truly amazing if you think about it! Will we find life in space? Who knows! We are still finding life we didn't know about on our own planet. Sometimes, even what we see with our own eyes can hide other truths from us.Oftentimes, my first impression of someone is wrong. People I thought were rude and abrupt were really only having a bad day and I later grew to like them immensely. Meanwhile, other people who I liked right away turned out to be manipulative and scheming. I always like to paraphrase Shakespeare with his "all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players." I usually mix in other quotes about masks, which totally kills Shakespeare's original meaning. Even so, I find that we all do wear many masks in our lives. My daughters see my father mask. My friends, my friend mask. And on and on. At work, I am an analyst and my actions show all that that entails. At karate, I am a sensai, and likely given more credit for knowledge than I truly feel. Still, I do have that knowledge, and I can effectively teach people what I know. My actions have more truth than my feelings about my actions. I think we are all like that, to some extent. We are uncertain about some of our actions and we wear a mask. We hide our nervousness or the fact that we are uncomfortable with a mask of competency or assuredness. Funny, I know that I know what I know. And yet, sometimes I feel uncomfortable trying to exp[lain to someone what I know. The mask slips, and my humanity trickles out. So what do you see when you look at me? I am almost certain that it is not the same thing I see when I look in the mirror. If you have a few minutes, write a couple of sentences in the comments. What do you see?
"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." This is a quote by Anais Nin. Nin was an essayist and a polygamist, if you can believe it. She seems to have been a very loose character, even before taking a second husband. In either case, I am not here to write about her forgettable morals. Some people are better off forgotten, and I believe that Nin is one of those best forgotten, so if you are interested in her, look her up yourself. I'll waste no more of my time with her!
Now, as for her quote, I'd have to say its true. What is not true, though, is that phony experiences can be used in place of true courage. So many people nowadays go about accumulating experiences that are, for the most part, safe, yet are marketed as dangerous and exciting. Does a person really show courage by going on a roller coaster, or by bunge jumping? I would argue that the answer is no. People go out to do these experiences to show their courage, yet they are too afraid to tell anyone how they truly feel. Instead of having the courage to be themselves, they safely emulate styles they are told are rebellious. Have you noticed the large number of tattoos and piercings all around you now? Or how everyone now feels comfortable calling others names, just because they don't agree with what they feel is right? Real courage has nothing to do with any of that. Real courage has nothing to do with changing your style of dress or adornment to fit into a group. It has nothing to do with driving a fancy sports car, or causing trouble. Courage has everything to do with being yourself and treating everyone with a modicum of respect. Courage has to do with doing what you believe is right, even if it is an unpopular opinion. True courage will expand your life because you won't let fear hold you back from doing what you believe is right. True courage will allow you to talk to people regardless of what the group you hang around with thinks. And true courage will expand your life by allowing you to experience more of everything since you won't be hiding behind anyone else's ideals. True courage is peace over power and not just doing something because you can. It is doing what you can, without intentionally hurting anyone else around you. While Nin gave a nice quote above, and likely thought she was the embodiment of her quote, her actions hurt others (her first two husbands whom she cheated on) and actually diminished her and her works in my view. In the end, I think Nin was weak and a coward. And I really wish that a more courageous person had uttered those words. In your life, have the courage to lead by example. To say what you believe is true, but still have the tact to say it without hurting someone else just because you can. Courage comes in many forms. The best courage, in my opinion, is when you can be yourself, do what you like and not hurt others in the process. Have the courage to treat others how you would like to be treated. Don't feel that you have to wait to see how they treat you first. Show them how you want them to treat you by how you treat them! "In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways." That mouthful was by Edith Wharton. And although it seems to be a long run-on sentence, I love that she got it exactly right, in my opinion!
Edith Wharton was an American writer who wrote "The Age Of Innocence" among other things. She actually became the first woman to win a Pulitzer prize (in 1921) due to this book. In my opinion, Wharton was a woman ahead of her time. Amazingly, she did not publish her first novel until she was 40! By the time she passed away, in 1937 she had written fifteen novels, seven novellas, and eighty-five short stories. She had published poetry, books on design, travel, literary and cultural criticism, as well as a memoir. Getting back to her quote, I like that she defines living by what she does and not by what she has. Illness and sorrow are facts of life in everyone's lives. She does not allow them to define her, however. Instead, she defines her life by her reasons for living! Ms. Wharton was not afraid of change. Her first husband had a mental illness that led to a radical change in how she had wanted to live her life. She tried to make the best of it, but after 28 years, once the doctors said that their was no longer hope to change his condition, she left to start her second life. She was 51 years old at this point! She traveled, wrote, and learned... She became happy in spite of what had happened during the "best" years of her life. I have often quoted Spock (who was likely quoting someone else) that the only constant is change. Edith is so right in saying not to be afraid of change. Not all change is bad... it is just different to what you are used to. Embrace the change, and make it your own. Always be open to learning new things. Nothing is sadder than seeing a person who decides that they know enough, and actively decides to no longer learn new things. We have all heard the saying "life has passed her by." Don't let this happen to you! Technological change has been happening at a rapid pace for over 75 years. If you fail to embrace this change, you are setting yourself up for a pretty rough go of things. Imagine if you still had to get around by horse and buggy... simply because you didn't want to learn how to drive a car! Look for small changes you can make in your life every day, and try them. The things you don't find useful, discard. Those things that show a definite benefit to you should be added to your life. Finally, find happiness in small ways. Don't look for what is wrong with your friends and family members, but what is right with them! Look for those small things that make them unique, and make you happy. It is easy to find fault in others. Constantly pointing it out doesn't make you superior, or happy. It makes you a nag. Be a person that inspires others, not the type that repels them. Remember, people are led by example, not by nagging or coercion. People in glass houses should not throw stones. And finally, remember what Jesus said to the Pharisees when they brought an adulterer to him and asked whether she should be stoned to death. He said: “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her” Before you cast guilt on another, think about what Jesus was trying to say in the above verse. Then honestly answer these two questions: "Do I live my faith? Or "Do I use it as a shield to protect me from what I disagree with?" I know I have drifted a bit away from the spirit of the above quote, but this post is meant for two people in my life... not just one. Because there is a second side to the coin, and an additional lesson, which again, can be found in the bible. This answer can be found in Proverbs. The question is how should you react to a person who may have strayed away from living their faith? The Proverbs make it clear: "Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you also be like to him..." Take this post for what it's worth. I think there are many lessons here. Both from the original quote, and from the verses I have quoted above. I think the two I am speaking to in the final four paragraphs should be able to recognize themselves from the described behavior. If not, feel free to ask me, and I will tell you whether I was thinking of you or not. Finally, if I was not speaking to you, yet you feel the need to ask me, then what is important is that you thought I was speaking to you, and thus you need to change your behavior. Have a good night, folks. "Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.” I like this quote. Again, this quote lends itself to Buddhist thought and the way of Zen. In fact. it's almost a koan in and of itself!
Funny, this quote is by Meister Eckhart, a German theologian and philosopher who was tried for heresy by the Catholic church. In other words, he was very far from being a Buddhist! I am also fairly certain that his meaning for this quote was much different to the meaning I am going to give it. I view the quote as one of the steps toward gaining enlightenment. What is the true thing? It is nothing. And Everything. There is no past. There is no future. There is just the present. Although we all hope that we will live for a long time, there is no guarantee. All we have is the present. The now. In the end, we have our minds, and that's about it. We have what we are doing right now. And nothing else. Although there are alternatives to what I am doing right now, I am not doing them. Thus, they do not really exist anywhere but in my mind. And the potentials that those actions may produce, are only that. Potentials. The body is made up of a number of living cells. And yet we recognize ourselves as only one. If we lose a limb, it is detached from us, and withers and dies. Meanwhile the rest of us lumbers on. A little inconvenienced, but still alive and able to function. In the end, our possessions do not matter. We cannot take them with us. We spend all of our lives collecting this or that and actually saving it, expecting it to give us happiness. And yet, in the end, we all return to the source. Our survivors throw what remains away. And we return to the nothing, as if we were erased from history. I was looking at some Zen koans earlier, and I came across something that wasn't realy a koan, but got me thinking nonetheless. A koan typically is a paradoxical anecdote or riddle, used in Zen Buddhism to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment.. The following anecdote, will get you thinking, but it isn't really a koan since it gives you the answer to think about. A true koan would leave it to you to figure out, and thus gain enlightenment. Here is the paragraph in question: Read this slowly: "LIFEISNOWHERE" What did you read? Life is No Where? OR Life is Now Here? My friends, Life is all about how you look at it! That last line is what really kills it as a koan in my opinion. Still, it does make you think, and the author is correct, in my opinion. Life is all about how you look at it!
Have you ever met someone who seems perpetually happy? I have. I think we all have actually. I notice when I am around these people that the world seems to be a little less foreboding and seems to have more opportunity. Their smiles are infectious, and I generally seem to have a better time while I am around them. Other people seem to have the opposite effect. Everything is a chore for them, and if you are not miserable too, then you are just not trying enough! These people have the ability to suck the life out of me, and I try to avoid them as much as I can. I also notice that these people are not the same for all people (although the happy ones are!). Someone who is a time suck and a drain for me, may just be an ordinary person for someone else The final group of people are what most people seem to be... that is neutral. For the most part, these people have little impact on your life most of the time. About 90% of the people you meet are going to be neutral in your life. My advice is to find the perpetually happy, and try to make friends with them. At the same time, make friends with all of the neutrals you can as well, since they are usually nice people, and while they don't have the ability to always be happy around you and help your happiness, at least most times they will be amicable. The final group, I call them the buzz kills, are the ones you really want to steer away from in your life. Life is too short to be miserable, or to be around perpetually miserable people. For me, I also try to avoid drunks and liars as well, since I really don't have the patience for them. Finally, although I initially read the above line of letters as life is no where, it is not how I truly feel. I like to live my life so that I am experiencing the now. Life is way too short to live in the past, and I find I am happiest when I am working towards a better tomorrow. There is a quote I read once that I honestly try to live by. That is: "Be the change you want to see in the world." Now, although I'd like to see many changes in the world, I am realistic. I won't be able to change the entire world, but I should be able to have an impact on my immediate surroundings. Thus, I focus on making things better around me. I like to help out people when I can and I try not to harm anyone around me, if they are not hurting me. Peace over power. In general, I see my world as a happy place, filled with opportunity. That type of attitude makes me happy. I am happy as long as I actually work towards bringing those opportunities about. How do you see the world? Do you take steps to be the type of change you want to see in the world? Because, in the end, life really is how you look at it! Meld it into your vision. Today's blog post is going to be a bit different than usual; because I'm writing it while I'm out and without a real set topic!!! I have a lot to get done today before my friend comes over, so I figured I'd write this before I even got back to the house so I wouldn't have to deal with TOO much stress. I still have some algebra, another post, AND my vacuuming to take care of.
However, my caffeine addiction knows no bounds and even with this heavy schedule I still asked my dad to take me out for our routine cup of coffee during the day. I really enjoy the coffee; but more than the coffee I enjoy the time spent in the truck with my dad talking about whatever we happen to come up with. Usually, we end up talking about life or some such engrossing topic- in fact; we just started talking about how life could possibly be a computer simulation!!! Talks like these are why my dad and I are so close. He doesn't have any real limits and he never "grew up" in the ways that DON'T matter- so he doesn't mind talking about whatever and making jokes with me. It's pretty awesome, to be honest. I feel like most people say that they "never grew up", but so many say it without knowing what it means. How close are you to your kids, if you have them? Can you relate to them and help them and talk about the world with them? Or would you rather blame them for your own mistakes and categorize them into the generation they were born without choice into. My dad can not only level with me on most things; but he tries to take interest in the things that I'm interested in as well. Hell, he even took up karate to help me train when I was 7; never knowing that he'd enjoy it! He's now a second degree black belt and a sensei. Aside from that; he also hikes with me and my sister, plays xbox with us, watches anime with me, and even tries to fit in with "meme" culture (which can be a mix of embarrassing and amusing to me). He's a great dad and he has a great connection with me... and in today's world, I couldn't be more thankful. - maddie "When watching after yourself, you watch after others. When watching after others, you watch after yourself." That, of course, is a quote by Buddha. The interesting thing about Buddha is that everyone quotes him, but he has no actual writings of his own. In fact, the first sayings written as Buddha's were written about four hundred years after his death.
Have you ever played a game of pass the secret? That's the game where one person starts with a message and then whispers it into the ear of the person sitting to their left. Everyone is in a circle by the way... Well, by the time the "secret" gets back to the original person, the secret is nothing near to what was actually said to begin with! Well, now think about doing that for four hundred years. I am guessing that if any of "his" sayings ever got back to Buddha he would have a Yogi Berra moment. .. "I haven't said half the things they say I said!" Anyway, to get back to the quote, I don't care if Buddha actually said it or not, I believe there is some truth to it. It is particularly true when you are watching after others. Here is a personal example: As many of you know, my wife was an alcoholic, and she drank herself to death. What you might not know is that I am also an alcoholic. I have been sober for seventeen years. When I first met my wife, we both drank. While I drank socially, always with other people, my wife was more of a sneak drinker. So much so, that I didn't even know she had a drinking problem until we were already dating for a couple of weeks! It was at that point that Sharon told me she was an alcoholic and asked me to help her to stop drinking. She asked me, because she did not know how heavily I drank (since I did it mainly on the weekends and occasionally after work). At first I just thought she meant that she drank too much socially, and I told her that in the two weeks that I had known her I only saw her have a couple of drinks. It was at that point that she opened her pocket book and showed me her bottle of vodka. She had a one liter bottle in her pocketbook and it was about halfway gone. She was drinking daily, then, including while she was at work... and I never would have known. At that moment, I promised her that I would help her to quit, and it was then that I had my last drink. That was back in July 1999. Sharon never stopped drinking, even with all of my "help". I literally took hundreds of bottles from her over the years, but it did no good. In 2013, she died of esophageal varices, which was caused by the damage she did to her liver while drinking. To bring it back full circle, in trying to save my wife, I ended up saving myself. (When watching after others, you watch after yourself.} In the end, although I tried my hardest, no one can really save anyone who is caught in an addiction...they must save themselves. BUT, in trying to save Sharon, I ended up saving myself. Sharon and I divorced in 2011 to protect the children. I have raised Maddie alone since she was seven and Ashleigh since the day she came home from the hospital. It pains me that I could not help Sharon. Psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, in patient, out patient, AA... none of it worked with Sharon. It ended up she had addictive personality disorder, but we didn't find that out until it was way too late. I held Sharon for the last six hours of her life after they removed her from life support. She died in my arms. When we first met, I never thought that our last embrace would be in death. I didn't realize how badly she needed help, and I never guessed that I would not be able to give it to her. I was naive, and I felt that if I just stopped drinking myself, I would be able to provide all of the willpower she needed for her to do the same. The other night, someone on Imgur put up a picture of the token they received from AA for being sober for one year. It really touched me, and made me think of Sharon, and myself. I congratulated them, told them how long I had been sober and said "Take it one day at a time, my friend." For those of you who are not afflicted with alcoholism, I can tell you from experience becoming sober is not an easy thing to do. In fact, some never quite make it. Like my wife. Rest in peace Sharon. For those of you still suffering with alcoholism, seek help. AA is a great place to start, and there are in-patient programs that may be of help as well. "What makes earth feel like hell is our expectation that it should feel like heaven.” That's a quote by Chuck Palahniuk. So who is Chuck? He is the author of the book "Fight Club". Although I have not read the book, I have seen the movie. (God it felt horrible saying THAT!!!) I guess I will have to put it on my list of things to read, since I did enjoy the movie, and oftentimes I enjoy the books more than the movies. I must admit, I like Chuck's quote. I have always felt that false expectations always works to make things seem worse than they actually are. Sometimes I go to movies with very high expectations and I end up disappointed... even if the movie isn't bad, but just mediocre. Meanwhile, I have also gone to films where I entered with little to no expectations and left the theater happy that I went! Buddha had a number of great quotes about expectations. I'll list a few below, then continue on with my thoughts. "Serenity comes when you trade expectations for acceptance." "The root of suffering is attachment." "Do not dwell on the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment." "Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without." "When we do not expect anything, we can be ourselves." That last quote may not be by Buddha. I believe I have heard it somewhere before. But for right now, we'll give it to Buddha since it seems like something he would say! It seems to be a recurring theme with Buddha that all troubles seem to start when we set expectations. Even worse than having expectations about things, we sometimes set expectations for ourselves.
Unfortunately, I like to do this. They are not expectations per se, but goals. I definitely like to set goals for myself and then strive to reach them. It is a way for me to focus my energy and use it towards creating a favorable outcome. While I do not always reach my "goals" right away, I can note progress towards them over time. Sometimes, I will change my goals due to changes in my life.When I do this, I do not feel like I am in hell. It is usually because I realized that there was either a better way of accomplishing my goal, or there was a better goal available. Now with all of that said, I will admit that I had a period in my life that I considered hell. Expectations did lead to some of it. When I was younger, I always expected that my wife would outlive me. She was ten years younger than me and given the mortality table, I was reasonably confident that she would survive me. That wasn't the case, however. She died three years ago. Although her mental illness took her away from our family three years before that. For the past seven years I have been raising my daughters on my own. My Mom lives with us now, and she is a great help, but I raise the girls as I see fit. At any rate, I think you can see where my hell was coming from. My expectations led me to have all of my plans tied to my wife being alive and with us. My business was based out of my home, and I had banked on my wife being there to help raise the children. For three years, there was only me to do that. Me, a single Dad with a newborn baby, a seven-year-old little girl, and a mentally ill wife who still needed my love and understanding... even though she could no longer live with us. To make a long story short, it is amazing that we survived that time as well as we did. I never want to have to relive those circumstances. Long-time readers of this blog, likely know some of our trials. There are some things I will never talk about though. Those are parts of my own personal hell. Once again, I have expectations for myself and my family. Am I setting myself up for further hellish times? I don't think so. I try to listen to Buddha, and keep my expectations low. I do aim high with my goals, though, and work diligently to make those happen. Are those expectations? No, they are goals, and they help to give my life meaning. In the end, keep your expectations low and set your goals high... and diligently work towards them. Hopefully, this strategy will let you walk the thin line between heaven and hell and allow you to survive. While there may not be a heaven on earth, there certainly doesn't have to be a hell either. God bless! Well, here is a weird post for you. One of my favorite characters growing up was Winnie The Pooh. In fact, during college for a time a few of my friends called me Pooh Bear, both for my ability to quote the friendly cartoon bear, and unfortunately for my shape and style of walking after a night of drinking. As an adult, I made sure to raise my daughters with a good dose of Winnie The Pooh. Both had Winnie The Pooh blankets and many of the stuffed animals. In fact, I even sang the Winnie The Pooh song to Ashleigh when she was younger and I was trying to get her to fall asleep. Those facts aside, it took my wife's death to unknowingly teach me the hard way that many of the things the little bear said had a pearl of wisdom hidden within them. Without further ado, here are some of the pearls of wisdom that Winnie the Pooh has uttered over the years that are very true: "Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart." "We didn't realize that we were making memories, we just knew we were having fun." "If there ever comes a day when we can't be together, keep me in your heart. I'll stay there forever." "People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day." "I think we dream so that we don't have to be apart so long. If we are in each other's dreams, we can be together all of the time." Promise me you'll never forget me, because if I thought you would, I'd never leave." Piglet: "How do you spell love Pooh?" Pooh: "You don't spell love... you feel it." "How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard." Well, there you go! And remember (to quote Eeyore) "It never hurts to keep looking for sunshine."
"Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.” That's a quote by my favorite stoic philosopher, Marcus Aurelius. Marcus was brilliant. In fact, I will go so far as to say he has taught me more about living properly than anyone I can think of. It's not just me that sings his praises either. His major work, "Meditations" has existed for thousands of years and is still in print today.
I honestly believe that if more people read "Meditations" there would be less war and bloodshed in this world. In fact, his work is so important to me, that I am currently looking for two leather-bound copies of Meditations to give to my daughters when they are ready to leave home. The picture above has another of his quotes that I think everyone should have to read while they are in school. If you know someone who likes to think... do them a favor and get them a copy of this book. If they can get past the first few pages, then they will be reading for a lifetime! I keep a copy right near the side of my bed, and I like to read a couple of pages a night, right before I go to bed. To get back to his quote, I think it is direct and to the point and quite simple. Too many people want to argue about what is best... instead of doing what is best. To Marcus Aurelius, he didn't want to quibble about who was right or wrong or what was best for any one person. What he cared most about was that everyone worked toward their ideal of what a good man should be. Obviously he is right. It shouldn't matter to you (not really anyway) what I believe a good man should be and how he should act. What should matter to you, is that I am doing my best to be the best that I can. All of us have had different life experiences. I don't care whether you are brother and sister or husband and wife. None of us have experienced anything the exact same way as anyone else. We have all seen the world through our own experiences. Even so, We all have a basic idea of right and wrong and just and unjust. If we all worked toward living these ideals, the world would be that much better of a place! Since we all view things a little differently, we have courts to decide between those major differences. The best courts have juries decide those differences. Twelve people to act as the judgement for our society. When done properly, these twelve men can reach a consensus on what is just and what is not. The system breaks down when people can no longer decide what a good man is let alone try to be one. And THAT is where I believe we are right now. Too many people are not trying to be a "good" man (or woman). Instead, they only worry about their present circumstance and how they can best profit from it. A good man does not kill innocent people... although they may kill the unjust or guilty. When people rely too much on their society to figure out what is right or wrong, instead of on their own instincts, then we get into long periods of chaos. My advice: Read meditations. Think about what he is actually saying, and then try to live your life to the best of your abilities. There is so much in "Meditations" that is worth quoting. I will leave you with two last quotes. "Our life is what our thoughts make it." and "It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” Live people! and be the best man that you can be! (Ladies, I use man but it can quite easily be woman! Don't get offended by me using the masculine. Instead take the advice for how it was meant.) "“There are more things to alarm us than to harm us, and we suffer more often in apprehension than reality.” That's a quote by Seneca. You say you don't know Seneca? For shame! Seneca was a tutor and adviser for Nero, way back during the Roman empire. He was forced to commit suicide after being found complicit in a plot to assassinate Nero. Was he guilty? Who really knows. I guess he found something that could both alarm and harm him!
Regardless of what happened to Seneca, I think his quote, for the most part, is spot on. I find that the things that really bother me and stress me out rarely do more than that. All of the worries that I have seem to be about what could happen, and not what has happened. At one point, I was worried that I was going to lose my house. My business was not doing well, and funds were getting short. All of the worry and stress was keeping me awake at night, and many of the solutions I came up with were either short sighted or too long-term oriented to be of any help. So what happened? I resigned myself to losing my house, thought out an exit strategy that wouldn't be too bad for me and my daughters, and then stopped worrying about it so much. (Yes, I still worried and felt bad... just not as bad as I had been feeling.) After resigning myself to my fate, I found a way out. Some of that way out included lucky things happening, but still I went from one small victory or coincidence to another until I finally worked myself out of my jam. Two years later, we still live in the same house, and I no longer have a mortgage on it! In accepting what I thought was inevitable, I stopped worrying about it as much, and in so doing made better decisions. Some of those decisions involved a bit of luck, but at the same time my mind was able to focus better and I could see different opportunities that I couldn't see earlier. Tonight, while reading Seneca's quote, I saw the wisdom in his observation. I suffered more from the apprehension of what I thought was going to happen, than I did from what actually happened. In hindsight, I can also look back and see that even if my worst fears were realized, I would have survived and eventually have been happy since the things that mean the most to me would have still been with me. I of course, mean my daughters, If ever you are alarmed about a potential outcome, please take a look at your fear. Ask yourself "What is the worst that can happen?" Once you can accept what the worst thing is, find ways to neutralize its impact on your happiness. Look for what really matters the most to you, and see if you can find a way to protect that, no matter what happens. With knowledge comes peace. Instead of focusing on what might be the worst. Think of ways that the worst may not really be anything else but change. The only constant is change. There is a bonus quote for you. Look it up and see who said it... although I think I may have discussed that quote once before anyway, so you can likely find the answer to that question right on this blog. Since change is constant, it makes sense that some of that change will be bad and some of it will be good. As long as its not fatal for you and yours, then you will survive and bounce back. Life goes on, and worries and fears will not work to make it any better. Thus, when you start to worry, think of Seneca and his insightful quote. Recently, I was reading a book by Greg Iles called The Footprints Of God. Now, before I go losing half of you thinking that this was a religious book I am going to review here, I would just like to say that it is not, and reviewing the book is not my intention. The book is actually about the development of artificial intelligence and its potential ramifications. While discussions about God do occur in the book, it is more in regards to philosophical debate. With that said, there was one passage in the book that I found very interesting, and I thought I would share it here. Before I quote the interesting passage, let me set the scene. In the book, the two main characters are travelling to Israel and are having a discussion on the plane. The one character has been used as a test subject for an MRI machine that is about 1000 times stronger than the ones currently in use. He, and the other test subjects have been suffering psychological effects. His are in the form of narcolepsy and vivid dreams. He is talking about a dream he had where he thought he had memories of being God, and he is having trouble relating man as he is, to his dream of God. The woman he is speaking to is a Jungian psychiatrist. The passage I am about to quote is her idea of why man is flawed, and why free choice often leads to unintended consequences. I found it very interesting. With that as a background, here is the passage. Hopefully, I have not cut too much of it out so that you at least get the gist of the argument. "I believe that to create means to make something that didn't exist before. If God is perfect, then the only way he can truly create is to make something separate from himself. So by definition, his creation must be imperfect. You see? If it were perfect, it would be God." "I believe that for human beings to be distinct from God, we must be able to make our own choices. Free will, right? And unless bad choices resulted in real pain, free will would have no meaning. That's why we have such evil in the world." Well, those are the parts that I found interesting. The two characters carried on their philosophical discussion for another five or ten pages, and a few other gems were nestled among the writing. I may paraphrase some of the thoughts in the next couple of paragraphs, but for the most part, those were the passages I wanted to highlight. In my mind, the above passages do go a long way towards explaining our world. Yet many people would say, "Well, what about instances where there was no clear choices made yet evil still happened. They point to people who die in natural disasters or childhood cancers as examples. I think part of the problem is that they are mistaking bad things that happen as evil. Also, many people look at natural things that happen and say "there was no reason for that, when in actuality, there is. As an example, when people die or lose their homes in flooding, it is often because they built their homes in a flood plain, or on a part of a beach where it may be above the line of a typical storm surge, but still within an area that gets impacted during extreme storm surges. In the case of illnesses, people can suffer from genetic disorders or due to dangerous materials in their environments. Two good examples of environmental factors would be workers who got sick due to their exposure to asbestos. Many ship builders, and factory workers have gotten sick over the years due to their exposure to that legal (at the time) product. Children who got lead poisoning from paint chips is another good example. The parents didn't knowingly put their children at risk... they didn't know any better! Although their is some evidence that paint manufacturers did know the risk, but made the paint anyway! A current example would be South African gold miners. There is a class action lawsuit taking place in that country concerning the care for miners who got tuberculosis and silicosis from inhaling rock particles while working in the mines. A personal example of a genetically caused disease is hemochromatosis. Although many people can be carriers of the gene, they may not be directly impacted from it. For a person to become ill from the genes, both the mother and the father had to be carriers of the genes. My wife was afflicted with hemochromatosis, because both of her parents were carriers. Meanwhile, her step sisters were not affected by it since they had a different father, and he was not a carrier. I guess what I am trying to say is that not everything that happens that is bad is evil. I think many agnositcs and atheists see this as being proof that there is no God, or that he is an unjust God, but I think that this may be lazy thinking on their part. The passage above goes a long way towards explaining the flaws, and our decisions can go along way towards explaining the rest. One final quote from the book. It is about facing evil head on. The character went on to quote three statements that made thoughts about western religions suspect. These were:
He then stated that you can logically reconcile any two of those statements, but not all three. Many Eastern religions believe that evil flows from God, and they do not try to blame some lesser figure, such as Satan.
That might be all well and good, but I think the topic them moves away from the existence of God and into the realm of thinking that God must fit the definition of any one religion. When man gets involved, there will always be flaws present... and that includes with their religious thoughts. After all is said and done, I don't think anyone can reliably describe God or his/her traits. For me, I believe there is a God, and I am happy to pray in my own way. At the same time, I believe that most religions can be a positive force for humanity. Which one is right and which ones are wrong, I can't truly say. No one can. I go to church on Sundays because I believe it is a positive action for my daughters. And that if they listen to what is being said, that they will eventually turn out to be honest, caring and empathetic people. That is why I go to church. In my own life, I try to live my faith. Hopefully, my daughters see that in me more than they see my flaws. I try to lead by example. To do that, I need to actually live my beliefs so that they have a good example of what I want them to become. That's about it for tonight. I hope these thoughts make you think a bit about your own beliefs and whether or not ou actually try to live them. Peace, empathy and kindness. It's the way I try to live. The girls and I went out for two hikes this weekend. The first was a little bit disappointing, while the second one ended in tragedy for Ashleigh. Don't worry, she isn't hurt! She did drop her iPad, though, and cracked the screen. On Saturday, we took a road trip to see what was billed as "The Grand Canyon of New Hampshire!" To be honest, we were all a little skeptical when we heard about it, but since it was only two hours away, and we like to hike anyway, we thought we would visit it to take some pictures. Our two hour trip ended up taking about three and a half hours to get there. I seemed to have missed a turn about one hour into the trip and we ended up going too far west. I blame Maddie since she was sitting in the shot gun position, and was supposed to be handling the directions. She blames me since I was driving. It's hard to argue with that, but I'll give her part of the blame anyway! Once we got there, we found that "The Grand Canyon" was only a creek that had cut its way through some rocks. It wasn't very deep, or very long. It was located on Sculptured Rock Road in Hebron. As soon as we arrived, it started to drizzle, which certainly didn't add to our mood. It stopped after a minute or two though, and we didn't get too wet, especially since the path ran through the woods. Below are our pictures from the creek. They are a bit underwhelming. Before I start with the pictures, I just wanted to point out that the picture above is from our second hike (from Sunday) at Cathedral of The Pines. We were there on September 11th, so the flag was flying at half mast. A friend of mine, Jennifer Tzemis, died in the towers that day, and I post the above flag as a tribute to her. Rest in peace Jenn. The Less Than Grand Canyon Of New HampshireDisappointed yet? We were. Maddie got a migraine on the ride up, so we didn't even attempt to hike any of the trails there. The trails did not run along the creek, so these pics were the "highlight" of the attraction. On a positive note, we saw a number of lakes and mountains on the ride to Hebron, so the trip wan't a total waste. And I did get to spend the whole day with my daughters, which was what was important to me anyway. Unfortunately, since I was driving, I have no pictures of the mountains or the lakes to show you. Ashleigh grabbed my iPad on the way home and took the selfie below! Cathedral Of The PinesOn Sunday, we stopped at Cathedral Of The Pines to hike the trails and take some pictures. It is only about five minutes from our house, so we go there often. In fact, Maddie and I volunteered there one season. I gave tours of the different rocks and their meanings, while Maddie usually helped out in the gift shop, or tagged along with me.
Although many of the tall pines that the Cathedral was named for were damaged in a storm a few years ago and cut down, it is still a beautiful place, and well worth the visit if you are in the area. As I said, Ashleigh fell and broke her iPad, and got very upset, thus we cut the trip a little short. Below are some of the pictures I took during the short time we were there. I am in an odd mood tonight. Although I was going to do a post on our weekend hikes, Maddie beat me to it. Next I was going to do a post on the existence of God and give a couple of different theories I read recently... but I am too tired and it is past midnight and the caffeine is starting to fade. Thus, I will do this post about ten things that most people don't know about me. Earlier, Maddie and I were having a discussion in the car (That is Maddie and Me above, though the picture is not from today) and the topic came up that there were likely few things that absolutely no one knew about us, although there were likely lots of things that few people knew about us. While the two things are similar, they are not the same thing. Thus, I started thinking: What things did not many people know about me, but that at least a few people knew about me? I noticed that it really depended on "when" I knew the person. Someone who knew me when I was a kid, likely knew different things about me than say people who I worked with at Merrill. Meanwhile, both of these groups likely knew certain things about me that people who I meet with socially now have no clue about. Thus, without further ado... Here are ten things that I think many people won't know about me. Some will know some of them, one or two will know most of them, but other than my sister, I don't think any will know all of them. Note, none of these things are going to be really earth shattering. In fact, I am going to try and keep this post on the light side. Only one or two of these things will really carry any weight. Let's see if you can figure out which ones.
8. I am a big fan of blues music, and I once saw Junior Wells perform at Manny's Car Wash in New York. Manny's closed down years ago, but the memories remain! RIP Junior! 9. I love to read poetry and I have written some of my own as well. 10. I am an introvert, although most people who meet me think I am an extrovert. I guess I fooled them! Well, there are ten things that you may not have known about me! Two bonus things would be that I used to smoke cigars, but gave them up (Thanks Maddie!), and that when I was younger I used to work as a messenger in New York city. Over the weekend, my dad brought me and my sister to Cathedral of the Pines. It serves as a bit of a nature walk and a tribute to fallen soldiers, as well as being a place of prayer accepting of all religions. It's beautiful, and it's one of my favorite places to go to catch a good sunset. You have a clear view of the mountain from almost everywhere; and it usually isn't too crowded. Unfortunately, we didn't get sunset photos on our last trip due to some unforseen turmoil- but I managed to take a good photo of the mountain and a couple of photos of my sister. I'll post them below.
Finally, here's another photo of my sister that I took while she was sitting on the stairs of one of the rock sculptures. I really like it a lot.
In any case- if you ever happen to be in Rindge, NH, I'd definitely recommend taking the time to make a stop at Cathedral of the Pines. It's calm and beautiful, and well worth your time. - maddie "Don't fear the enemy that attacks you, but the fake friend that hugs you." I could not find who said this little gem, but it is kind of true. I have had more grief thrown my way from a fake friend than I have ever had from an enemy.
In my entire life, I think I have had only one or two fake friends. Oddly enough, one was enough to break up friendships with true friends due to the lies he told. One guy I ran into was being very distant when I ran into him, and when I asked why, he said that the other had said I had been saying bad things about him (I won't go into detail here). So I asked him did he believe that? He said that he did. I said, "well I didn't say that, and I am not going to try and dissuade you since you seem to believe it, but you do realize that I haven't talked to that guy in over a decade?" He got a look of surprise on his face and said really? I said yeah and told him why I never hung out with the other guy anymore. The funny thing was that the guy had told him I said that only a couple of years ago, and only said that he did not hang out with me any more. He didn't say it had been over ten years since he last saw me, and he didn't tell him the real reason on why we no longer hung out. I said, well now you know and walked away. That old memory came to me when I saw that quote. You see, it didn't really matter to me that the guy really didn't want to hang out. I didn't either! I just saw him and said hello. I live in New Hampshire now, and the fact of the matter is I rarely go back to New Jersey. What did bother me was that this other guy, after about a decade, still went out of his way to tell lies about me. I have not thought of that guy in years at that point, even though we had been good friends. And yet, there he was spreading ill will all those years later. My advice: Treat everyone as you would want to be treated. If they don't treat you that way in return, then avoid them. Otherwise, you are setting yourself up with a fake friend. And with a fake friend, you are never sure when they are going to plot against you. The safest thing you can do is keep your private thoughts about others private and not share them with your other friends, unless they are positive comments. By doing this, then people will only have heard you saying positive things about others and they will be less likely to believe something concocted by a fake friend. Our second hike this week took us along the Contoocook River in Jaffrey, and eventually into the Children's Woods, which can be reach at a trail head along the Rails to Trails route. We had a beautiful day for a hike and we took advantage of it. We likely did about four mile round trip, and we timed our return with the onset of dusk. Below, are some of the pictures I took along our route. Note that most of these are along the river since it starts to get darker earlier in the woods, where the trees do a good job of blocking out a lot of the sunlight. Water shots are the best shots along this portion of rails to trails. You can really see the effects of the drought along the river. Water levels are just not as high as they usually are. I tried to catch the sunset as we were leaving, but I wasn't that successful. While the pictures are nice, they are not as dramatic as some of the ones we have caught in the past.
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