50 isn't what it used to be

Our 22yr old greatgrandson loads trucks and railroad cars.  My wife asked him how his work was going.  He said,"50 lbs isn't what it used to be."

Our cleaning lady is beautiful.  She is over 50 years of age and a grandmother.  Fifty years old isn't what it used to be.  We are living in an age of longevity.  Peter Drucker said years ago that 65 was too young an age to set for retirement.

I learned that one of my former students just celebrated her 50th birthday.  How can that be?  I taught college students.

One of the challenges of life is that we ourselves are constantly changing.  So being 50 looks different when I am ten years old from how it looks when I am 80 years old.  Plus commercial and political pressures and causes and lapses make the landscape and what is in it change all the time.  While I am watching and charting two steady changes, four more are changing behind my back. I notice that all sorts of aging goes on without my permission.

My daughter was a cute, intelligent little thing.  Now she is ready to retire.

My piano lessons

Lynn has a wide musical background.  I don't.  In high school, I joined the drum and bugle corp. I had been impressed with drums for quite a while but teachers in junior high had asked me to just mouth the words to songs the class sang.  Once, a music teacher had me listen to her play two notes on the piano over and over.  I was supposed to tell her whether the 2nd sound was higher or lower than the first.  After a while, I had more and more trouble telling which was higher.  Lynn can begin a note, hit a key on the piano and the singing and the piano match perfectly.  I can't even though I have tried.  

She sang in choruses in school and church.  She played the French horn and other instruments in high school.  

I can keep a beat but I can't read music.  Lists of activities for older citizens sometimes advise learning to play an instrument and learning other languages as valuable activities for older brains.  So, about a month or two ago, I asked her to usher me into some basic piano lessons.  She has picked a couple pages from "Piano for the Young Beginner".  I have played both lessons several times but when she plays them without looking at the keys or the pages and does so with verve and spirit, I fear I might not ever get to be a piano pro.

plan for a commercial success

I have been reading a great book, "Einstein's Fridge" by Paul Sen.  It has the intriguing subtitle "How Heat and Cold explain the universe".  For quite a few pages, it didn't and then rather suddenly, it more or less did.  Quite a bit of it is about capturing energy.  Since it is clear that Americans, and maybe most adults, dislike waiting and will exert themselves to avoiding having to wait, waiting seems like a possible basis for a commercial success.

I picture three branches of the effort: classes, practice and research.  We will start with classes that explore feelings and memories of waiting.  You remember finding that you weren't old enough and waiting to be.  Talking, walking, driving a car, dating, playing on the team - all those times when you had to wait.  How did waiting make you feel?  Can you wait better now?  How can you improve your waiting?

The 2nd branch of the effort will be the launch of practice rooms.  Of course, the idea emerges to label them "Waiting Rooms" but that label is already taken by doctors, dentists, principals and others.  Maybe "waiting practice rooms" but that is not catchy or memorable enough.  There is some similarity between waiting and meditation.  Also, the Quakers have learned to wait quietly for religious awareness and insights so we might pick up some funding from them, the Religious Society of Friends.

Finally, the research branch will be opened for business.  Of course, the first variable to think of is probably duration.  Who waits the longest time, without talk, smartphones, fidgeting, etc.?  We may purchase sensors to help us track those who wait with the least disturbance and the most quiet.  

Waiting

I was prepared for quite a bit of waiting when I accompanied Lynn to her one day art class in Dodgeville.  Then, yesterday, I went to get a haircut.  One of the hairdressers told me I would have to wait 30 minutes before anyone could work on me.  I sat in the waiting chairs.  I like to practice staying alert and not urging the clock to go faster.  It is good Bhuddist work, related to meditation and being conscious of what I am doing with my mind. While waiting, I saw a 20-something man ask a hairdresser, with a pained and anxious look on his face, "How long is the wait?"  He looked as though he was asking "How long will I be tortured?"

I know that Americans are famous for disliking and fearing having to wait - for anything.  Everything should be available NOW and if not, forget it!  One thing that covid has done is increase the number of places one has to wait.

I know there are all sorts of odd books available these days and I had just read about Bart (bart.google.com), Google's new chatbot that is said to be their attempt to compete with the much-talked about ChatGPT.  As I have said, I like to treat the Google search as though it is a wise, well-read chat bot and have Google search out answers to questions, odd ones as well as standard ones.  t.ly/1sh_r  (short link to Google search "how to wait")  I was impressed that "how to wait" received 3.9 Billion responses. 

The format of a Google search result includes questions others have asked related to the main search.  Often, the related questions broaden my thinking and my ideas about my search.  One aspect of waiting I had not considered was the wait in some Christianity for Jesus to return.  The novel by Tom Perrotta "The Leftovers" explores the impact of the Rapture when some Christians are taken up to Heaven while many other people, often assuming they are models of the right way to be, find that others are "missing" while they themselves are not.  They are puzzled and depressed. 

Can you seat two diners?

We didn't feel like cooking a meal after returning from the workshop.  We traveled to five different restaurants before we found one where we could be seated immediately.  The first one usually has immediate seating available and we have eaten there many times in the 55 years we have lived in this town of 26,000.  That figure is somewhat misleading since other towns and villages are immediately adjacent and passing from one to another is not very noticeable.  Besides, the town includes a university with about 7700 growing, hungry students.  Yes, the campus dining halls serve them many meals but eateries and drinkeries are still popular at all hours, especially late ones.  Admittedly, this was Saturday night, well-known to be a likely one for people to assemble and dine together.  Further, this was the end of spring break, so students, parents, little brothers and sisters, boyfriends and girlfriends may well have increased the number of diners and those waiting to dine.  

We are still experiencing the effects of covid, too.  Enough people can pause as patrons or reconsider their working lives and hours that businesses shorten their hours or go out of business.  Confusion can result if we try to use web pages to decide on hours.  Many smaller businesses have poor or no access to their own web documents to insert up-to-date hours or totally forget that web pages make statements that can be badly out-of-date.

Lynn made the suggestion that took us to the winning location but the dining room was half young teens and pre-teens.  I asked the waitress about the unusual clientele and she said there was a basketball tournament in town.  We are simply lucky we didn't starve to death!

Back from a trip

We are back.  We attended a one-day workshop for Lynn at Adamah Clay Camp in southwest Wisconsin.  Lynn shopped for clothes and bought some tops and a pair of pants. We saw some wonderful scenery, despite being worried about a snowstorm.

A friend sent some lovely writing about childhood memories and that reminded me to encourage all who might want to try writing (or inserting photos) that it can be done fairly easily.  Writing memories or notions or explaining fears or important convictions can be fun and stimulating.

Artists everywhere

There is a group of artists in town here and they represent several arts.  But as far as I know, they don't seem to recognize they lack any representative of the verbal arts.  Poetry, fiction, non-fiction, essays - all have a place in our lives.  Beyond that, most humans begin to use spoken words about age 1.  We have an internal impulse to say "Momma" or "doggie" or whatever.  

As we age, we learn more words and become sensitive to a wider range of internal feelings and external observations.  We also develop desires and we use words to express our desires, as in Can I have a fried egg?  It is easy to accept the progress from the wails of outrage of a newborn expressing displeasure to being ejected from a pleasant womb through a narrow and squeezing passage to the high school senior debating the need for lower taxes as "normal".  In a way, that certainly is normal but it is still the acquisition of an art, the art of choosing and using words.  

Many descriptions of humans focus on their use of spoken language as an important part of being human.  Much of the early education that kids get in schools is about adding an ability to write, to make marks that can later be decoded by future generations or others.  So, yes, the vast majority of us are artists engaged in the complex art of using words spoken and written.

Expanding skill set

Certain skills are valuable to have but some aren't very important.  One of my skills is being able to wiggle my ears, separately.  Of course, I can also wiggle them together, coordinately.  I admit you have to look closely to see the wiggle but it is there and it is observable.  A related skill is lifting an eyebrow, as in doubting, skeptical or quizzical looks.  

I think I first began concentrating on ear movement when, as a kid, I saw a video of a person claiming that hair loss is retarted or prevented by having a loose scalp.  I think the idea was that a looser, moveable scalp allowed better blood flow and nourishment of the hair on the head.  As a wrestler, I have not been very attached to the idea that bald is bad and as a fan of Yul Brenner, I thought the hair on my head was not important.  

I guess most people can lift both eyebrows simultaneously as part of the facial expression of shock or surprise.  I can lift either eyebrow separately.  Doing so makes a pretty good expression of doubt.

If you lack either ear movement or eyebrow lifting abilities, it is not too late to practice and acquire these fundamental abilities.

Ravioli and Happiness

 I think it is interesting that there are astronomical moments that mark our seasons.  I like to look up the moments of the spring and fall equinoxes and the summer and winter solstices.  When I looked up the spring equinox, I found that instead of March 21, the actual moment of the spring equinox this year was 4:24 PM Central Daylight Time today.  Then, I was surprised to learn that today is also "International Happiness Day".

I tried to find days in the calendar that are not already designated to celebrate, commiserate or focus on some theme or other, but so far I have not.  Back in graduate school, our teacher set us a problem that had to do with calendar calculations and in working on it, I found that there are more than 60 calendars in use around the world.  So, it might be international pickle day for you but not for me.  

In addition to multiple calendars, there are many databases, web sites and other sources that name days for themes, causes, remembrances, anniversaries, etc.  Here is a short link, via the Firefox browser, to a Google results page that names some of them: t.ly/ZVtp  If you try, you can discover that today is National Ravioli Day, in somebody's opinion. 

Today is the 19th

Today is the 19th.  Tomorrow, the 20th, at 4:24 CDT PM, the spring equinox will occur.  Expect big changes.  Birds will start landing, plants sprouting up, flowers developing, green shoots on tree limbs.  Warmer weather and daylight starting earlier and lasting later.  Of course, not all at once.  Slowly, over time, this and that will change.  There may be some lingering snow storms, some cold weather but spring has to get started.  It has to finish its transfer into summer by Wednesday, June 21 at 9:57 CDT.  That is only a quarter of a year later and there is so much to get done!

Hard to tell

We paid extra to see "Everything Everywhere All at Once" but we stopped viewing it halfway through: too chaotic and jumbled for our taste.  The parts we saw made some use of an idea similar to Capgras syndrome.  That's where I feel I know you until I become convinced that you look the same but you aren't.  People I know have been replaced in some cases by identical-looking and sounding-creatures who in fact are different people altogether.  Our younger daughter died at age 45 but exhibited this syndrome sometimes.  

Joseph Capgras was a French psychiatrist who described people in the grip of this sort of erroneous conviction in a professional journal in 1923. With our daughter, who had a high IQ, was convinced of replacements or other ideas that her parents disagreed with, she sometimes expressed exasperation with our limitations and pedestrian minds.  Our doubts of her convictions do not weaken them.

These days, with plenty of avenues for communication and expression of ideas, we can run into ideas that strike us as absurd, improbable or impossible.  There are many calls for evidence to support notions but many of our modern ideas are difficult or impossible for the average citizen to gather evidence about.  I was reading Dorothy H. Crawford in the excellent Oxford Very Short Introduction book "Viruses: A Very Short Introduction" and found this sentence:

It must have taken a huge leap of faith for people to accept that tiny, living organisms were responsible for diseases that had hitherto been attributed variously to the will of the gods, the alignment of the planets or miasmic vapours emanating from swamps and decomposing organic material.  Of course, this realization did not dawn overnight, but as more and more microbes were identified, the 'germ theory' took hold and by the beginning of the 20th century it was widely accepted even in non-scientific circles that microbes could cause disease.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

When I was in my early teens, I saw a map with family names in some places.  One of them was "Kirby" and that got me interested in my ancestors.   For a while, the National Geographic Society ran the Genographic Project that helped people understand the paths ancestors had taken out of Africa to their present location.  Later, we had our DNA analyzed by 23andMe.  We bought books of the results and Lynn's book has twice the ancestors that mine have.  She has strong Viking and Nordic but also strong Hispanic and Native American.  I'm just Germanic and Nordic in various subgroups and flavors.  I really like the book The 10,000 Year Explosion by Cochran and Harpending but there are many other good ones, too.  I like to shorten the list by just citing blue-green algae and cockroaches as my ancestors. 

The other kind

I remember that in the lower grades, there were girls I liked.  Why not?  They were pretty and friendly.  There were girls I dreamed about, literally.  In the 3rd grade, I asked a girl to go to the Saturday movie with me.  Her mother kept saying "How cute!"  That remark and her tone made me doubt my maturity.  By grade 7, a good looking girl said, "Meet me after school."  Suavely, I said, "Why?".  She wanted to walk home together and we did.  She probably didn't realize that the words she said were used to challenge another guy to a fight after school.  I didn't think I had offended her in any way and I didn't think it was a good idea to trade punches with a girl.  Not that I was much of a puncher.  My fisticuff skills were not developed and never have been.  

By 8th grade, I asked out a girl who had been on my mind since 6th grade.  We went together sporadically for two years.  She was friendly and smart and looked me up on my 60th birthday and we communicated after that until she died. I went to an all-male high school, a public high school in a major city that had 14 high schools.  I found I could afford the good nearby teachers' college at $67 a year.  The low price came from state support for teachers.  Nobody mentioned the obvious: many young women are interested in teaching so my experiences with females were quite different in college.

All my life, my mother, my sister and my wife have helped me understand and appreciate the better gender.

Old-fashioned AI

ChatGPT   t.ly/5SyY

This is the chat bot that has gotten much publicity and hoopla.

I like to use Google Search for all kinds of questions that come to me or come up in conversation and communication.  I recently Googled the question "How can I make her love me more?"  As usual, I got what seemed like pretty good answers.  I was just exploring and was not actually seeking to get anyone to love me more.  

I wrote my dissertation in 1968, way back in time.  We had computers and I used the computer "language" Fortran to help me with my data analysis but just as seen in older sci fi movies, there were enormous cabinets of electronic components, not personal laptops and certainly not cellphones, let alone smartphones.  

Yesterday's blog post about pi, the ratio of the diameter to the circumference of a circle, and many other things, brought up the question of What is random?  Here is one answer:

Dictionary

Definitions from Oxford Languages · Learn more

ran·dom

/ˈrandəm/

See definitions in:

all

statistics

building

adjective

adjective: random

1. 1.

2. made, done, happening, or chosen without method or conscious decision.
   "a random sample of 100 households"

• Statistics
  governed by or involving equal chances for each item.
  "a random sample of 100 households"
  h
  Similar:
  unsystematic

arbitrary

unmethodical

haphazard

unarranged

unplanned

undirected

casual

indiscriminate

nonspecific

stray

erratic

chance

accidental

hit-and-miss

serendipitous

fortuitous

contingent

adventitious

nonlinear

entropic

fractal

aleatory

stochastic

h

Opposite:

systematic

• planned

• (of masonry) with stones of irregular size and shape.

2.

informal•

often derogatory

View definition

• informal
  odd, unusual, or unexpected.
  "the class was hard but he was so random that it was always fun"

noun informal

noun: random; plural noun: randoms

1. an unknown, unspecified, or odd person.
   "I just sat down by myself and talked to some randoms"

I thought readers might be interested in inexpensive chat bot assistance.  

These old tools can be employed in an Artificial Intelligence way.  You just set a question, such as "should I buy a new car?"  You write down H=Yes and you flip one of Artificial Intelligence tools in the air.  Letting it fall on a carpet or mattress so that it doesn't roll, you read which side landed up.  If it is not heads, keep saving for a while.

3.14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279 50288 41971 69399 37510

As you may have heard, today is Pi Day.  Since the digits of the irrational number pi are 3.14159…. And since today, on our calendar, can be represented as 3.14, this is a good day to salute Pi and all the other important mathematical constants.

I was in the 6th grade when my teacher or my parents told me there was a mathematical relation between the diameter and the circumference of a circle.  I started measuring circles on classroom maps and such.  They seemed to be right and I was impressed with the idea.  At the time, I hadn't heard of irrational numbers and how they don't repeat digits in our number system.  Rational numbers can be represented by a common fraction but irrational ones cannot be.  

Just now, it is a little past 2 o'clock in our system of daylight savings time.  A few moments ago, at 1:59, we could say it was the moment of Pi.  I find it easy to remember 3.14159 and at that moment we experienced 3.14159.  The title of this post shows the first fifty digits of pi, which I copied from a source on the internet.  

I have read of people memorizing the first 200 digits but doing that seems somewhat pointless to me.  The whole business of thinking about pi and its so-called connection to this day may seem that way to you.

Beauty and sleepy

One of many things about winter is that it can be beautiful.  Today is mostly overcast so clouds dull the light.  But once in a while, the sun breaks through and for a few moments, bright light and stark white arrest the eye.  I am just not used to such brilliance.  So many objects and angles of bright white!

I am really sleepy so I am going to wrap this up.

Mothers get us started

We were watching the movie "Faraway" on Netflix.  A married woman with a teenage daughter found that her deceased mother had left her a house.  She lives in Germany but the house is in Croatia.  She travels there to see the place.  While exploring, she warms to a man who lives nearby.  As they warm more and more, the teenaged daughter surprised them by showing up unannounced at a time when the pair is sitting at breakfast in the nude.  The daughter is very, very shocked and exclaims that no teen should have to see what she is seeing.

I had to intervene.  I explained to the shocked young lady that the mother's body is the exact portal she herself used to enter this world.  She explained in an outraged way that she doesn't care and she should not be subjected to the sight she was staring at.  I think that is what she said.  

Pocket showed me an article by a young mother.  It's called "I kinda miss my gynecologist" and it explains that pregnancy made her feel like "a science project and a sorceress".  Seems sensible to me. t.ly/A1b_

What is valuable to know?

Most testing in education happens soon after the instruction.  In college, a course of 10 or 15 weeks, ends in an examination of the instruction and assignments made in those previous weeks.  For most people, that seems to be the time of maximum retention.  A year or a decade later, most people probably have forgotten many of the details of the instruction.  

A book I enjoyed reading years ago was "The Knowledge Most Worth Having" by Wayne C. Booth.  It is written along the same lines of thought that the English philosopher Herbert Spencer used when he asked "What knowledge is of most worth?" in the middle of the 1800's.  Many academics seem to feel that the knowledge of most worth is the knowledge they have.  We wouldn't expect a professor of history to state that methods of data analysis are the most valuable knowledge and that knowing the social relations in ancient Mayan culture were the least valuable.  A professor who was hired to teach the history of art might well say such knowledge had been of most worth in his life since it formed the basis for his livelihood.

Experts in mental health and the treatment of anxiety and depression might say self-knowledge and acceptance and understanding of one's own emotions is fundamental.  Somewhere, the author of the book that formed the basis for "South Pacific" said that it is important to know how to live without being in jail or a mental asylum.  That idea is much like Socartes advising to "know thyself".  

Many young people express an interest in acquiring whatever knowledge they need to land a good-paying, reasonably pleasant job.

One of several difficulties in choosing what is valuable to teach is that times change and people change. What is valuable for a 20 year old man to learn might be very different from what an 80 year old woman most needs to know.

Two properties of school tests

I taught many subjects to 5th graders, undergraduates and graduate students.  I taught statistics on Wisconsin Public Television but you may have missed the lessons since they aired at 6 AM on Sunday mornings. It seems to me that having taught many lessons, there should be some that are ok to be on this blog.  

We don't apply statistical methods unless we have some numbers to apply them to.  A book that me and the others in my program studied from is Harold Gulliksen's "Theory of Mental Tests" and it shows many mathematical concepts and formulas but teachers know that math and people don't always mix so well.  I am not thinking of the well-known and widespread dislike of math and calculation.  I am referring to the strictness and rigidity of math compared to the slipperiness and flexibility of human minds and personalities.

You may have heard some of the history of intelligence tests, attempts to see who is smart and who isn't.  t.ly/5C8z (short link to a Duckduckgo search)  When I hear about school tests, I naturally put on my doubting cap.  In rough generalites, most of the time, in ordinary circumstances -whatever they are- when a student takes a test honestly without bribery or secret use of a smartphone, doing well on the test usually means the student does indeed know what he is supposed to know.  In contrast, when a student does not do well, that student may not know the subject but intervening variables may have distorted the performance or the test score.  

Harold Gulliksen and many others used the concepts of 'reliability' and 'validity' to discuss good scores and poor ones, not good for the student but more basically good.  Reliability is often compared to stability.  If a test says the student knows but, on repeat, says he doesn't, but on repeat says he does, we may feel that is a poor test. That sort of yes and no result in any measurement, height, weight, intelligence, blood pressure, whatever isn't appreciated.  Of course, some phenomena do change steadily or erratically and up and down scores may be trying to tell us that.

The other property, validity, is often said to be about whether the test "measures" what we think it does.  This is usually trickier and more difficult.

You can download Gulliksen's book in eKindle format for $59.95.

More than one card

I like the app Libby.  You can download it to a smartphone or tablet but you can also use it online at https://libbyapp.com.

It allows the user to borrow ebooks, usually for 14 days.  Unless I really buckle down and pay attention each day, that is not usually enough time to finish a book.  The app seems nicely set up and it enables me to extend the borrowing time if the book is not in too much demand. 

When using the app, it is possible to set the browse so that you only see books of a certain type.  I don't use the Hold function but I could use it to be notified if a given book becomes available later.  I set the search for non-fiction available now.  I have read enough mysteries and romances but some psychology, some math, some science is always of interest to me.  

I was impressed to learn that while I have registered my local public library card with the app, I can add a second card for the University of Wisconsin's ebook collection.  If you are interested, you can find several posts in this blog about using Libby.  Another aspect that I like is that when a book becomes due, it merely disappears.  No driving to the library and putting in a return slot.  

This blog has its own web page at https://fearfunandfiloz.blogspot.com/

If you go to that page, the search window in the upper left corner can be used to find posts containing a given word or phrase.  Try using "Libby" and you will find several posts that discuss the app and its use.  I like the Kindle ebook reader, which basically lets me read an ebook without interruptions or notifications or other distractions. But if you don't have a Kindle, you can install an app for it on a smartphone, a tablet or a computer.  You can also use the web address read.amazon.com to see the text in an ebook you have purchased or borrowed.

What would be just great?

Just as I have an interest in descriptions of heaven, I am interested in descriptions of extreme happiness.  Having no worries, having deep and preferably continuous pleasure in one form or another, these specifications usually figure in descriptions or wishes or plans or hopes.  I guess it was during the days of the tv show Downton Abbey that I realized that many of the characters seemed to think being the laird, the lord, the owner would be wonderful.  It might have been.  I have never been the local lord, the head of the corporation, the boss.  

Since most of us have never been the big boss, the billionaire, the star of stars, we don't have real experience with such positions.  Beyond the fact of not knowing, there are the biological and mental limitations that impinge on our consideration of the wonderful life.  Take thinking.  We imagine the good and easy parts of being the boss.  The underlings can't quite decide what would be a good crop or a good tractor or the best welding machine but the hero of a boss applies his giant brain to the question and Voila!  Difficult problem solved!  Thanks, Boss.

But the workers that have been around for a long time can tell of times when too many difficulties popped up and the boss's grand idea turned out to be quite impossible.  Plus, remember those times when his idea was carried out just as dictated and we all came to wish he had never had the hunch he played, including him.

Many processes in our head, our vision, our sensitivity, our thinking are intermittent.  Remember that time when you were watching that simply gorgeous girl and walked into a tree while gawking?  Or that other time, when you saw that kid at another table in the restaurant whose behavior was beyond reprehensible?

Maybe you have heard of or seen Apollo Robbins in one of his shows and demos. http://www.apollorobbins.com/  He is the sleight of hand artist who goes through a crowd greeting people.  After some of that, he stands on the stage and asks, "Whose wallet is this?" He has been picking the pockets of people, an activity at which he is a complete expert.

Just as Ecclesiastes says, we are all always subject to time and chance, despite being basically alert and smart and tough and engaged. 

Chances

We just lived a week in a rented house in Arroyo Grande, California for a week's adventure.  Here at home, we met a new couple that just moved near some good friends who introduced us.  Where are you from?  We are from Arroyo Grande.  This is where we say,"What are the odds?"  To tell the truth, we don't care what the odds are.  Besides, this is one of those situations where I try to look wise, educated and statistical even though I don't know what the odds are.  So say a number so we can say "Wow!"

A book that comes to mind about odd and unlikely events is the book "The Improbability Principle" by the British probabilist David Hand. He discusses many aspects of probability and chance.  He describes the bettor who tried to guess the winning numbers of the Connecticut lottery and the winning numbers of the Rhode Island lottery.  The exact numbers were winners but in the opposite lotteries! The Ct guesses were the winners in R.I. and the R.I. guesses were the winners in Ct. He describes a horseman who was struck by lightning while riding.  That man's grave was struck by lightning after he died.  Wow!

Did a demon or evil spirit cause such unlikely events?  It is hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that it is just fortune, just luck, good and bad.  In the fourth grade, I was told to take a pair of shoes to the shoemaker for repair.  When I got to the shop, I had only one shoe! I didn't notice a shoe falling.  I went back over the walk but never found the shoe.  Did you cause that mini-tragedy?

Purpose, shmurpose

I read about loss of purpose.  I also read about the value of gratitude.  

I suppose I could spend too much time and energy having the purpose of being grateful.  I could thank my mom and dad for making me.   Reflecting on the need for a mom and a dad, I could be thankful that my grandparents made my parents.  Sure I could be thankful that my greatgrandparents, all 8 of them, spent the time and effort to make my grandparents but this looks like an ever-enlarging burden. I will just pull the human language trick of using more general language and keep a tiny place in my heart for permanent gratitude to all my ancestors, including the blue-green algae and the cockroaches.  I am related to all of life!

The feeling of being lost and confused is one that has been expressed very fully over and over.  I often enjoy reading the Bible chapter Ecclesiastes.  It is so down.  "Vanity of vanities, …all is vanity."  We are not talking here about thinking I am the handsomest dude around.  No, a much bigger cloud than that: living, eating, breathing, being good, loving and accepting love - this preacher says it is all pointless!  But, Preach, think about this: I, me, myself, yours truly, LIKES life.  I am not focusing on purpose or goal, I am just ENJOYING!  

You may have read of Shakespeare's MacBeth:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

Just a sec, there, Buddy.  First, I am no idiot!  I even know my multiplication tables! My brain (and yours) is a very impressive organ that controls a complex, stunning bod!  So, stash the blues.