Welcome, Ven a gozar!

I remember as a child, different religious people coming to our door, knocking and preaching, and then the anger it would set off in my parents. Not because they were atheists or anti-religion, but because they saw these people as an invasion of their privacy, and an interruption in their day. The end result was normally raised voices, and a demand to leave the property.

When I was living on my own, and these folks came to my door, I would encourage them to share with me what they believed to be their truth. After one or two visits and no arguing, I would not see them again. At one function I attended some years ago, I found myself in conversation with one of the men who used to knock on my door.

I asked why he did not visit any more with his friends? I was curious both about what more they would tell me, and also why they stopped trying to convert me. This man told me they thought I was a minister of some kind, and there was no sense trying to convert me.

I thought that was funny, because a minister was the last thing I would have considered myself to be! After a while they all quit coming around to try to convert me, and I forgot about them. Some time later, I moved to a bigger city, and there the process started all over again. The outcome was about the same, except after listening to the many different versions of what they had to say, some of them would ask me what I thought?

This was my opportunity to explain what I have learned over the years to them. The sum of what I learned from my own reading, talking, and some television programs has taught me a lot. I shared with them those things I found to be common in everything they had told me over the years plus what I learned on my own.

Each group has a slightly different version of how this all came about. None of us here today really knows what the true story is, or even if any what we believe is true, or made up. I was not there, and you were not there, so we can only speculate on what is the truth. Thankfully it does not matter.

If you imagine a special present, it is easier to explain. As I remove the bow, the ribbons, and wrapping from the package and open the box, I see the fundamentals we all share. When I look closely, some basic truths becomes evident.

We are all one family.

None of us has a monopoly the truth.

It is our responsibility to live the best life we can.

We should try to love and be good to one another.

We should do our best to treat each other with respect.

We all come from the same place. Not one of us on earth comes from somewhere else.

That is all there is to living well, everything else is fluff.

Some of these people, after hearing me did not know what to say. One of them decided they would be sending an Elder to speak to me as I was obviously confused, thinking this way. Others have put up futile reply’s, but quit part way through when they realize there is no real argument. I usually never see them anymore, as there is nothing for them to argue over, and no one to convince.

It is much easier to keep it simple, as simple allows for more agreement, and less argument. If there is nothing to argue over, then these folks have nothing to discuss. Take away the argument, and you take away the wind in the sails. Happy sailing!

Technorati Tags: life, love, rules, self help

Comments (1) Oct 21 2007

Drop those less important things out of your day so you actually have more life in your life! Somehow we feel that if we do not have our free time planned from early morning to late at night we are wasting our life! The thoughts below might be an example of a typical weekend for a lot of people these days:

* Friday night after work, it is the weekend! Get home from work, clean up, change and go out with friends to a local coffee bar to unwind and relax.

* Saturday morning, after not being able to sleep from such a large coffee, get up early and hit the bicycle or running trails. Get in a long healthy ride, or long run before it gets too warm outside.

* Saturday afternoon, zip over to the mall and do a little shopping for some new shoes, and maybe some clothes. Leave the mall and make a quick dash to the grocery store and pick up a few things to eat, and some energy drinks.

* Saturday night, take a quick shower, and dress up to go out with your friends at the local hotspot.

* Sunday morning, go to church, or sleep in until about nine or ten, no later, lots to do today.

* Sunday afternoon, get on over to the book store, pay some bills, and then spend some time house cleaning, don’t forget to wash the car.

* Sunday evening, perhaps do those few work things you brought home on Friday so they are ready for Monday morning. Go to bed late because there is so much to do.

Monday morning arrives in a flash we claw our way out bed and go to our jobs, grab our favorite caffeine laden brew along the way, and compare notes with our work friends about what we did on the weekend. And we wonder why everyone looks so tired, and burnt out, and it is just Monday morning!

It is even worse when you are a family, because you then have three or more schedules to juggle around on the weekend, and the times and places rarely have anything in common. So parents end up hurrying their children through one activity to get another child to their activity without being too late.

Not too long ago, there was another type of typical weekend. Saturday was spent doing the chores, and other sundries that needed to be done for the week. Sunday was a day of rest and relaxation, where families spent slow time together often in their own back yards. Children and adults read books just for fun, and there were picnics with homemade food. Families spent lazy sundays with family and friends sometimes just enjoying sitting on a blanket in the shade at a park and watching the kids play.

In our endeavor to add more life to our life, we lost the quality of life somewhere. Our lives are now jam packed with quantity but very lacking in quality. We communicate over cell phones, text messages, and email. Parents and their children are strangers sharing a house while doing individual activities. We no longer really know our friends, just what we do together. And we wonder why we feel the way we do most days, and why life became such a drudge to get through. Our attention span, like our thinking is about too short, and we have little original thought any more. Really life is getting quite dull for us.

It is time to slow down and enjoy the quality of life. Drop those things that simply fill up time do nothing else for you. Having a free hour each day to just sit and look out the window, hand write a note to a friend, or even daydream; you will find your life changing, and more fulfilling. There is no winner at the end of our race when death stops by to take us away. There are no extra years added to our lives as we race through the time we have. There is however great value in having some quiet time to let your spirit loose and grow and bring about ideas of things you haven’t thought of in years, if ever. Besides you owe it to yourself. You work too hard all week long!

Technorati Tags: stress, life, relax, personal, weekend, self help

Comments (0) Oct 20 2007

At one time I lived in a rural area of Minnesota, five miles from the nearest paved road. We had a gravel road running by the front of our house, but after reaching blacktop five miles away it was still seven miles to town. Down the road was a recently abandoned farm. One spring day a man was there and he seemed to be living on the property. As neighbors gossip, it turns out the man, I will call him Mr. O’Malley, rented the property but not the house. It also appeared that Mr. O’Malley was living on the property.

As life goes it was not long before I ran into Mr. O’Malley myself. He was living on the property, and no, he did not have access to the house. He was living in a plywood ice fishing house roughly eight feet by ten feet by six feet which he had dragged on to the property. Mr. O’Malley also volunteered that he was a farmer and he was planting three acres of corn that spring. I wondered what he was planting on the rest of the acreage, but as Mr. O’Malley did not volunteer anything, I was not about to ask his business myself.

One summer day that year, our horses got out from their pasture. As I went looking for them I stopped by Mr. O’Malley’s place as he was our closest neighbor. I found Mr. O’Malley in his house which was now three ice fishing houses dragged together but not touching, held together by plastic sheeting. Mr. O’Malley told me he had not seen my horses. Mr. O’Malley also said he was not allowed to build any shelter, and if the ice houses were joined that would constitute a building, that is why there was plastic sheeting between them. It as all he needed, he said.

Mr. O’Malley asked if I was in a hurry and I said no, Mr. O’Malley might be a little touched but he did not seem a dangerous, and I was very curious about him. He showed me his corn crop. Mr. O’Malley had his three acres plowed and the corn was coming up just like every farm in the area. I asked Mr. O’Malley where his tractor was as there did not seem to be one around. Mr. O’Malley told me he did not have a tractor, he had a team of plough horses he used instead. The horses paid for themselves and did not usually break down, Mr. O’Malley had told me. This was 1974 and I never heard of anyone actually using horses to make a living other than than formal competitions.

Fall came along as it tends to do, and winter was approaching. Mr. O’Malley had been around now and then to our farm over the summer usually just to talk. Mr. O’Malley was a little odd, but a nice person, and a decent neighbor too. Of course there were stories told about him, gossip I suppose, they were pretty colorful too. People like Mr. O’Malley tend have colorful stories told about them, so I did not give them much credence. The funniest story I heard was in the fall. Mr. O’Malley supposedly had taken a few ears of his corn to the bank to get a loan. No one knew the outcome of his loan, but collective gossip thought the bank probably threw him out. Winter arrived, and along with it the well below zero temperatures that Minnesota is known for.

I was curious about how Mr. O’Malley was holding up and went by his place. He was not only surviving in his ice house home, he was thriving. There were chickens and goats, a dog, and a few other items around. Mr. O’Malley told me the bank had lent him money and he could now afford a tractor and attachments for next spring.

Mr. O’Malley lived there about five years and then disappeared. He never moved into the house but lived in his ice house home all that time. He was a good neighbor, he rarely asked for anything and if he did, it was something he could not do alone. I personally thought he was the oddest person I had ever met, but he did not let that get in his way. A team of horses, a few ears of corn, and gumption led Mr. O’Malley to a complete farm. Quite an accomplishment by anyones standards!

I believe we all have some Mr. O’Malley in us, have you found your Mr. O’Malley yet? If you have, have you let him out? You may be surprised by what happens in your life with Mr. O’Malley on your team!

Technorati Tags: farm, growth, horse, personal, self help

Comments (0) Oct 19 2007

One day, perhaps relaxing at the lake, or maybe camping I had an interesting thought. For no reason I started pondering why do I think what I think? Why do I believe what I believe? I thought this was interesting because before this moment I never stopped to think about why I believed what I did. Could I have built a whole belief system without ever thinking how these beliefs came to be so ingrained in me?

I started down the process of what I believed and why. Some of my earliest memories floated into my thoughts. One that I remember fondly is my parents sitting on the couch smoking cigarettes, and talking quietly. The sunshine was pouring its rays in through the windows. It must not have been summer time because all the windows were closed.

So here I am, a young child, and the room is filling with small billowing clouds of cigarette smoke floating in the air, looking like approaching fog in a scary movie. I remember sitting on the floor looking at the clouds of smoke moving lazily around the room filling up the clear spots. Just like the clouds I would see outside. I thought how fun it would be to fly through them!

So I did want any little kid would do seeing the smoke and thinking about the clouds outside. I stood up, put my arms straight out from my side and pretended to be an airplane as I ran around the room tilting to and fro. It is such a happy memory from when I was a child. Everything was right with the world. As young children we play, sleep, and play some more, such is our world at that age.

My next thought was thinking about my beliefs and why did I start smoking when I did? I thought of all the not smoking teaching I had in school when I was older, not the specifics, but the general pertinent points. I remember coming home from school and parroting to my folks how bad smoking was for them, and asking them if they would quit? Back in those days, some doctors still advised their patients to either take up smoking because it would help them relax, or keep smoking for those same reasons. My parents doctor was in that group, so they said.

When smoking and other poor health habits caught up with my Dad, he was forced to go to the hospital having a major heart attack. Not the minor ones, he thought he had suffered from previously that he chose to blame on indigestion. He lived through that heart attack, and was instructed by the doctor that treated him to quit smoking, and start walking at least a mile a day.

One of my fathers brothers had a heart attack within the year (same health habits), and the doctor gave him the same instructions. Quit smoking and exercise to heal his heart and lengthen his life. I remember my Father and Uncle talking after my uncle had been released from the hospital. They were sitting on the porch smoking, discussing their heart attacks and the doctors instructions. It did not take them long to agree the doctors were wrong. They agreed that quitting smoking, and exercising would place too much dangerous stress on their hearts. It would probably kill them. They both agreed with this thought, sitting on the porch smoking.

As I worked through this line of smoking, I knew why it was so easy for me to start smoking. I knew then much of what I believed in, and sometimes believed in strongly came from the earliest memory’s of my world as a child. Almost everything from what foods I did and did not like, to my faith was an auto install from when I was a child. It sure was disconcerting to think that a large part of my belief system came from a time when I was too young to question what was going on in my young child life. I felt suddenly like I was standing at the edge of he Grand Canyon. So started the journey of evaluating almost every thought and belief I ever held. I was already a non smoker by this time…thankfully.

Once I arrived at this point, I knew why they believed what they did, and how haphazard my own beliefs might be. It is a serious undertaking to think that everything you think you know may be wrong and you are living in a belief system that is built on sand that could wash away any moment. I have found it is better for my life, to go through the validating, and throw away process of everything I believed in than to simply wrap myself in what was the cotton candy forming the bedrock of my life.

Technorati Tags: family, growth, belief, heart attack, self help

Comments (0) Oct 18 2007

I had an uncle who when he was young, shot another boy with a .22 caliber rifle. The boy was sitting on a fence post, and though the whole story was never made clear, it seems my uncle shot him in the area where the boy sat on. Other uncles in the family occasionally kept their cars on the road by stealing gasoline out of another cars gas tank. There was a joke between them that one of the uncles could tell the grade of gasoline by the way it sounded when he tapped his knuckles on the tank. If someone tried to steal gas from a farmer, and mistakenly filled their car with diesel fuel, well they paid for the fuel, cleaned the barn for a few days, and their car problems from the diesel fuel in their car’s gas tank were usually punishment enough.

On the other side of things, when they were children life was more serious. Many children had serious chores to do. They had to milk cows, clean the barn, and tend the garden. An adult finding a child doing something wrong, generally treated that child the way they would treat their own children. Everyone knew and accepted they deserved what they received as punishment when caught. They also knew they had no one to blame except themselves for what they did. There was little tolerance of blaming others for individual wrongs.

As I was growing up things had changed, but not too much. I remember going out to a close by gravel pit where the teenager’s parked at night. We would look for the old cars where the back doors opened backwards. This meant the door handles were close to each other. While the occupants were busy doing what teenagers did in gravel pits at night, we would tie the door handles together with rope or a coat hanger. Once that was done, the car was fair game to rocking and pushing as we knew the driver could not get out to harm us.

I shot a friend in the thumb with a BB gun when I was about nine. The BB made its way under my friends thumb nail up to the joint and stopped right under his skin. He screamed and yelled for a few minutes and his Mom was pretty upset, and probably scared too. I thought I in serious trouble, but once it was clear I was just trying to shoot a frog he was holding for me and it was not intentional…. Well let me just say I got off pretty easy, considering. Stealing gas was still pretty common when I was a boy. In my neighborhood where I lived if someone had a car, they either had a locking gas cap, or left little gas in the tank over night. Police were rarely called for gasoline thefts.

When I was eight years old, I was old enough and I would go to a boys camp for a month at a time during the summer. I earned my way to camp by selling candy door to door for almost a month in the winter after school and weekends. When I was eleven years old I was old enough to go on ten day canoe trips. I went with twenty or so other eleven to thirteen year olds, and one Adult who was our guide. The canoe trips took place in the wilds between the Minnesota and the Canadian border. We went across the lakes and portages three to a canoe. At sixteen I was off camping alone for days at a time. I owned a few rifles and a pistol in my teens and fired off thousands of .22 caliber rounds while plinking at rocks, cans, and bottles.

Many children today have little exposure to guns other than television and movies. Lovers lane is where sick people hang out waiting for victims. The only outhouse todays children see is at a park or a fair. Children probably rarely if ever hear of a classmate stealing gas, but whole cars being stolen is the norm. I am curious at how much our ideas about what is and is not acceptable have changed in less than half a century. Along with our thoughts on who is responsible when kids do something wrong and, placing the blame somewhere else is okay. I do not think the basic tenants of our lives have changed at all, just the way we think about them.

Technorati Tags: guns, responsibility, growing up, family

Comments (0) Oct 17 2007

My heroes have always been cowboys…have you ever heard the song? This is true to some extent, there is a lot to be admired in cowboy life. In a number off famous cowboy stories and most cowboy movies, one or more Cowboy’s are heroes. The Cowboy life just does not transfer over to the rest of our society at times. One of my lifelong real world heroes is an ex world champion boxer - Mr. Mohammed Ali. Mr Ali has taught me a lot about life, being a man, and being human. Another real world person, a man named Eddie Rickenbacker is also a long time hero of mine, he was flying Ace and race car driver.

I think everyone should find and have a hero in their life. Heroes are important for those times when things get tough, no one else is around, or you feel the world is conspiring against you. At these times having a hero means having a friend in your corner. Someone who maybe has not been through what you are going through, but you have a fairly good idea how they would handle the situation if they were. They can also act as someone you do not want to disappoint if there is no one in your life at the moment.

By knowing how my hero would probably handle a situation makes it easier not to be indecisive. Knowing what my heroes would probably do, I can handle whatever obstacle is in my path at the moment. My heroes have also unknowingly kept me out of situations that at the time seemed a lot of fun. They may have been fun at the time but they would have been a bad life choice. Of course it is easier to see, having stepped away form the situation and observing it from a detached perspective at a later time.

Having heroes in my life at first was hard, especially when I came to understand that my heroes are also human beings just like I am. They are flesh and blood, and they sometimes make decisions that I have a hard time understanding. They may have made poor decisions, or they have done something I could not imagine they would do or say. It must be tough being someones hero. Being a hero means that so many people look up to you for direction, guidance, and hope. The weight of knowing people always expect you to do the right thing must be a heavy weight to bear.

What my heroes did that many of us are never put in a position to do, is my hero’s have made courageous life altering decisions. A few times choices they were presented with sometimes had terrible options. These men were forced to make the best choice they could live with, not a choice they may have really wanted. There was no easy button for them to to press. Sometimes there was no one they could talk to about what was the right choice, or there was no time to contemplate. They made the best choice they could under the circumstances.

Eddie Rickenbacker was in a terrible accident at one point in his life. There was a fire, and flames were crawling towards him, threatening to burn him alive. He wrote he had two terrible choices - be severely burned and maybe be rescued, or inhale the flames as they reached him, and hope that inhaling the flames killed him quickly. Mohammed Ali found himself at odds with his belief system and the country he loved. Mr Ali’s choices at one time were to become a soldier and fight in a war that he did not support, or believe in, or go to prison. Going to prison also meant giving up his right to the World Champion boxing title he had recently won. May our own life decisions never be that serious.

At times in our lives many of us take on the role of heroes too. Perhaps not at the level of our own biggest and baddest heroes, we are usually heroes in a lesser although equally important role. Perhaps someone who is having a rough spot in their life thinks we can help them with some good direction. Maybe you are a hero some child looks up to because they see you as larger than life? Heroes are people just like us, whether they are in business, sports, singers, or spouses. Although we would like to think our heroes are perfect, just like us, they make mistakes too.

I salute, you the hero you are, for you are somone’s hero, even though you may never know it.

Technorati Tags: character, cowboy, family, hero, heroes

Comments (3) Oct 16 2007

There is an old saying, that probably is not well known any longer. The saying is, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.” This saying was first uttered so long ago it seems the author has faded into history, although the advice is as true today as it was when first heard.

As with all good sayings, there is more to this saying than the few words that is takes to write it. Each of us owns our own life, and we have the right to choose how we wish to live it. Where conflict comes in, eg, the horse not drinking, is when we care about someone. We care about someone, but their life choices, and our life choices are not the similar enough. Because we care about someone we have a tendency to jump in and try to correct situations when we are not invited to. We like to think that because we care about them, we are entitled to have an opinion or voice in any situation of theirs we disagree with.

Some people have to go through life facing difficulties. They need what a hard life brings to complete their goals in their life, whether spiritual, or character centered. Each problem facing them is a new opportunity to either grow into what they envision themselves to be, or to reaffirm what they believe they have become. Sort of like practicing for an event, it is hard for these people to practice without something wrong in their lives.

Unfortunately for some of us, there is nothing wrong in other peoples lives. Only what they have created or manifested is what is happening to them. To us they live at the edge of their economy, they hang out with the wrong people, they walk alone in the wrong places at the wrong time. They do a hundred things that they should not be doing - in our opinion. On a cold day, the heat is on and the door is left open, because the sun is shining and they are feeling closed in. Then next week an envelope arrives in the mail, and suddenly they can not afford their heating bill.

I believe generally it is wrong to help someone who continuously places themselves and/or their family in these types of situations. This thinking may sound cold hearted or just plain bad, but it is true. Whether the currency is money, time, or something else, our gifts are too valuable to waste on someone who does not value what we give. These gifts we have accumulated through our lives are not to be wasted. When gifts we have are given to someone who does not value them, what happens? To us it looks as if they have wasted their gifts, and now they are wasting our gifts too. Do not give away your gifts any quicker than you would give away your keys, and your home address. Your gifts are not necessarily overly scarce, but they are not endless either. They are to be used wisely and for the right reasons.

There is another old quote that applies in these situations, “Don’t throw out the baby with the bath water.”

Helping others is a wonderful thing if it is done with the proper attitude, and the proper perspective. Throwing a dollar bill to the person that stands on the street corner with a pail every day is throwing away your financial gifts. Think of how much better use you can put your gifts to if they are given at the right time for the right reason to someone who is really ready for them? If you wait for the right time and the right reason to share your gifts, you will discover so much more than what you have given. The person you choose to share your gifts with will also receive so much more than a few dollars, or a little of your time. You will find you both have something to share in, and you both will feel fulfilled, and grateful, albeit for different reasons. Finally, in being frugal with sharing your gifts, you will find the greatest gift of all is letting someone make their own way, in their own fashion, at their own pace. Once you realize you have found this gift, you will know the people you were trying to help are perfect just the way they are! And they will know you finally understand what they have been trying so hard to teach you.

Technorati Tags: sharing, caring, family, charity, spirit

Comments (0) Oct 15 2007

I have decided I would like to write about something I am grateful for. Today seems like a good day to think about being grateful, and write a little about it. I am grateful for most things in my life, and I thought picking something should be easy to do. But thinking about what I am grateful for, and actually writing it down seems to be two different things. There are so many things to be grateful for in life! At the same time so many of these things are so trivial compared to what I see going on in the lives of others. My life, like many people’s life is made up of a compilation of minutiae, and there is no one area that usually takes up most of my time. So I thought to myself what big thing am I especially grateful for no matter when? I will write about that.

Because the weather is starting to cool down, and winter approaches, I have been thinking about the holidays fast approaching. That led me to people working on holidays. I am grateful for those people who work on holidays. They keep convenience stores, grocery stores, and sometimes even the big stores open. I have been too spoiled on many holidays, so some holidays I forget to plan ahead. I get off work on a holiday, and I need something. I need gasoline for the car because I did not think the night before and I am driving out of town for the day. Or I have to get some eggs, milk, tortillas, or bread, because I worked all week and the refrigerator is almost empty. More often then not, there is something I need on a holiday - such is modern life.

Of course when I am not working on a holiday there is the movie theatre that is open because people are working. Maybe even book stores, and occasionally home improvement stores are open if they think they will do enough business. The list always changes of who is open on a particular holiday. This is great for me, because on a holiday when something goes wrong, breaks, or just plain needs fixing I can get it done. Being able to get a part(s) for whatever it is sure makes my life easier and I am grateful for that.

When I am working a holiday, it is just like any other work day. Well almost like any other work day. I am working and it seems ninety-nine percent of the rest of the world is not. On work days just like some other days, lunch time rolls around and I have no lunch. I sure am grateful for the people who work in the food service industry. They show up when they want to be home too, but they show up and I can have lunch. I know some people are working because it is not a holiday they celebrate. Others are working because they can not afford not to work. And still others are working, because like me when I work, they could not get off this time.

I mostly wish these folks did not have to work. I remember as a child almost no business was open on a major holiday. Perhaps one gas station would be open on any holiday, but that would be it. I remember feeling bad because I knew they were open just for people like my family when we went for gas. No one I knew traveled anywhere on a holiday, so it had to be people like us they stayed open for. It felt almost a little criminal to make them work when were enjoying a holiday. In most cases if we did not have milk, eggs, or whatever else we needed, we made do until the next day.

Times of course have changed, but my feelings about going to a store on a holiday have not. I still have a twinge of guilt when I have to stop for gas, milk, and such. At least now I have grown to the point where I am grateful for the people who are there for me on holidays, so I can get what I need or want. I am grateful for all these people who work holidays. If you are one of these people, thank you very much!

Technorati Tags: holiday, working, grateful, convenience store

Comments (0) Oct 14 2007

Yes, that is part of the song from R.E.M! Everybody raise your hand who has not heard this before..anyone? Every few years the world is ending, or so some group would want us to believe.

I was thinking about what I have read or heard about the world’s end arriving in five short years. We Americans at least attribute tremendous foresight to civilizations such as the early Egyptians with their pyramids. The pyramid builders looked into the future, and determined we would have the mathematics to decipher what they built into the Great Pyramids concerning the world’s end. The Aztec’s and Mayan’s with their calendars seem to have done the same thing. They were truly incredible people in their time.

I remember Jim Jones who was responsible for the massacre of almost one-thousand people in Guyana. What was so sad about this is Mr. Jones took his flock of believers to Guyana to survive a coming nuclear holocaust that was to destroy most of the world.

David Koresh, came along who proclaimed himself the Lamb of God and was to break open the Seven Seals and also end the world. While he technically did not break any seals that I know of, it was the end of his world, for this go ’round anyway. I found it sad that so many others died there too.

Once again the Indigo Children are arriving, after having first made money for folks in the late 1800’s. They are back in full swing and making money for some savvy marketer’s. I read they are here to do great things, and lead the world into a new level of awareness! Never mind that the characteristics they are allegedly to share with each other have a lot more in common to a child with to many things, and not enough parental attention than to a highly evolved human being from the future.

Here is a link I found to the most well known end of the world dates. I do not think we are going to see the 2007 predictions come true. Seeing there are only eleven more on the web page, I suppose that is alright as we missed the previous two hundred and nine dates.

When I think about these things, I am saddened by a few thoughts surrounding these events and predictions. My first thought is that some people should be so miserable that not only do they want to see the world come to an end, they want the world to end for others too. For some of them I think is the smoker’s out. They are not killing themselves, the cigarettes are. Finally, what do these people who market the worlds ending think they are going to do with the profits from their endeavors?

Secondly, if they really believe in what they are hawking, they must know there won’t be anywhere to spend their fortune. If there was someplace to spend their fortune on, there would be no one to take their money. And there would be no one here to tell them they were correct after all.

For myself, I think of the people who were alive in the middle ages and the black death that killed so many, many people. I heard estimates that as many as four out of five people died during those times. This wikipedia link reads that estimates go as high as ninety percent in a population of five million people in China alone! When I imagine those numbers, and everything that happened in that time, I would know the world is coming to an end if I had been alive then. If the world did not end for them, I do not see much on the horizon that I have to worry about.

Finally, I think about what is going to end really? We as humans speak through our ego’s when we speak of the world’s end. The best we may do on our own is cause the extinction of the human species. It is likely that the world will continue on without us just as it did before we showed up.

When you hear or read the world is coming to an end, look at the person telling you, and guess if they have anything to gain by what they say to you. Other than normal conversation among friends, chances are they do have something to gain and it probably resides in your wallet or purse.

Technorati Tags: 2012, david koresh, indigo children, jim jones, plague, middle ages

Comments (0) Oct 13 2007

I bought a book last year from a Borg store. It was priced right and on a subject I had an interest in that week. The book was about the concept of infinity. I always wondered about infinity because it is nothing I could really comprehend, or define. For me infinity has always been like electricity. Everyone agrees electricity exists. I know what it feels like to be shocked, but electricity is too abstract for me because I can not pick it up and set it back down.

Infinity is like for me to. Infinity reminds me of when I was a child and I would break thermometers to play with that little drop of mercury they held inside. I would hold that little silver drop in the palm of my hand, and watch it move around and conform to the bends in my hand. It would roll this way and that, but after a few minutes most of it had rolled to the floor, never to be seen again. Infinity is sort of like that, in that you can start thinking about it, try to define it, but after a few minutes infinity sort of slips away, and you realize you are thinking about something else.

In the past, according to the book, people were scared of the concept of infinity and even today many serious mathematicians do not play in the arena of infinity. Many mathematicians found it too easy to go past a point of no return and get lost. Going on my limited experience from trying to imagine thinking about infinity I can understand how it could happen. As I read the book, which was not by any means a best seller, I would have to it it down as I have my limit of how much I can absorb at one sitting, and with infinity that appears to be a small amount.

One of the most descriptive explanations of infinity I read was not credited with a source. It was an explanation about a hotel with infinite amount of rooms. I found this link although you will need some time to read it, it is a good read. It is an explanation made into a story about Hotel Infinity. Hotel Infinity makes a complex idea pretty simple to understand even though it ends on a sad note.

After I finished the book, I had a better understanding of how thinking of infinity came about, and how it is just beyond us to comprehend something that has no end. I made a little game for myself. It made it clear to me how mathematicians get wrapped up in infinity and never come back again, and why it causes some apprehension in some people who must work with infinity. I thought of the number two written in the sky. It took a few seconds before I could see it in my mind. The number two floating in the sun. Then I multiplied the number two by two. Again I could see the number four floating in the sun. I did this a few more times, but of course by now the numbers are big and I really had no guess what they were, only how large they were. I kept writing these long numbers up in the sky and making them almost twice as long each time I multiplied by two.

Eventually the numbers stretched from one side of the horizon to the other, and there was no place to write them and more. At first I was confuse as to how to keep imagining infinity, but then I thought all I need was to change my perspective of where I viewed the numbers from. I started looking at the numbers from space and there was lots of room to fit them all. Well, they were getting really long each time, so large I could not see from one end to another, so I imagined standing even farther out in space. When I finally stopped with the numbers everything I could imagine every star, planet, and any other object in the universe was a tiny spec of light, so far away, it was hard to see. Yet the numbers kept writing themselves out across the emptiness. I knew at this point, I was still only just getting started, and already it was time for me to quit. It felt as if I were really some unknown billions and billions of light years from where I had been sitting on the couch. Shrinking the numbers back on their way to the number two was quite an experience. It really felt as if I was traveling, moving at an incredible speed back to my little spot on the couch.

I knew at that moment how it happened when mathematicians get lost in their thoughts never to return. I had experienced just a sliver of what they must feel and think when they are doing high level symbolic math out on the edge. Getting so wrapped up in something that over time they are so far away from everyday life that they never manage to find their way back home. I am not a math whiz, or even anything close to it. I put this into something I could relate to on an everyday level because having discussions about infinity just does not happen very often and the concept is interesting and flows into all aspects of our lives no matter what we may believe.

I wonder if something similar happens when people just quit. Whether people quit from stress, trauma, or something else that makes them simply check out of their life. I am thinking the process is all the same. That is a think I can relate to, because it could by me or anyone I know who one day just quits. How terrible it sounds to us, to think of someone who has no response to anything. It must be a terrifying hell for someone who has been a part of something so terrible they quit. For someone like a digit head who does the same thing, I wonder if they feel like they are on a wonderful trip, or do they hit a point where they no longer are? Maybe for someone who gets lost in infinity, it is not too bad? For them life never stopped, their life just changed a few levels of reality?

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Comments (1) Oct 12 2007