What Is Wrong With This Picture?

I am at the YMCA and I walk down the hallway and there are groups of teens sitting on benches texting and talking and taking selfies.  Nobody is talking.  Nobody is exercising.

I go to the local high school and in the cafeteria as students texting, sharing videos, playing games and updating their social media.  The day after I was there, a local scandal broke that some of the kids were sexting and passing around a naked freshman girl's picture.  What are they learning?  How to avoid getting caught (by using Snapchat or deleting their history).  They consider their phones a right and not a privilege.

I met a friend last week for lunch, he tells me that at his workplace that they installed web monitoring software to watch the employees internet use.  Seems some people are going places they shouldn't- shopping, social media, even porn sites- and it is having a noticeable effect on productivity.  So people are bringing their personal cell phones and tablets to work and end-running the web blocking.

This is what happens when technology out-paces our personal integrity.

The Problem With Some People (Not Me)

The problem with some people is that they judge without loving first.
The problem with some people is that they care more about image management than the facts.
The problem with some people is that their word is no longer their bond.
The problem with some people is that they view relationships as disposable as a TV or cell phone.
The problem with some people is that they love things and use people.
The problem with some people is that they see the sawdust in your eye and miss the plank in their own.

Grouchy Bastardism: Verbal Arsonist

When you are a Grouchy Bastard you sometimes say things that hurt other people, it's all part of the ready-fire-aim that is aging and losing your filter... Otherwise known as having zero tact, or as a friend says, becoming a verbal arsonist.

I use to hate that about my Grandma.  I stopped visiting her because she would start visits with comments like, "Wow, you've put on a lot of weight."  or "When are you going to get some decent furniture?" or "Are you still married to her?" and the conversation from there just went downhill.  To be fair, she had dementia in her later years, but she was famous for that kind of inept and uncomfortable dialogue far before that occurred.  The truth is I didn't like that in her because I didn't like it in me.

I hate to admit it, but I am sliding toward Becoming Grandma myself.  What is it that causes us to disregard that little voice that says, "Um, maybe you shouldn't say that out loud.  That could hurt someone's feelings."?  Maybe it is a tiring with pretense?  A cynical view of speaking the truth (or at least my interpretation of the truth)?  Instead of asking questions to understand, I make statements.  Overly bold statements.  Crunch goes the toes of others, and I can't tell you the friends I have hurt with my words.  Since I was a teenager I have moments when I have vivid recall and self-condemnation of words that have come out of my mouth that in recollection were socially awkward and unfiltered and I wish like hell I could take them back.  Once they are in the air, the fire is lit and there is no "unburning" a fire.

"It only takes a spark, remember, to set off a forest fire. A careless or wrongly placed word out of your mouth can do that. By our speech we can ruin the world, turn harmony to chaos, throw mud on a reputation, send the whole world up in smoke and go up in smoke with it, smoke right from the pit of hell.

This is scary: You can tame a tiger, but you can’t tame a tongue—it’s never been done. The tongue runs wild, a wanton killer. With our tongues we bless God our Father; with the same tongues we curse the very men and women he made in his image."  (James 3:5-10 The Message)

Yeah, it's like that....verbal arsonism.

I hate that part of me.  It's not bad enough I am a Grouchy Bastard but I just can't bear Becoming Grandma too.  Grandma died alone in a nursing home, she had scorched everyone around her.  

Sons of Grouchy Bastards

I had observed that my sons take after my wife in disposition.  She being from a stoic Dutch upbringing, shows very little emotion, struggles with intimacy and expressing her feelings.  I should have seen this coming.  Perhaps I just ignored it, grateful that the boys had not been too much like me.

My older son admits that this condition was a prime factor in his divorce.  My younger son is 16 and comes off as too serious with a dour air of superiority (a tendency I notice in my wife's family as well), he also admits that he has a hard time expressing himself.  My wife tells me of her parents never expressing much affection toward each other publicly, she can count on one hand the number of times her father said, "I love you" as she was growing up.  Her parents not only slept in separate beds but in separate bedrooms!  I compensated by lavishing her and the boys with loving expressions and encouragement both publicly and privately.  Alas, the boys seem to struggle with the same deficits in emotional expression and self-esteem, despite my best efforts.

I simply cannot relate to this, though I am patiently trying.  My family ran the other end of the spectrum, being a bit too hot and cold, considerably more expressive to the point of impropriety and temper.

They say we marry women like our mothers.  Nothing could be farther from the truth in my case.  I have heard women look for men who remind them of their father, again, not the case here.  My wife and sons simply have a different sort of character and self image and who is to say theirs isn't the preferable one?  My own passions tend to lead to places angels fear to tread.

I have the sense that the difficulty lies in relating to the opposite sex, which we are all a bit ham-handed about at times.  It sometime seems like they never developed a concept of who they are and how the opposite sex thinks.  Granted, I am no expert, but I always felt more comfortable relating to girls than guys growing up, I guess they just seemed easier to talk to in general.  In my earlier teen years, that changed when I began to think of girls as more than friends, more desirable to touch than talk to, damn those evil hormones!  But I digress.  Perhaps it was because of limited interaction with the opposite sex?  In some ways we all lead sheltered lives, avoid things that we fear or make us uncomfortable.  Face it, fumbling through understanding the opposite sex is often an embarrassing and humbling endeavor.  Who can understand the mind of a woman?  Who can penetrate the primal drives and ambitions of a man?  It takes a certain naivete to be forward enough to experiment with opposite sex relationships.  Determining how much of our emotions to reveal and what thoughts to withhold is a dance we all must learn.

Perhaps I am trying to micro-manage that dance for my sons.  Maybe I just wish they were more like me, which means I though my way was the better way all along.  Which makes me even more a Grouchy Bastard...

Trust No One

As I age, I am becoming more grouchy, more cynical and less trusting.  I have a cummulative experience of too many betrayals, had too many promises broken.  Hell, I don't even trust MYSELF most the time. Maybe I have unreasonable expectations.  Maybe I am wanting more from others than I do from myself?...

Ah, THAT hit a nerve!

Trust has it's place right along with forgiveness (which we aren't good at either, are we?)  LOVE is a combination of trust and forgiveness.  It isn't a nice neat transaction between two perfect people.  Love is messy, we try to get our needs met and meet someone else's as well.  Sooner or later, you will let them down, piss them off, act unfairly- not meeting their expectations.  Then the other person will get all offended and want an apology (which they MAY deserve) or worse- justice.  You don't want to go there, because if we all got what we deserved, our bacon would be burning in Hell.  People have a choice to make: forgive, or leave.  Loads of people have such messed up communication skills and a lack of commitment these days that they just leave.  You might recognise that relationships (friendships, business dealings, family tiffs) often will end up stronger if you will swallow your pride and work through the mess.  That takes maturity.

I will throw this in for free:  If you burn through friends, lovers and jobs it is because of you, and you ought to get that looked at- if you follow my drift- before you end up lonely and wishing you hadn't burned all those bridges.

Now don't leave nasty comments about situations where someone is abusing someone else or cheating or lying.  Most those situations involve two broken people and there is blame enough for both in most cases -though it never seems to be even blame does it?  Truth is you make choices and the other party makes choices, you make mistakes and so do they.

Sometimes we expect the other person to be for you what only God was intended to be.

Security? Personal identity?  Personal worth?  Protector?  Source of strength?  Those things come from God.  Anyone looking to their partner, friend or lover for that is bound to be disappointed.

The Inertia of Complaining

“Too many people go through life complaining about their problems. I've always believed that if you took one tenth the energy you put into complaining and applied it to solving the problem, you'd be surprised by how well things can work out.” 
― Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

People frequently complain about complaining, I do this myself.  Everyone knows that when you have something that annoys you, seems unfair or makes you feel bad that complaining solves our problems and relieves all the stress- it recharges and reinvigorates our energy.  No?  It doesn't make you feel better?

That's surprising...

Let's try a different approach, say to yourself “It’s not fair. It’s not fair they have the high paying job, . It’s not fair they have the big house. It’s not fair (insert what you are envious of here).” That should be the last time you say any of that because the shocking truth is life isn’t fair. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose so badly it is embarrassing; but that is life. We have to realize that there are some things we can change and a lot of things we cannot. Instead of complaining about the things we cannot change we should focus on the things we can. We should put all of energy into changing the things we have control over and not waste energy complaining.  Complaining is not going to help any situation and most of the time we complain about the symptoms not the problem.

Sometimes complaining is passed off as "working through our issues" but the truth is that it is only talk excusing our inaction.  

Think about it; if we do not get enough sleep, we complain that we are tired. If we spend all our money, we complain that we have no money. If we are not having a good time, we complain about how bored we are. All the things we are complaining about are just results of the real problem. If we are tired it is because we did not get enough sleep and complaining about how we did not sleep is not going to give us energy. The only thing that will do that is to sleep (although those 5 hour energies can help), so go to sleep earlier. Yeah, you might have been up all night doing that paper but how long did you have to do it? Complaining is also not going to make money grow on trees. If you want more money work more hours, do not buy that $200 pair of shoes, or manage your money better. If you are bored, find something to do or change your attitude and start having fun.

Yes, it is alright and probably healthy to have a venting session every once in a while. And yes, you can be doing everything right and things still may not work out but like I said life isn’t fair and complaining is not going to change that. So instead of complaining, take that time to figure out the solution to your problems. Invest in the future instead of complaining about the past. Words are not going to change your situation, so stop complaining and take action.

Christmas- Bah Humbug!

Why is Christmas not the magical experience it was in our youth?

Have you become a Humbugler over the years?

Where has the joy gone?

Have we been ripped off over the years in the great Collateral Exchange and no longer want to play along?

Are we just mad that our parents lied about Santa Clause?

Would we really kill the guy who wrote "Jingle Bells"??

Perhaps we have not seen "A Christmas Carol" enough times????

Although for many years Christmas has been justified on the grounds that it is "merry," rigorous quantitative analysis establishes that the opposite is the case. Despite claims advanced by proponents that the holiday promotes a desirable "spirit,'' makes people "jolly," etc., the data show that the yuletide time period is marked by environmental degradation, hazardous products and travel, and—perhaps most important—inefficient uses of key resources. The holiday is an insidious and overlooked factor in America's dwindling savings rates, slack worth ethic, and high crime rates. Nor does Christmas truly fulfill its purported distributional objective: the transfer of gifts to those who need them. Moreover, the number of people rendered "joyous" by Christmas is probably equaled or excelled by the number made to feel rather blue. In short, as shown below, although Christmas is an important religious observance that provides wintertime fun for children (who would probably be having fun anyway), it fails the test of cost-effectiveness.

Christmas consumes vast resources in the dubious and uncharitable activity of "forced giving." First, it is necessary to factor in all the time spent searching for "just the right gifts," writing and mailing cards to people one ignores the rest of the year, decorating trees, attending dreary holiday parties with highly fattening, cholesterol-rich eggnog drinks and false cheer, and returning presents. Assuming conservatively that each U.S. adult spends an average of two days per year on Christmas activities, this represents an investment of nearly one million person-years per season. Just as important is the amount that Americans spend on gratuitous gifts each year—$40 billion to $50 billion, according to the U.S. Commerce Department's monthly retail trade sales. Extra consumer spending is often considered beneficial because it stimulates the economy, but the massive yuletide spike creates numerous harmful externalities.

Mistargeted giving is one indication of this waste. According to New York department stores, each year about 15 percent of all retail dollar purchases at Christmas are returned. Allowing for the fact that many misdirected gifts are retained because people feel obliged to keep them (such as appliances, tablecloths, etc., which must be displayed when the relative who gave them to you comes for a visit), and allowing for the widespread inability of children to return gifts, this indicates that up to a third of purchases may be ill-suited to their recipients. Christmas is really a throwback to all the inefficiencies of the barter economy, in which people have to match other people's wants to their offerings. Of course, money was invented precisely to solve this "double coincidence of wants" problem. One solution would be to require people to give each other cash as presents, but that would quickly reveal the absurdity of the whole institution.

"Forced giving" also artificially pumps up consumption and reduces savings, since it is unlikely that all the silly and expensive presents given at Christmas would be given at other times of the year. One particularly noxious aspect of Christmas consumption is "conspicuous giving," which involves luxury gifts such as Tiffany eggs, crystal paperweights, and $15,000 watches that are designed precisely for those who are least in need of any present at all ("the person who has everything"). Most such high-priced gifts are given at Christmas; the fourth quarter, according to a sampling of New York department stores, provides more than half the year's diamond, watch, and fur sales.

Naturally, gratuitous spending delights retailers. Christmas accounts for more than a fifth of their sales and two-fifths of their profits, which suggests a Marxist explanation for the holiday—a powerful economic interest underlying the season's gift-centered ideology. But for the nation as a whole it increases the burden of consumer debt (almost a quarter of Christmas season sales are financed by credit cards or charge accounts, and January is the peak month for credit card delinquencies) and reduces our flagging savings rate (now below 5 percent of national income).

(Source: Excerpt from New Republic. James S. Henry)