Options

I spoke with a young man from Nepal today.  He received his education there, and was in the U.S. to try to start studying at a university here.  My job was to ask him a question to help him practice his English.  So, I asked him, "Do you believe there is life on other planets?"

The answer was simply an opinion question.  Mainly I was listening for grammatical structure of his utterances to check for his understanding of ideas from the question.  In the course of his answer, he said that the sun was the only light in the universe, and that other stars were not suns with light and heat of their own, but reflections from the Earth's sun.  Therefore, there was no life elsewhere, only here with our sun.

Grammatically speaking, everything was fine.  Semantically speaking, there was a great amount of entanglement with his answer.  I didn't question what he was saying.  I listened only, which was my job.

However, if the young man learned this kind of science in his country, I know he is not ready for an education in the U.S.  I did ask as my last question to him if it would matter to him that other explanations of the universe existed.  He said, "No."

Education is a wonderful thing in that it expands one's horizons.  This young man will find that is true if he really does continue with his education.  I'm not overly concerned with his answer.  People either opt in or out of an education.  He will get to choose if he will allow evidence to develop his future thought.  If he opts out, of course, he will fit in better with the world he left behind, and will probably rejoin them.  If he opts in, he will love what enlightenment has to offer in this and a thousand other matters.  He will be in for the trip of his life.  I hope he opts in.

On the canvas of darkness

Night has fallen.  It's a little earlier than it has been falling because summer is in its death throes.  The readout on the clock is still approaching 8:00.  It's a sign that my time of day, the cover of dark, is kicking in for 6 months.  The night soothes my mind, allowing it clarity to see my path clearly, and invites me to imagine what lies ahead so I can save steps during the day.  Darkness is the canvas on which I can produce pictures of possible outcomes given certain scenarios.  Night is my close friend.

Life's colors

Our kitchen is filled with pictures drawn by our little granddaughter.  She colors everything, always trying to color a picture in rainbow colors.  I think she has a robust enough personality that she herself will have a colorful life when she learns how to start coloring life.

And it is that principle that allows me to admire people who know how to turn their environments into bursts of their colorful personalities.  There aren't many who can do this, but I know a few.  They fill the room around them with rainbow colors, no matter what is happening in their worlds.

This is not a standard personality type with standard types of jobs.  It is any job with people who want to add a touch of laughter, a talent of art, a background of music, a picture of serenity, a record of steadiness, or a well of knowledge to their other amenable habits.  These kind of people usually don't flag in their energy or their gift to the setting.  It's a pleasure to work with people like this.  I tip my hat to the color-filled people who have touched my life.

Seriously different advice

Life is funny like that.

A woman I have known a long time got married right out of high school.  Her marriage lasted 2 years and ended.  She didn't waste too much time getting a second husband.  She married again within 6 months.  She had two children, then when they were 2 and 3 respectively, her husband walked away and divorced her.  She spent a 3 year period of time wandering, so to speak.  In this time, she lived with one man, left him, went to bars every Thursday for a year carousing.  Finally she moved to a different city, found a man to marry and raise her children with, and 28 years later she is still married to him.

Now my daughter is dealing with single mom issues.  Who wanted to enter the picture as advisor?  You guessed it.  The above mentioned woman.  Even if the woman finally settled down, I can't imagine the type of advice she will give.  I would bet my life that it will be different from mine - seriously!

An even older path

I was raised in a way very different from the ways that I have adopted now.  I didn't know how I would exactly react when  I went this weekend to a place that I knew had kept those time-honored ways of the all the restricted forms of discipline I had kept in my very young years.  I anticipated that I would have some nostalgia, and then be appreciative of my current lifestyle and move on.

But my mind couldn't really comprehend what I saw.  It was so far removed from my current ways that I had no nostalgia whatsoever.  I  actually found myself pitying the ones who were still engaging in these retroactive habits.  I felt nothing for myself because I had escaped the slavery of such a lifestyle.

It was dream-like.  I could see what was happening, but could not engage.  I found myself as a spectator only.  At the end of two timeless hours, I was finally able to get in my host's vehicle and leave the scene.  When asked what I thought about the experience, I used the word that normally I use for thoughts that have to be masked.  "It was nice," I said.  But nice and numb have the same feeling to them (really a lack of feeling).

I am writing from a comfortable distance from the scene of that window to the remote past place in my life.  I am only thinking thoughts like that of the old Pink Floyd song.

Jump right in

I have learned both in classes and in experience that for every collapse of some business, there is a golden opportunity waiting in the wings for someone to discover what it is and turn a golden opportunity into gold.

I have just encountered such conditions.  A particular business that had been operating for a decade or so has collapsed through gross mismanagement.  The golden opportunity hasn't appeared yet, but it is there waiting to be discovered. 

It always takes time to develop something, but the currency at this point is ideas.  That's my longsuit.  The second part, negotiating the deal, I'm not quite as efficient in, but it is the last part, turning the idea into a lucrative business, that I don't do well in at all.  I am hoping this turns out different.   But, I have to try it.  It's entrepreneurship 101.  Get in on a groundfloor opportunity, build it, reap the benefits.  I will be working diligently this time to make it as easy as entrepreneurship 101 makes it sound.

An old path

I had been acquainted with the town for a really, really long time.  Today, I had an occasion to visit it.  I stayed in a modern hotel, but when I stepped out its doors, the town's old, old way of conducting business hit me in the face.

I went to watch a movie.  I drove into the parking lot to park, and the cars were jammed into parking spots that had been striped for cars of the 1950s.  They were not wide and the slant of the lines reminded me of the way striping had been done in small towns right after WWII.  But, I found one of those narrow spaces and parked.

I got out and joined a line in front of a ticket office, box-office style.  The line had about 50-60 people in it.  Only one person was issuing tickets at the box office window, so it was going to take about 15 minutes before I was going to be served.  I had not seen that arrangement since I went on a date in my high school years.

After the line to get tickets, I went inside.  Yep, another single-file line.  I snaked by the popcorn counter, the drink counter (where a person took my order and filled my drinks for me - now how many years ago was self-service phased in?).  It went by the candy stand and finally ended up at the cash register.  I paid, went in to the show.  At least it had stadium seating.  But the seats were the two-piece kind where the seat part was separate from the back part and folded down by sitting on its edge to get it to move.

The show I was seeing fit the decor.  It was a movie set in the 1970s but many of the buildings were in the architectural style of the 1950s.  On the way out, I stopped into the bathrooms.   I flushed my own toilet used a push button soap dispenser and crank down towels from a front loaded lever.

I had experienced a time trap.  I really had not been ready for it.  I certainly didn't appreciate it.  And it reminded me of times that were not some of my best days.  I guess I needed that reminder.  Life is still not easy, but it is so much better now than it had been then, that I actually felt kicked and bruised from having visited the theater.  I made note that I didn't need such a visit to appreciate what I have now.  The visit had certainly been a stark reminder of some rugged days passed and to which I hope never to return.

Strong vision

The moment had a solemnity to it.  I was visiting one of the places where my life had been rooted.  I spent about an hour there.  But, I found myself looking around the place, and unpleasant memories filled my mind.  So much so that tears welled up in my eyes, then trickled onto my cheeks.  I wiped them away only to have second round of the same.

After those moments, tears came and went in the bottom lids of my eyes but did not leave my eyelids to stain my cheeks.  The strong vision of my son in a place that couldn't help him, that should have helped him, flooded my mind and triggered the sad wetness.  Imagining the procession to his casket caused me to short-circuit at that point.  What remained was just the feeling of sadness.

Moments like that don't happen, but then again, I was visiting one of the places where my life had been rooted.  I should have left, but I would have to have brought attention to myself by excusing myself and climbing over 4 others seated next to me.  So, I brought out my phone and begin reading from it something that I had been concentrating on earlier that day.  It helped and soon returned me to normalcy.

I didn't think I was vulnerable to that train of thinking anymore.  But, I found that I was.  I don't like working through the depths of death again.  But for a moment in time, I felt again the same chilling, hopeless feeling that I had had 13 years ago.  I'm good to go now.  My flashback moments have taught me something about myself.  I'm ready to move forward now.

In a moment's notice

Recently, I observed a man about 35 in a role playing game who didn't like the way the game went.  The value of his cards changed from one round to the next and he went from successful to struggling in one fell swoop.  He argued how unlike life that was.

Well... maybe his life hasn't had that experience yet... but I doubt it.  Life has more than a few twists in it where it is different from before in the flash of a moment.  This weekend I received just such an email.  Life was rocking along like I wanted it to, but now, I am going to have to make some adjustments.  And it happened in the length of time it took me to read a short email.

When I play the currency market, money is lost or gained in a one second time span.  About two years ago, I had to completely rearrange my life for a two-month time period because my mother fell, broke her kneecap, and had to have 'round-the-clock care.  Her fall happened in less than a second.

I have had people people decide things for me that I didn't like and wouldn't have done.  I have had friends to tell me things or not tell me things in a short conversation or email that affected where I lived and worked and what my productivity level would be.

Yes, all the above and many, many other very important occurrences have happened to me in one fell swoop, without notice, without my approval, with indifference and insensitivity, with not a second thought about what would change for me.  In one fell swoop!

So, to the man who made the statement about life and immediate changes, "Hang on because one day the floor below your feet will disappear in a moment's notice and you won't be ready."