Grumpa Joe's Place

I copied this from a friend. It’s so insightful I had to share it. So much of this takes time and life to grasp.

This is too insightful not to share. I asked a friend who has crossed 70 & is heading towards 80 what sort of changes he is feeling in himself? He sent me the following:

1 After loving my parents, my siblings, my spouse, my children and my friends, I have now started loving myself.

2 I have realized that I am not “Atlas”. The world does not rest on my shoulders.

3 I have stopped bargaining with vegetable & fruit vendors. A few pennies more is not going to break me, but it might help the poor fellow save for his daughter’s school fees.

4 I leave my waitress a big tip. The extra money might bring a smile to her face. She is toiling much harder for a living than I am.

5 I stopped telling the elderly that they’ve already told that story many times. The story makes them walk down memory lane & relive their past.

6 I have learned not to correct people even when I know they are wrong. The onus of making everyone perfect is not on me. Peace is more precious than perfection.

7 I give compliments freely & generously. Compliments are a mood enhancer not only for the recipient, but also for me. And a small tip for the recipient of a compliment, never, NEVER turn it down, just say “Thank You.”

8 I have learned not to bother about a crease or a spot on my shirt. Personality speaks louder than appearances.

9 I walk away from people who don’t value me. They might not know my worth, but I do.

10 I remain cool when someone plays dirty to outrun me in the rat race. I am not a rat & neither am I in any race.

11 I am learning not to be embarrassed by my emotions. It’s my emotions that make me human.

12 I have learned that it’s better to drop the ego than to break a relationship. My ego will keep me aloof, whereas with relationships, I will never be alone.

13 I have learned to live each day as if it’s the last. After all, it might be the last.

14 I am doing what makes me happy. I am responsible for my happiness, and I owe it to myself. Happiness is a choice. You can be happy at any time, just choose to be!

I decided to share this for all my friends. Why do we have to wait to be 60 or 70 or 80, why can’t we practice this at any stage and age?

Shared from Steve Serie’s page.

Thanks Steve for sharing so many meaningful insights.

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My long time transportation companion is at the car doctor being lubed rotated and analyzed for sickness. The nickname I attached to this Toy comes from a recall of a few years ago when Toyota cars were running wildly off the road and crashing. The root cause was never really revealed but the Doctor installed special hooks to keep the floor mats from sliding under the accelerator and keeping it from retracting when foo pressure was removed. The shocking result was a car that decided to run wildly out of control. Happily, I have never had the problem, but the nickname fit.

Just now I got the diagnosis from the Doctor and the problem may have been located as an igniter in #3 cylinder. This is a 6 cylinder motor and this will be the third igniter to fail in fifteen years. That means three more trips to the car-doctor before the problem starts all over again. I gotta go now.

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We just gave the Taliban, an organization we have been fighting for twenty years, a complete army of equipment. All we can hope is that they are too stupid to operate it. Fat chance of them being stupid. They have maintained a pretty good fight for twenty years without fancy equipment so they must know something. The Chinese have copied all of our stuff and are smart enough to learn from it. Since we don’t make too many things in America anymore we sub it to China for manufacture. That gives them a pretty formidable war machine. Not only do they have the people to fight, but they have enough people left over to make more fighting stuff.

I’ve told this story before but it bears repeating. When I traveled to Singapore for my Company I was commissioned to to learn if the Singaporeans had the capability to make the molds we used to make our products. I fully expected to find Barney and Fred Simpson banging on metal with a stone hammer and a crude chisel. What I learned is that they were using more sophisticated CNC machine equipment than we had. And because they had to learn fast they trained young men from high school to operate the machines. Within a very short time these youngsters were making molds as good as we could with Tool and Die makers who went through years of apprenticeship to become tool makers. Because our guys were so well trained in making things manually, they commanded huge salaries. The Singaporean machinist who only had to learn how to run computer controlled machine made considerable less.

Fortunately the owner of our company did not trust the Chinese for a second and would not allow anything as critical as our main product molds be made in China. I do remember President Bill Clinton being accused of trading secret aircraft technology with them for what I don’t remember. I was so incensed by this knowledge that it didn’t matter to me what we got from the Chinese. Our company leader had a philosophy that he developed and paid for all of his proprietary equipment. He believed his competitors should have to do the same. Why gift them with the information they need to beat us? The same goes for our giving the Taliban anything other than a lack of American military to kill. They can all go to their version of hell as far as I am concerned, and we should all think the same way.

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My pond never ceases to amuse me. This evening I got the urge to begin feeding my goldfish. As I stepped onto the first stone of the pathway at the waters edge a streak of green flashed from my shoe to become splash. A smallish leopard frog with a colorful body pattern and some bright hues of green floated at the edge of a lily pad resting from his leap. No sooner than I took note of him another one jumped even further just as my shoe was about to squish him.

Frogs have been plentiful this season and I wonder if it is because I stocked the pond with goldfish. It is rare to see a small school of six fish and never a school of 24 which is the number I released. Those fish that I do see are much bigger than I bought. Evidently, they are eating any and all organic matter growing in their environment. The frogs on the other hand are carnivorous and enjoy feasting on scrumptious goldies. My logic makes me wonder if the frogs are winning the battle of survival.

One hope I have is that the fish continue to spawn throughout the season. One fish that I released was an algae eating plecostomus.

He is black and disappeared immediately into the darkness of the water. I have dreams that one day soon when I am skimming algae that he will appear latched onto the back of my hand. In a dream he and I are rolling around in the water. Me trying to escape his grip and he trying to take a bigger bite.

The mosquitoes are rather annoying this evening and I must escape from the patio into the house. I’ve done my bit for nature by acting as a mosquito target for the past hour. I have one giant itchy bump on the base of my left thumb and it is driving me mad trying to resist scratching. As I am writing about my thumb, I feel squads of skeeters attacking my hair. The joy of nature has suddenly ceased, and has become a wild urge to begin slapping all about my body and heading for the door.

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