It doesn’t take long to get hooked on something that is inherently addictive. For example, yesterday I began a single game of solitaire on the computer and now I can’t get unhooked. In the past several years I have logged over one hundred days playing double deck solitaire. Those are days I will never get back to do something useful. My win rate is locked at 16%. It may never get any better, but I keep on trying, and wasting incredible amounts of time frittering away flipping cards from stack to stack when I could be writing blog posts about my boring life. I have to get unhooked. The problem is how does that happen? Perhaps if I blew up the computer, or smashed the screen?
No doubt even if I kick the habit, another vice will sneak into my repertoire of time wasting addictions, like napping, or reading, or just watching clouds pass over. There are so many ways to break habits but so little motivation to do so. Just try quitting to smoke.
Before long, if one practices an addiction like breathing it becomes a normal function of life. Addictions are contagious and will spread to your family and friends. Drinking alcoholic beverages is another addiction that is very hard to break. Drinking in excess becomes as hard as breathing to give up, and affects many other body functions well. There are harmless addictions like playing solitaire and those that are harmful like smoking and drinking. Does that mean we should not attempt to break those that are harmless? I think not. Getting away from the unharmful ones will give a person more time for productive things like day dreaming or washing windows.
The most harmful addiction I had to give up was smoking a pipe. It took three tries before I became successful, and I admit my health has been better for it, mental and physical. The final trick that tipped me over the top to success was when I came home from work one day to learn that my seven year old daughter buried my pipes in the garden. Her teacher taught all about the evils of smoking at school, and she came home to fix her daddy. So I kicked a twenty year smoking habit cold turkey and have not looked back. Now for the solitaire. I have already stopped playing several times and once went so far as to trash the program from my lap top. One day, I got an urge to play and reloaded the game. So much for kicking bad habits.
On a recent trip while wandering through antique shops searching for treasures, I amused myself by photographing posters, and signs that people hung in their homes because they were: meaningful, funny, whimsical, truthful, and sometimes shocking.
I only wish I would have written this essay. It is logical, and presents answers to Leftist claims that all people have a right to equal outcomes.
Two Americas
The Democrats are right, there are two Americas.The America that works, and the America that doesn’t.The America that contributes, and the America that doesn’t. It’s not the haves and the have nots, it’s the dos and the don’ts. Some people do their duty as Americans, obey the law, support themselves, contribute to society, and others don’t. That’s the divide in America. It’s not about income inequality, it’s about civic irresponsibility. It’s about a political party that preaches hatred, greed and victimization in order to win elective office. It’s about a political party that loves power more than it loves its country. That’s not invective, that’s truth, and it’s about time someone said it.
The politics of envy was on proud display a couple weeks ago when President Biden pledged the rest of his term to fighting “income inequality.” He noted that some people make more than other people, that some people have higher incomes than others, and he says that’s not just. That is the rationale of thievery. The other guy has it, you want it, Biden will take it for you. Vote Democrat.
That is the philosophy that produced Detroit. It is the electoral philosophy that is destroying America. It conceals a fundamental deviation from American values and common sense because it ends up not benefiting the people who support it, but a betrayal. The Democrats have not empowered their followers; they have enslaved them in a culture of dependence and entitlement, of victim-hood and anger instead of ability and hope. The president’s premise – that you reduce income inequality by debasing the successful – seeks to deny the successful the consequences of their choices and spare the unsuccessful the consequences of their choices. Because, by and large, income variations in society is a result of different choices leading to different consequences. Those who choose wisely and responsibly have a far greater likelihood of success, while those who choose foolishly and irresponsibly have a far greater likelihood of failure.
Success and failure usually manifest themselves in personal and family income. You choose to drop out of high school or to skip college – and you are apt to have a different outcome than someone who gets a diploma and pushes on with purposeful education and/or employment. You have your children out of wedlock and life is apt to take one course; you have them within a marriage and life is apt to take another course.
Most often in life our destination is determined by the course we take. My doctor, for example, makes far more than I do. There is significant income inequality between us. Our lives have had an inequality of outcome, but, our lives also have had an in equality of effort. While my doctor went to college and then devoted his young adulthood to medical school and residency, I chose another avenue. He made a choice, I made a choice, and our choices led us to different outcomes. His outcome pays a lot better than mine. Does that mean he cheated and Joe Biden needs to take away his wealth? No, it means we are both free men in a free society where free choices lead to different outcomes. It is not inequality Joe Biden intends to take away, it is freedom.
The freedom to succeed and the freedom to fail. There is no true option for success if there is no true option for failure. The pursuit of happiness means a whole lot less when you face the punitive hand of government if your pursuit brings you more happiness than the other guy. Even if the other guy sat on his arse and did nothing. Even if the other guy made a lifetime’s worth of asinine and shortsighted decisions. President Biden and the Democrats preach equality of outcome as a right, while completely ignoring inequality of effort. The simple Law of the Harvest – as ye sow, so shall ye reap – is sometimes applied as, “The harder you work, the more you get.” Biden would turn that upside down.
Those who achieve are to be punished as enemies of society and those who fail are to be rewarded as wards of society. Entitlement will replace effort as the key to upward mobility in American society if President Biden-Barack gets his way. He seeks a lowest common denominator society in which the government besieges the successful and productive to foster equality through mediocrity. He and his party speak of two Americas, and their grip on power is based on using the votes of one to sap the productivity of the other. America is not divided by the differences in our outcomes, it is divided by the differences in our efforts. It is a false philosophy to say one man’s success comes about unavoidably as the result of another man’s victimization. What Biden offered was not a solution, but a separatism. He fomented division and strife, pitted one set of Americans against another for his own political benefit. That’s what socialists offer. Marxist class warfare wrapped up with a bow. Two Americas, coming closer each day to proving the truth to Lincoln’s maxim that a house divided against itself cannot stand.
Over the years I have passed many yard ornaments consisting of ladies with very large derrières facing the street while in front of their flower garden. They always brought back memories of my own mother bent over at the hips pulling weeds. II wondered why do they do that? Wouldn’t it be easier to kneel down and pull weeds that way? Today I realized the answer to my question. I attacked our small vegetable patch with a vengeance removing two seasons worth of wild growth. My advice to gardeners is this, never, never, never, never allow a garden to go wild for two years. Nature has a rule which is to recover from man’s attempt to over rule it in any way shape or form as quickly as is possible.
I thought I had the problem solved when I first initiated the garden plots. I boxed them off from the lawn to slow the growth of grass and weeds into the valuable vegetable space. Slowed is putting it mildly. Within one season the grass had grown under the wooden framing and was taking over the interior. To make matters worse there were a few trees that had started from seed that had roots nearly to China, and in between patches of bluegrass were tough wild specimens of thistle. In the middle of it all stood three clumps of green onions the last reminder of anything edible within the borders of our meager vegetable patch.
Digging and pulling weeds firied up the neurons within the nervous system through my back, knees, hips, and neck. A reminder to never, never, never, never allow a garden to go to weed for two years. It took me about an hour of said exercise to remember why my mother bent at the hips to pull weeds. I chose to go down on my knees, but getting back up became more strenuous and my knees screamed at me for doing so.
By the end of the pull, I too was bent at the hip with my butt pointing toward the sky reaching to tear the grass from the ground. It is time to fill the jacuzzi with TBD oil and to jump in for an hour.
And, that is my story of how the term “butt up time” originated, and I’m sticking to it.
The devil whispered to me, “I’m coming for you.” I whispered back, “Bring pizza.”
Having plans sounds like a good idea until you have to put on clothes and leave the house.
It’s weird being the same age as old people. When I was a kid, I wanted to be older…this is not what I expected.
Life is like a helicopter. I don’t know how to operate a helicopter.
Chocolate is God’s way of telling us he likes us a little bit chubby.
It is probably my age that tricks people into thinking I’m an adult.
Never sing in the shower! Singing leads to dancing, dancing leads to slipping, and slipping leads to paramedics seeing you naked. So remember…Don’t sing!
I see people about my age mountain climbing; I feel good getting my leg through my underwear without losing my balance.
If you can’t think of a word, say “I forgot the English word for it.” That way people will think you’re bilingual instead of an idiot.
I’m at a place in my life where errands are starting to count as going out.
Coronacoaster noun: the ups and downs of a pandemic.
One day you are loving your bubble, doing work outs, baking banana bread and going for long walks, and the next you’re crying, drinking gin for breakfast and missing people you don’t even like.
I’m at that age where my mind still thinks I’m 29, my humor suggests I’m 12,while my body mostly keeps asking if I’m sure I’m not dead yet.
I’m getting tired of being part of a major historical event.
I don’t always go the extra mile, but when I do it’s because I missed my exit.
At what point can we just start using 2020 as profanity? As in: “That’s a load of 2020.” or “What in the 2020.” or “abso-2020-lutely.”
You don’t realize how old you are until you sit on the floor and then try to get back up.
We all get heavier as we get older, because there’s a lot more information in our heads.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Success is a matter of choice not chance. It’s your choice.
