As I sit to type out this year’s Thanksgiving entry it occurs to me that I would never have considered doing such in my younger years. I don’t know if this is a sign that I appreciate life more in my maturity or if my focus on what’s of value has changed. Back in my…
In the contemporary world there seem to be a host of beliefs, accepted as unavoidable fact, based on assumptions about the inevitable results of past events. The examples I would give are 1) Every combat veteran will have or does have PTSD and 2) If you have a family history of clinical depression then it’s…
One really spectacular benefit of social media is that it allows you to follow those you choose, ignore those you want to and share news or commentary on your day as you see fit. There are a great many people who use it purely for trivia or entertainment. There are many companies that use it…
As with so many of the things that inspire me to start thinking around a topic, something popped up in my social feeds. In this case it was about how, as we live life, we are essentially standing in line. Standing in line for what? The person who presented this represented everyone as standing in…
Nearly every day of my life I hear someone say, “Karma’s a bitch,” or, “Watch what you do; you don’t want Karma visiting it back on you.” Both of these statements indicate a belief in a higher power, even though most of us don’t think of it that way. We tend to talk about karma…
Yesterday evening, in a local cigar shop, there was a conversation held about belief in God. I use the capital “G” there for God, because the conversation started out about whether or not one man’s son believed in God. It quickly morphed into a discussion about the difference between “belief in God,” and “belief in…
“Only a Sith deals in such absolutes.” Obi-Wan Kenobi. I couldn’t help myself. I had to open with that. The entire Star Wars franchise depicts the Sith as evil and selfish, so when I started thinking about these two words that express absolutes – always and never – I immediately attached them to “the Sith.”…
There are many different kinds of energy, and that’s not even getting into the existential discussion about Einstein’s theory and how all mass is also energy. No, I’m talking about the energies each of us contains: physical energy, mental energy, emotional energy. We also have spiritual energy although some would argue that’s just a combination…
This is always a good conversation starter: Do you believe in ghosts? The answers vary from, “Nope. They don’t exist,” to “Yes, I’ve seen one!” What’s funny is to listen to the conversation, always inserting just enough input to keep it going, and realize how many different ideas there are of what a “ghost” is….
Almost daily you can hear someone complain about their life, their day, some part of their job or something else. The commonality across their statements is that something is wrong somehow and they’re not happy. Stop and take a minute to consider what they’re complaining about and most often you can recognize a common cause…
Someone once said that there are two truly important days in our life: the day we are born and the day we discover what we were born for. That “what we were born for” could also be described as our purpose in this life. It’s something a great many people search for over a span…
A long time ago a friend of mine told me that psychologists are just overpaid bartenders who don’t serve you drinks. While that’s an oversimplification of both professions, if you stop and think about it there’s some truth to the outlook. A great many people with problems talk to their bartender… and the more they…
Every now and then I get involved in some interesting discussions with friends at the local cigar bar. Last evening (as I type this) I got involved in a discussion about the human soul, the value of it, where it originates, where it goes after we die and so on. As you can imagine, everyone…
Have you ever had a thought and then wondered why it was so dark? Have you ever looked in the mirror and wondered who that person was looking back? Have you ever thought about your talents and wondered why they all seemed to focus on something you weren’t really proud of? Have you ever doubted…
Every now and then we get reminded of just how good the people in our world can be. And “our world” isn’t just our circle of nearby friends, or folks from our neighborhood, friends of friends, etc. It quite literally is people from around the world. Bear with me as I elaborate and follow along…
According to brainpickings.org, it takes 21 days, at a minimum, to build a new habit. That’s 21 days of repeating the same action, at approximately the same time, and for something simple… like drinking a glass of water when you wake up each day. Another website suggests that it takes over two months – 66…
This morning I saw a quote that said, “Even bad days have an expiration date of 24 hours.” The editor in me wondered if a time limit was a date and then I realized I was missing the point. The point is that even bad days have a limit to them; they only last a…
Some years back when I was responsible for fleet maintenance for my police agency, we kept track of the service life of our patrol vehicles by how many miles they had on them. Another agency I knew of tracked the service life of their patrol vehicles according to service hours. We scheduled maintenance according to…
My family once owned a dog that we named ThunderStorm and just called Storm. He was a chocolate Labrador from a big family and, full grown, weighed about 100 pounds. The odd thing we discovered about him, from the earliest days we had him as a puppy, was that he loved to go out and…
Have you ever noticed that some of your friends or family never seem quite as stressed or lacking in control of a given situation as others? Have you ever wondered why? What makes them so special? How come they never seem to sweat when something goes sideways? Here are a few reasons why they might…