No cuts

Shows on TV nowadays leave out a lot of real life so that people don't have to see the humdrum of reality. They skip from one scene to the next allowing people to assume the action that happened in between. In NCIS LA tonight, for example, the two main detectives go to the director and tell her that she needs to send them to Afghanistan. In the very next scene, the two detectives are wearing middle eastern garb and are in Afghanistan - no preparation to go there, no flight to get there, no car ride from the airport to the house where the next scene is, and no unpacking and changing clothes in their hotel before going to the house of the next scene.

I would like for this to happen in real life sometimes. I would be nice to skip the mundane scenes in my life and just go from one substantive scene to the next. On trips, I would get to cut out the 5 1/2 hour drives to either Dallas or Austin. Every morning I would get to skip the routines to get ready for work. I would get to cut right to the parts that had meaning in my day.

But reality is not TV. I do have to go through every second of every day, good or bad. But, it makes a better person out of me because I get to learn from my failures in the bad moments and experience great happiness in the good moments. I get to watch others in how they operate their business and learn from them. I get to watch others have their worlds take turns in unexpected directions and see them make lemonade from lemons. And that gives me comfort, vicarious experience, and satisfaction. I would not be the person I am today if I got to skip the scenes in my life. I would end up with less happiness; I would make assumptions about the missing action that would not match what really happened; and I would have less understanding of the connectedness of life.

As it is I experience every second of every day and have great, great hope of how I want the future to be.