Happiness – Page 14 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

#AlexandriaOcasioSmollett, The Caption Contest

“Shake, a hoax is a humorous or malicious deception. And this is clearly not that.” – Aqua Teen Hunger Force

Okay, I’m sick. I had written one scathing bon mot after another in my head today about this subject. But I’m sick. I’m going to bed after I post this. Instead, we’ll have a fill in the blank caption contest. Let’s keep it PG, folks.

CAPTION A: _________

CAPTION B: _______________

CAPTION C: ________________

CAPTION D: __________________

CAPTION E: _______________

CAPTION F: __________________

Three Kinds Of Evil

“You’re semi-evil. You’re quasi-evil. You’re the margarine of evil. You’re the Diet Coke of evil. Just one calorie, not evil enough.” – Austin Powers

I heard that Kim Jong Un was evil because he had no Seoul.

Evil.

Several of my posts have been about Evil recently. I use the capital E because, in my conception of the world, Evil is a force. I know your mileage may vary, but I think that today’s post can benefit you regardless of your belief system. Stick with me on this one. I brought cookies and juice boxes for halftime.

Normally, I had thought of Evil (when I thought of it) as just plain Evil. The idea that there were different kinds of Evil wasn’t something that I dwelled on. Bad is bad, so why categorize it? It’s like determining if Biden’s morning Depends™ is worse than his night time Depends© – he calls them both Executive Odors and then talks about Corn Pop.

Well, it turns out that for me, when I read about these categories it made Evil easier for me to see. It also made the progression of Evil easier for me to understand. And if I could better see Evil and understand Evil, I could anticipate Evil. Most importantly, I could try to avoid personally being Evil.

And that’s why I thought this was worthy of a Friday post, where I normally write about health. What could be healthier (for your mind, if not your soul) than not being Evil?

The first form of Evil is one that most often came to mind when I thought of Evil, and that is Luciferian Evil. Describing this type of Evil is easy: “If it feels good, do it.”

What feels like the United States but isn’t? Washington, D.C.

If that sounds familiar, the entire decade of the 1960s and most of the 1970s was dedicated to exactly that phrase. Regardless of social conviction, regardless of taboo, regardless of the impact upon society, the idea was to live for yourself. How else would you explain disco music?

In theory, that’s a great idea. (Not disco, but living for yourself.) In practice, however, living only for yourself has an amazing cost. I’ll admit that I know this because, at one phase of my life, I thought that this was just fine.

Oh, not in the way of stealing things, or breaking things, but in the realm of personal relationships. Let’s just say I had a large number of girlfriends, some of whom may have had self-esteem issues. We’ll leave it at that.

Doing what feels good at the expense of the context of a traditional relationship has consequences. In the end, it feels empty. Lust is never as good as love, though it was easier to find at 11:30 on a Friday night.

I don’t have a problem with low self-esteem, considering how awesome I am.

Living life just for pleasure ended up making me feel lonely and empty and nihilistic – the very partnership that a stable traditional marriage brings was what was avoided. But, you know, it felt good. That makes it okay. Right?

Well, no. That’s what makes it Evil. When I gave that up? Life became better.

The second type of Evil is more Evil than the first one. Dr. Bruce Charlton (LINK) referenced it as Ahrimanic Evil*. (Dark Brightness (LINK) had the excellent original post I read and the link to Charlton’s site.)

Ahrimanic Evil requires Luciferian Evil to open the door. “If it feels good, do it” seems to lead to “everyone should follow the value system of the material world and globalist systems. It’s for their own good.” That coercion is Ahrimanic Evil.

Just as Luciferian Evil removes the spirituality out of sex, Ahrimanic Evil removes the virtue out of sacrifice for society. If you’re against the soul-destroying, controlling, Chinese Social Credit system, what you’re really opposing is Ahrimanic Evil.

I hear that the unit of mass George Soros uses is the pentagram.

The soulless Yuppie of the 1980s became the architect of the Ahrimanic control structures of political correctness and cancel culture. Ahrimanic Evil wants you to live in pods and eat bugs and take the vaccine. Fun? Not on this Evil. It’s about the relentless and constant pursuit of material success.

It seems like, since 1990 or so, we’ve been living in a world based on materialism, denying the spiritual or natural component of human existence. The libertine (not libertarian) excesses of the 1960s and 1970s gave way in the 1990s to full-on materialism. If it’s good for the economy, it’s perfect. Free trade, open borders? Who cares about what the consequences are to society as long as the economic systems function?

I’ll admit, in the 1990s I was seduced by this model. I worried more about economic systems than I did about the social structure of the United States. Was I for NAFTA then? Yeah. What could go wrong?

A lot. It looks like Ross Perot was right. But during that time I was following the same model – I pursued my career as a top priority. Yup, I’ve tried to put that Evil behind me, too.

Want it, buy it, forget it.

The last stage that Charlton mentions is Sorathic Evil. It is the most evil of the three Evils.

Sorathic Evil requires the progress from Luciferian to Ahrimanic Evil in society. In practice, you’d think that having a global police surveillance state was the worst thing you could think of. You’ve seen all the films, right, and listened to Pink Floyd’s The Wall, which was (sort of) an attack on the Ahrimanic Evil they saw coming.

But what is this final Evil?

Destruction. Hate. Spite.

You’d think that Evil would be happy with the image, in Orwell’s words with this: “imagine a boot stamping a human face forever.” Total control, through the end of time.

Nope. That’s not enough. Sorathic Evil requires destruction. And, I’ll admit that I felt that way once or twice. It, like the lustfulness or materialism, is soul-destroying. After I released feeling that way, I felt immediately better, like a weight had been lifted off of my shoulders.

The end state of Sorathic Evil is despair. It is envy. It is the desire for the destruction of others for no other reason than you want them to be destroyed. But as we have seen recently, the destruction of others is not enough: Trump transgressed the Ahrimanic system, so Trump (and all who supported him) must be (in their minds) destroyed.

If it were just about justice, that would be simple enough – the absence of Trump was the win for the Left. After Obama ceased to be President, I ceased to care about him. Leftists, the current embodiment of Luciferian, Ahrimanic, and Sorathic Evil, want Trump and his supporters to suffer. If we all changed to their viewpoint today, it would not be enough.

I interviewed to be a mime once – but I didn’t get the job. Must have been something I said.

Imagine Cambodia times the Cultural Revolution times the Holodomor. Squared. That is the future the Left wants for us, and I’ll be writing about that for Monday’s post. And that is the Evil we face.

What they fail to realize is that is the future that they will also get for themselves if they are successful. There won’t be any Gender Studies Majors on the Central Committee. The Left would line up the Leftist professors to be shot far faster than the Right ever would.

The only way to feed the Beast is to make people suffer.

I’m not going to say I’m a great person. I regularly meet with and interact with people who are far better people than I will ever be. I will say, I try. But by having lived through and let go of these three types of Evil, I immediately felt better.

The other thing I’ve learned is that Good is stronger than Evil. Good fills the void, while Evil only brings additional hunger.

We’re not done.

This isn’t over.

*(As far as the terms Charlton references, you don’t need to follow the rabbit trail as to where he got the names for the Evils and points I’m making in this post. It gets a bit esoteric, and you can spend hours, days or weeks wandering down there, but Charlton points the way if you are interested. Beware, it’s filled with esoteric weirdness.)

Toxic Positivity, Because Leftists Say So?

“Dad, you’re, you’re twisting my words! I meant burden in its most positive sense.” – Frasier

In Rambo® 7, Rambo™ fights arthritis.

News stories are like sheep they arrive in flocks as part of a lambush. One flock of stories this week was about, and I quote, Toxic Positivity. Just like another bogeyman, Toxic Masculinity, the Left seeks to take something good and turn it into something to be seen as bad.

The basic idea of the stories is this:

Positive people make it hard for people to be sad or defeatist.
Because people can’t express their sadness or defeat, they feel even sadder and more defeated.
Therefore, the people who tried to cheer them up are evil. Oh, wait, the Left doesn’t acknowledge such an old-fashioned concept as evil. It has to be “toxic.”

Positivity is good. Is it a universal cure-all? Absolutely not. When Ma Wilder died (more than two decades ago), the last thing I wanted was someone to crack a joke or try to make light of the situation. I was grieving. I was not interested in anyone putting the “fun” in funeral.

It’s normal to grieve when a parent dies. But wallowing in that grief for too long doesn’t help anyone. If I had stayed in that grief?

That’s despair, and despair is evil. Not toxic.

Evil. Despair eats into the soul.

Moses was a high-tech prophet – he was the first to use a tablet.

That was my first reaction when I read this story: whoever is behind it is evil.

Why?

Life is tough, really tough. People that we love die. The economy has hit millions directly and is looming over many, many more.

Heck, if I wanted to, I could spend this entire post writing about things that were horrible in 2020 and 2021. But I’m not going to, because, even when things are pretty tough, almost every person reading this has a life that’s better than 99.99% of every person that has ever lived, even on your worst day.

The four stages of Santa:
1. You believe in Santa.
2. You don’t believe in Santa.
3. You are Santa.
4. You look like Santa.

Objectively, my life has been fantastic, as has the life of The Mrs. and the rest of my family. Have bad things happened to us? Sure. But we don’t dwell on them, because that’s despair.

One thing that’s critical for me when I’m having a bad day is being around someone positive to bring me up and out of my sadness. It’s critical because if you let it, sadness will turn into self-pity. And self-pity is a hole with no bottom.

Joe Biden has indicated he wants to put chips in the brains of United States Citizens. What kinds of chips? “Well, you know the thing, sour cream and onion, maybe.”

So why are there people preaching against Toxic Positivity? I can only think of two reasons:

There are a group of people who actively like feeling bad about themselves. As I’ve established before, this group tends to be (but is not exclusively) Leftist. Positive people are a mirror that they don’t like to see: a mirror of what kind of person they could be if they weren’t such miserable wretches.
Oops, there’s only the one group.

The alternative to positive people is . . . negative people.

I avoid negative people like I avoid personal hygiene. Why? Because every day I live or work around negative people, it feels like my life is slowly being sucked away. Negative people are emotional vampires. The sort of defeatism that they spew out is as infectious as Madonna® before her monthly penicillin shot.

I hear mummies are into wrap music.

Negativity can poison a workplace: it’s the guy at work who is always sure that someone else has it better, that some other group is the favored group, and that whatever raise they get is never enough. Then one person in their team is recruited – they begin to see that their group are always getting a bad deal, treated unfairly, having to work harder than others.

Strong people can avoid this self-identified victimhood. However, I’ve seen good people sucked in and become unhappy in a great job, merely because they felt that someone else, somewhere else, had it better than they did.

The biggest weapon against that attitude: being positive. That’s why I write so often about it. I think that 95% of the way I feel on an average day is entirely in my control. No, it doesn’t apply at a funeral or on other dark days. But most days?

At my funeral, my friend promised to say, “bargain,” and that means a great deal.

I choose to be happy. I choose to enjoy my life. I choose to be positive. I choose to try to uplift those around me. Do I acknowledge that times might be rough? Sure.

But the answer isn’t giving up, and taking our ball home. The answer is to work harder, get better, and never give up.

Toxic positivity?

Sign me up.

Studies Show: Hanging Around Victims Sucks

“Yes, sir! That’s exactly who I am and what I am, sir. A victim, sir!” – A Clockwork Orange

Someone in London is stabbed every 37 seconds. Poor guy – he’s got to be getting tired of that.

One of the greatest sources of trouble in my life has been . . . victims. You know the type. They never create the situation they’re in. Every bit of trouble that the victim has ever had has been somebody else’s fault. Pa Wilder was the first to tell me to not find faults – he was horrible at geology.

I’ve even dealt with relatively well-off victims. They had nice houses, but the houses could have been so much nicer if only they weren’t being kept down. People have done them wrong. Generally, if you listen long enough, you’ll hear the list of every bad thing that happened to them.

And I mean “happened to” since nothing, no matter how small or large, is ever their fault. Even if they’re lazy, they’ll say that’s not their fault – they’ll say it walks in the family. As a general rule, when I find a victim, I steer as far away from them as possible. They’re dangerous in several ways.

If you’re not aware of what they’re doing, their attitude can be poisonous. They’re the guy at work who complains that the company they work for makes a profit and that their share is never enough. I avoid them because if I’m not part of their pity-party, soon enough I’ll be in the crosshairs as someone who has done them wrong. As we’ll see – that’s a dangerous place to be.

What does a vegan zombie eat? Graaaaains.

Yesterday I read about a study that was released in the journal Personality and Individual Differences. No, I don’t have a subscription, but I did read about it here (LINK). The study defined a character trait that the researchers named Tendency for Interpersonal Victimhood (TIV). TIV was defined as “an ongoing feeling that the self is a victim, which is generalized across many kinds of relationships.”

TIV? Sounds like living with an intolerable martyr to me.

The researchers found four factors that were pretty much always there with the insufferable losers:

Moral Elitism
Lack of Empathy
Need for Recognition
Unable to Stop Thinking About Their Problems

This wasn’t sometimes there – it was always there. Imagine living a life where you were torn by these sorts of feelings on a consistent basis. Certainly, I’ve written about it before – these traits are 100% the traits of . . . a Leftist.

What does it take to start a riot to destroy a city? Certainty you are right. Lack of empathy for those individuals that own businesses or property. A need to be seen as being virtuous – they must be visible.

Congratulations! You’ve made it through 343 months of 2020! Only 11 more months to go!

And lastly, they cannot stop thinking about every little thing that has ever been done wrong to them which in the end causes them to be filled with nothing but hatred. And hatred has been popular with the Left all year – it’s quite the rage.

Because they constantly felt like victims, the researchers found that the TIV idiots:

Were more likely to make another person suffer loss, even when it didn’t help them personally.
Felt more intense negative emotions, and
Felt entitled to behave in an immoral fashion.

Now, the last three bullet points are a lot more normal. If someone broke into your house and stole your antique yak knickers, you’d probably experience each very one of those last three bullet points – they broke into your house – you want them to pay. What’s not normal is this is the way that people who have TIV feel this way all of the time.

They’ll call him the Grim Sweeper. (Not my meme – as found on the ‘net)

TIV isn’t just the hatred of people, it’s the hatred of all of the systems that those people created. Ever notice that the victim class generally intensely hates the United States?

Why?

Because they want everyone to suffer loss, and they feel that any means whatsoever are justified, especially since they are morally superior. They don’t want to watch the United States fail – they want to watch it burn.

But this victimhood isn’t just a hatred focused outside of self. TIV is, at its core, the hatred of self.

Thankfully, there’s good news:

TIV is a choice.

I have and do maintain that many of the things about ourselves are entirely under our control. Attitude is one. We can always control the way that we feel about something.

I’m not saying they keep the thermostat control hot at my in-laws, but two hobbits came and tossed a ring into their living room.

The start of being a victim is allowing it to happen. I was fortunate. When I was feeling sorry for myself, my parents and brother absolutely wouldn’t allow it. Was it tough love sometimes? Sure. But at least in the Wilder house, I was mocked mercilessly when I tried to play the victim.

That was one of the best gifts ever. Because they wouldn’t let me be the victim, some of the results were:

I felt my destiny was in my own hands. My actions help to create my future.
I was responsible for my own successes, along with the help I’d had.
More importantly, I was responsible for my own failures. This was generally a solo trip. My successes generally had help – my failures were generally due to my own weakness.
Revenge was less important than getting better and winning my own game.

There were some downsides to this. When everyone is playing one game, and you’re playing another sometimes people don’t understand your motivation. If their goal is a brand new car, and your goal is no debt, you’re not playing the same game at all. They see you driving a ten or fifteen-year-old car and think, “Weirdo.”

One of the best examples I ever saw of not being a victim was at a corporate training session. We had discussed victimhood, and the trainer had a large metal pin-on button that said “VICTIM” on it. When one of the participants in the training session leveled a (very valid) complaint about a company practice, the instructor tried to give that participant the “VICTIM” button. The participant refused it.

I tried to steal his boots, but they wouldn’t fit me. I guess those boots were made for Walken.

It was a great moment to watch. The trainer didn’t know what to do, but it was clear to everyone in the class that particular participant was not a VICTIM.

But it’s easy to not be a victim:

Moral Elitism Understand that each of us falls short of our own moral goals. Each of us.
Lack of Empathy Have empathy for your fellow man, but not a poisonous generosity that destroys civilizations.
Need for Recognition Understand that recognition is fickle. It may be the best thing you ever do for mankind will be utterly unknown. Be good with that.
Unable to Stop Thinking About Their Problems Give it a rest. As Twain said: “Drag your thoughts away from your troubles: by the ears, by the heels, or any other way, so you manage it.”

Yes, sometimes bad things happen to us.

How long we wallow in victimhood, however, is entirely up to us.

Fit For Service: Fat Little Dogs With ESP And You

“We’re on a mission from God.” – The Blues Brothers

I thought this guy looked like a werewolf. If he bit me, I’d go to the doctor to see if I had a beast infection.

~~The proprietor over at Adaptive Curmudgeon (LINK), who goes by Adaptive Curmudgeon,~~ Hank Curmudgeon challenged me that he’d only type naked until I did a post where all of the memes come from a particular web page, specifically this one (LINK), which documents Victorian beard styles.

(Update: Do go visit Adaptive Curmudgeon! I’m sure I have already confused him with several comments, so I’m owing him big time!)

It’s getting cold, so I thought I’d allow him (Update: Hank) to at least get a blanket. Since this isn’t normally how I do my memes, we’ll see how it goes. But I’m concerned for him – I hear it’s so cold where he is that you can get soft-serve straight from the udder.

(Update: So, yes, as usual, the problem exists between my keyboard and my chair. I was thinking that Hank Curmudgeon was Adaptive Curmudgeon sharing a first name and didn’t want to share that name without permission. So, it turned into a big Frasier episode where Frasier doesn’t know that Daphne spiked the eggnog, and then he spikes the eggnog, and then Miles spikes the eggnog, and then they catch Martin on fire.

All error belongs with me. End update!)

On to the story.

My dog has ESP. Well, that’s not really true. It’s not my dog. It’s The Mrs.’ dog, MacReady. I’ll do in a pinch when The Mrs. isn’t around, but I’m not the preferred person – that’s The Mrs.

That’s understandable. The Mrs. feeds MacReady and pampers it. In my world? Dogs get kibble and (once in a while) leftovers. In The Mrs.’ world, dogs get canned dog food. So, yeah, MacReady probably picked the right person.

This particular dog is a miniature pinscher, so it’s supposed to be about eight pounds of misplaced aggression. The Mrs.’ has currently “overserved” MacReady, so he’s currently about sixteen pounds of misplaced aggression and high self-esteem.

I can hardly remember when I tried to get into optometrist school. It’s all kind of blurry now.

By misplaced aggression, I mean the dog is sixteen pounds, yet it barks like it thinks it’s a linebacker for the Chicago Bears® when someone rings the doorbell, and will bravely waddle to the door to defend the house as fast as its little legs will carry it.

When MacReady jumps off of the bed, I’m constantly in fear that his legs will collapse up into his body and we’ll be left with a sort of dog/sandworm mix that will only be able to wiggle around the floor. If that happens, we’ll keep still keep him. You know, for the spice.

The Mrs. is worried MacReady might rupture like a bag of soup. If so, we’ll toss him in the compost heap. Then he’ll be min-pin soup for the soil.

Anyway, MacReady has ESP. By ESP, I mean that he has extra-sensory perception.

I was going to make a joke about his eyes, but I worried that would be two cornea.

And my phone is the cause.

See, whenever my phone isn’t on mute, it makes a particular noise when my front doorbell senses motion. It’s like a set of not-annoying wind chimes. The Mrs. used to have the same app on her phone, and somehow MacReady associated that sometimes when the wind chimes played, there would be a person, like a UPS® guy evil eldritch horror or monstrous alien threat* (LINK) at the door.

So, MacReady has figured out that whenever my phone makes that chime noise it means that bad men, perhaps wearing hats are lurking outside to ring the hated doorbell? He clomps his huge min-pin butt to the door and barks, as threatening as a feather duster in a biker bar fight.

But, as fat and as tiny as MacReady is, he is fit for purpose. He has two jobs: be warm and cuddly, and be annoying when someone rings the doorbell. That’s really it.

Maybe he grew that to cover a neck brace? If so, he never looked back.

As people, though, we have a purpose, too.

Are we fit for it?

And, that’s the question I have for you today.

I can’t tell you your purpose. I can only give you ideas on how I found mine. But I assure you that you have one even if you don’t know it.

I once read that you should write down things that you could do and do it until you break down and cry with the beauty of what you have written. I think that smells kinda bogus, and really doesn’t fit well with reality as I’ve found it, and I haven’t cried since Hornady developed the 6.5 Creedmoor.

Me? I’ve found my purpose (as I know it now) by trying things. First one, then another. I’ve found a few things that I’m good at. Sleeping. Eating Ruffles®. I’ve even found some things that I do that are useful. Putting laundry into the dryer is definitely one of those things.

His girlfriend left him, too. She found out he was seeing someone else.

But I’ve found far more that I’m awful at. Singing. I love to sing. People love it more when I don’t sing. Playing guitar. People like my guitar playing better than my singing, but not by much.

If you have no talent in a subject (or, like me an aggressive anti-talent in music) it’s rarely going to form the basis of a purpose. Finding those talents that you have, developing them, and then combining them (Scott Adams calls it a talent stack) is really the basis of a purpose.

A purpose is, in the end, the reason that you exist. And eating Ruffles© and sleeping, no matter how good I might be at those things) is not it. This blog is part of that purpose. And my purpose is constantly evolving, not because I’ve lost focus, but because I’ve learned more about who I am and what I can do.

And a purpose may not have anything to do with your job. Often it is. But in the end, you do the job you need to do so you can feed your family, even if it sucks. Of course, if you don’t need money, that rule goes right out the window. But most people who have jobs find them distasteful from time to time – that’s why they’re not called hobbies.

His other hobby was taking pictures of trout wearing clothing. He said it was like shooting fish in apparel.

But if you do have your purpose, especially if it’s a special purpose, I can tell you that you need to get fit for it. Even as MacReady’s purpose is pretty easy to meet – be a warm furry throw pillow and be a tool by barking like a chopper door machine-gun two dozen or so times a day – I bet yours isn’t that easy.

So what is it that you have to do to fulfill that purpose with all of the impact of a fat miniature pinscher impacting a carpeted floor accelerated by gravity at 32.1740 ft/s² (6.62607015×10⁻³⁴Js)?

Is it physical? Get in the best shape you can.
Is it mental? Practice improves everything.
Is it spiritual? There are many folks that can help you there – who knows what you might find.
Is it courage? Is it scary?

It might be. Actually attempting to fulfill a purpose can be daunting. What happens when you fail?

Not if. When. If the purpose is big enough and worthy of you, you will fail – that’s the basis for learning. And you will fail until you don’t. You have to be strong enough to keep going, building yourself up layer by layer.

I like having lots of layers on my bed – that’s a blanket statement.

You’ve got to bark at that door every day, if that’s your purpose, even if you don’t have ESP.

*I went with the spelling from the 38 year old movie – I figured it was more commonly known than the spelling in a story written over 82 years ago.

Luck And (Sort Of) $20

“What’s this, then? ‘Romanes eunt domus’? People called Romanes, they go, the house?” – The Life of Brian

When Clint was taking pottery class, before he put his ceramics into the oven, he’d snarl: “Go ahead, bake my clay.”

I went on a long-ish walk today. Walking is fun, gets me outdoors, and allows me to feel the wind on my scalp. Not that being bald is bad – when I was younger I used to play chess with bald old men at my hometown’s park. It’s really hard to find 32 of them all at once, though.

I went on the same walk yesterday. The thought came to my mind, hey, I’m going to find a $20 bill when I go walking soon.

And today? As I had just finished 1.56 miles (still heading out) I looked in the ditch by the side of the country road. Could it be? Was it?

It was.

No, not another Bud Light® can. It was my $20 dollar bill! I’m not making any of this up. Here’s a picture.

I got home and found that someone ripped the center pages out of my dictionary. It went from bad to worse.

Now it’s not the worst thing I’ve found inert, piled in the weeds next to a crumpled Bud Light™ can – that would be the Ex. But it wasn’t exactly a full $20 bill, either.

I sent a picture of it to my friend. “Looks like you’ve got about $9.50 there, John.”

Yup. It is a real $20 bill. Just not a complete $20 bill. And since you need to have 51% of a piece of paper currency to trade it in – it’s not $9.50, it’s $0.00, although I’m sure that in Pennsylvania (or Wisconsin, or Georgia or…), my 45% of a $20 dollar bill would magically transform at 3AM into a full 55%.

So, was I lucky?

Yup, I was.

Why would I deprive an Uber driver of a chance to take part in a marathon?

Although we talk about all of the right things to do with your money (or bullets, or gold, or PEZ®) one thing you have to factor in is luck.

Pa Wilder, generally, did it all the “right way” – saved money, owned his home free and clear for years, bought his cars with cash, and stayed out of debt. About 25 years after he retired, he was broke – he had spent most of his savings, so my brother John (yes, my brother’s name really is John, too) kicked in and helped Pa along. Pa didn’t spend it all on pantyhose and elephant rides – generally, he just lived a very quiet life.

Then there was relative “B”. They went from one cash shortage to another for almost their entire lives – not because of any sort of fault – they were frugal and worked hard. In one particular cash crunch, they ended up having to sell cattle to pay an emergency bill. Then, one day, a group of geologists came on to their land just as they’re ready to retire. The oil company drilled a few wells and started sending them checks.

How much were all those checks worth?

Enough to allow them to get a bulldozer to push over the house they were living in. Honestly, they didn’t need a bulldozer since the only thing holding the house together were mice holding hands with termites.

I enjoy testing microphone/speaker combinations. Have any feedback for me?

And enough was left over to build an entirely new house.

It was . . . luck.

As humans, we plan. We can’t help it. And we observe patterns: not getting married until you’re ready, finishing school, not getting divorced, saving money, being thrifty, and investing are things that generally lead to financial stability.

Choice of career is also important – there are few composers of 17^th and 18^th century-style music that are wealthy. But for those composers that are? If it ain’t baroque, don’t fix it.

But we should all take a step back and understand that the future isn’t based entirely on skill – it’s also based on luck. And, yes, I know what you’re saying – the same thing I normally think – quoting Seneca (the dead Roman): “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

I try to live my life by those words.

But there’s still just plain luck.

Did Romans kept fit by doing Pontius Pilates?

I am normally that lucky guy. Seriously – I started writing down a list of incredibly good luck that I’ve had in my life. It was a very long list. If I took a hard look at the list, sure, some of it happened because I was clever enough, or fast enough, or strong enough, or just so very pretty – too damn pretty to die, some might say.

But some of those coincidences that happened to me were none of that. The opportunities were so amazingly rare, and yet, there I was. It’s not just me who has observed this. A good friend once described me like this: “John, if you were walking down the street and fell down into a pile of gum, you’d come back up with a $100 bill stuck to your forehead.”

Part of luck, however, is just understanding that some days are your day – nothing can go wrong. And other days? Nothing will go right, even if you’ve prepared wonderfully and meticulously.

Yes, I believe that Seneca is right, and you prepare as hard as you can for those days and seize the ever-loving snot out of those days. So when it’s my day? I try to push my luck as far and as fast as I can. The Romans had this one sniffed out, too: Fortis Fortuna adiuvat. Fortune favors the bold.

What kind of aspirin do fortune-tellers take? Medium strength.

When it’s not my day? I just slooooooow down.

What I really have seen is that people who are in great moods have . . . the best luck. Those same people often find opportunities where others don’t see them.

Maybe I’m just an optimist. I think great things are going to happen to me, so, they do. When I was out walking on the deck when it was raining and one foot slipped and I did the splits? The kind of splits that you feel some muscle in your left leg streeeeeeeetch, and then feel that same muscle “give” because I haven’t bent like that since I was in high school?

Not lucky? Right?

I can’t be sure. Stretching my leg like a pretty, pretty ballerina sure fired me up to get walking to build that muscle back up. And it’s working just after a few days. And I found this neat $20 bill.

Or at least part of one.

Weird, huh?

Black Friday 2021

“Who buys an umbrella anyway? You can get them for free at the coffee shop in those metal cans.” – Seinfeld

I never understood why people got attacked by sharks. Can’t they hear the music?

Black Friday is easy to make fun of, but I won’t (so much) this year. As other people go nuts over shopping, I get to sleep in on a Friday morning and not go shopping. It’s a win-win: other people get to do what they want to do, and I don’t have to join them.

I can see the appeal – the idea of, perhaps, getting a deep discount on something they wanted to buy anyway is attractive. And economizing by not wasting money is a very good thing, especially if you’re able to afford something that you normally couldn’t buy. By not participating, though, I save 100% in every store.

I have no idea how well the sales figures will be on Black Friday, 2020. I expect that the economy is significantly weaker than people imagine. Multiple shutdowns for Coronavirus seem to have taken a major toll on the economy, so I’m not sure how many people are going to want to spend extra for new cooking gadgets. I know that there’s a mask mandate in most places, but please be aware: around here they expect you to wear pants, too.

If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and flies like a duck, it’s probably a government surveillance drone.

Many retailers, including our local shopping choice, Wal-Mart®, were closed on Thanksgiving.

As we all know – if there’s a buck in it, stores will stay open. That is, after all, why they’re in business. Someone did the math and figured out that it wouldn’t make sense to be open on Thanksgiving this year. That should tell you a lot about where the economy is.

The real economy.

The idea that the Dow-Jones® Industrial Average (DJIA) just hit a record 30,000 should also tell you something – the economy has split. FaceBook® is doing so well that they’re still hiring Congressmen. As several astute readers here have noted – the DJIA seems to be entirely disconnected from the reality of the actual economy most people have to work in, even though once upon a time there really was a connection.

But there is a connection between Black Friday and Christmas. Several people I know complete all of their Christmas shopping either on Black Friday or Cyber Monday. Businesses count on this behavior to make a profit for the year, although big businesses (Amazon®, Wal-Mart©, etc.) have already had a great year.

If you used your COVID stimulus check to buy baby chickens, did you get your money for nothing and your chicks for free?

The Mrs. and I no longer get very excited about Christmas presents – we’re fortunate that we have most of our needs met and the best gifts are the small ones that require some thought, like when The Mrs. bought me that book on anti-gravity. I just couldn’t put it down!

The Boy seems generally content, and when I ask him what he wants, the answer is generally, “I’ll think about it.” Pugsley still has a list.

Well, not a list. A dozen lists. He emailed me the first one. Of course, knowing him, I entirely ignored the list. Never even opened it.

Why?

Because there was a new and entirely different list the next day. And a new one the day after that. Finally, he seemed settled.

I named my iPad® Titanic, so when it was updating it said, “Titanic is syncing.”

“I want an iPad®.”

“Why don’t you take my old one? I never use it. Enjoy.” It had originally been given to me by a Chinese friend – I do love homemade presents.

“Wait, what?” After complaining that it was the 2015 model, he finally accepted that making do with an old iPad® and something else for Christmas was actually a pretty good deal. Honestly, I think he’ll remember that more than getting a new iPad™.

Like I said, our family is in a good place, but we know that not everyone is. I expect that there will be a lot less spent on gifts this Christmas. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. The best parts of healthy relationships aren’t material. Long after a gift has worn out or been lost, the benefits of a real relationship remain.

If Schrödinger’s cat went on a crime spree, would he be wanted dead and alive?

I expect that the recession is far from over. I also think that we’ve moved from a period of relative plenty into something . . . new.

New doesn’t mean bad. New means different.

And if that meant that Black Friday stopped being a materialist holiday?

We might all be better off.

Time, Treasure, and Talent: Three Gifts To Be Thankful For

“We paid him in gratitude and life lessons.” – Psych

But it’s what we got.

The other day I went to McDonalds®. This is not a usual thing, because the McDonalds® in Modern Mayberry is run and staffed by people who (really) once gave me a bare McMuffin™ instead of the Sausage McMuffin™ with Egg© that I had asked for. Some of the folks who work there (not all of them) couldn’t spell dog if you spotted them a “d” and a “g”.

I ended up going there because The Mrs. asked if I wanted to have lunch with her and one of her relatives. I was intended to get the food. When I asked what she wanted, she said, “Surprise me.” Since I like spending time with The Mrs., I agreed. Since we never went to McDonalds™, I figured that would surprise her.

The Mrs. said to meet at noon. Immediately the calculations went off in my mind:

It will take me fifteen minutes to get to McDonalds®.
It will take 10 minutes in the drive-through at McDonalds™. In Modern Mayberry, McDonalds© isn’t fast food, it’s convenient food (at least when they get the order right).
It’s another 10 minutes to the relative’s house.

To be on time, I’d have to leave home 35 minutes before lunch. Simple. And, as it turned out, my timing was exactly (nearly to the minute) correct. But my biggest revelation of the trip was this: to feed three people a warm lunch from the drive-through cost $23.74and took 20 extra minutes from my life.

I bought lunch for the three of us (again, with me eating light) and I did the math – with the cost of my lunch deducted, each of them could have had a one pound ribeye steak and side dishes if we cooked it ourselves I and could have done that in 20 minutes or less.

Oh, sure, you say, who would want a one pound ribeye steak when one could have a box of ten lukewarm chicken McNuggets®?

Well, me.

Well, I guess McDonalds® has a pretty sophisticated social media group.

And that brought me to today’s thought. It’s the week of Thanksgiving and I already hit gratitude, but I’m going to drive that psych-out home with this post, too.

Gratitude is being grateful for the gifts that you are given. That implies that you use those gifts wisely. The biggest gift is the only one that we all get right out of the box when we are born:

Time.

Time. It’s been a subject that has fascinated me since I discovered that there are irreversible processes. You can’t unbreak a glass. You can’t uncrash a car. And you can’t undo intentionally leaking all the ink from 20 or so pens on an oak hardwood floor under your bed and drawing pictures of horses when you are three.

My parents were really chapped about that last one. Oh, they weren’t happy about the car, either.

Each of us only has so much time. It’s both a blessing and a curse that (most of us) don’t know how much time that is. It’s a blessing because we can face life unafraid without knowing our fate. It’s a curse because we might waste our Time.

Literally the first item in my search for the term “time”. I could have picked another term, but ain’t nobody got time for that.

Waste of anything we have is a failure to show gratitude. We are each given our measure of Time. To waste it? You are wasting everything that your life is made of, and what you could achieve. To be clear – your achievement isn’t for you, it’s for the future of mankind. What are you doing with those precious moments that you have to make the future of mankind better?

Or, at least you could use your time to get on the cover of The Rolling Stone.

Even if you aren’t religious (to be clear, I am), this duty is simple – what are you doing to make the world better?

Don’t waste your Time.

The second thing that you can waste is your Treasure. Good heavens – when I looked at the prices I paid for lukewarm McNuggets® compared to the cost of a home grilled steak dinner, it was embarrassing. Seriously – the cost of a Quarterpounder® with Cheese™ and a medium fries was the cost of a ribeye steak.

I’m not saying that I’m only going to eat ramen noodles warmed by the heat of my thighs rubbing against each other as I spend quality time on an elliptical trainer. Nope. Besides, that’s much messier than keeping the ramen duct-taped under my armpits.

You really don’t want to know where I warm the pâté.

But each one of the people reading this (I’m hoping that Bezos and Musk don’t read this) have a limited amount of money. What you do with it really matters. Ma Wilder (who was my adopted mother) didn’t deal well with waste – to her, a wasted drop of gravy was an affront against all that was good.

And Ma Wilder was right.

“What’s the most expensive food in the world? Food you buy and then don’t eat.” – John Wilder

But that’s also why we don’t make candles in summer – we have to pay for the heat to melt the wax and then to get the heat out of the house again. I love having candles in the basement, but most of the year I can’t have them – who lights a candle when the air conditioning is on?

That’s the most expensive light in the world.

I’m sure someone else has said that the most expensive food in the world is the food you buy and don’t eat, since it is the most basic idea in the world. But I haven’t seen it before, so I’ll take it until some bright commenter (Ricky?) notes that the Internet says that some French monk said it in 457 A.D.

(And, no, that won’t bother me a bit.)

But I guess that’s maybe why the French eat snails?

Well, he’s no Pinochet. He didn’t have helicopters.

But wasting your money is wasting your time, and wasting your life. I’m not sure about many of you, but my inheritance was the time and love I got from my parents and family. Oh, and a box of rocks (this is true, I’ll save it for a future post, maybe). But the Treasure you have represents potential.

There was a story I read once, I’m going from memory, and it went (more or less) like this:

A group of monks asked a Chinese Emperor for more robes. The Emperor asked:

“What will you do with the old robes?”
“We will turn them into sheets for our beds.”
“And your old sheets?”
“We will turn them into rags to clean the floor.”
“And your old rags?”
“We will incorporate them into the bricks that make up our monastery.”

Do not waste your Treasure: exhaust it.

The final thing you should have gratitude for?

Your Talent.

I am really grateful for each of the Talents that I have. But, like Time and Treasure, wasting Talent is, well, wrong. Just like Time (mostly) and Treasure (at least partially), most of the Talents you have weren’t earned, but given at birth.

What do you do with your Talents? That’s where it gets interesting.

I have used many of my Talents during the years, and only a few of them are on display in this blog. After all, you can’t see how shiny my scalp is over the Internet. NASA uses it as a beacon to guide spacecraft back from orbit.

Wasting Talent is probably the worst, even more than wasting Time and Treasure. Time is determined in many cases by forces beyond our control. Treasure? Treasure is fleeting. Elon Musk made $100 billion dollars this year. And it can evaporate as quickly as it rained.

But Talent is the most inborn of the traits, and in my opinion, the most tragic thing anyone can waste. I can’t gain the Talent of Eddie Van Halen even if I devoted my entire life to playing the guitar. If I spent the next decade studying the guitar, or trying to sing? People would pay me for those talents.

Pay me not to use them.

Well, I never bought any Princess Leia CDs.

I’ll explain: one time we went to church and I was too hoarse to sing. The Mrs. said after that service, “I never knew how beautiful that music could be.” This is a true story. I guess that if people can have Talents, I can have an anti-talent, too.

In the end, I have to be grateful for the Talents that I have, and grateful for the Talents I can use. Can I be filled with pride for them? Nope.

So, as I sit here typing – my goal is this:

To use every Talent I have, for every minute left in my life, as much as I can. Why?

Because a Talent is a gift. And if I use it well, for the benefit of me and those around me in a positive way?

That is Virtue. And that is a goal all of us can share in: living the most virtuous lives we can. Think of your Time, Treasure, and Talent as ways to become virtuous, because they are the greatest and, perhaps, only gifts you will ever have.

Also, don’t look up Rule 34.

So, to sum up: I’m grateful for the Time given me, the Treasure I have earned, and the Talent I was given at birth. These are three of the things in my life I’m most grateful for.

Happy Thanksgiving!

A Tree Fell On My House, But I Have A Chainsaw

“I’m a lumberjack and I’m okay. I sleep all night and I work all day.” – Monty Python’s Flying Circus

What’s black and white and red all over? Two mimes fighting with chainsaws.

I saw a quote this week that made me smile a lot. I’ll share it with you:

“When God put a calling on your life He already factored in your stupidity.”

A few weeks ago, a tree fell down and hit our house during a storm. And by a tree, I mean a huge one. I had snapped off 15 feet (57 Joules) up the tree. It was nearly horizontal, and resting on my favorite roof.

I’ll admit that I was sitting in the hot tub during the storm that brought down the tree.

It was glorious. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard a tree fall. It’s wonderful. Approximately once every five minutes, I’d hear the tearing of wood and then, after a pause for the amount of time it took for the vertical tree to become horizontal, the crash. The next day, one more tree fell.

It fell into my house. The Mrs. sent me a picture.

I waited until Saturday when The Boy was down from Upper Lower Midwestia University to solve the problem, because the one thing a boy home from college wants to hear? “Hey, son, glad you’re back from college for a weekend of rest. I’m going to grab you and your brother and we’re going to work all day in one of your dad’s crazy adventures. Oh, and it involves you getting up early and chainsaws.”

Honestly, he should be used to it by now.

Looking back, I realize that in a normal world, I would have called my insurance company. They’d send out adjusters who would look at the tree. They’d measure it, weigh it, and sensuously cup its fallen boughs, which still happens to be legal in my state.

I’ve heard you can save a lot of money on car insurance by switching. Switching to reverse and leaving the scene.

They would look in the book of “Tree Falling On House Payments.” They’d then tell me that elm trees falling on houses in Upper Lower Midwestia were excluded. I would then correct them because I live in Lower Upper Midwestia and the tree was actually a son of a birch.

Then he says, “Oh, you’re that John Wilder. Of course! Insurance will cover it.”

Then, I would call a tree company to come and move the tree. Since everyone in town had a tree fall on their house, it would take a month for them to show up for an estimate, and another month for them to remove the tree. After the tree company charged me $2200 to move it, I’d toss the bill to the insurance company.

I’d pay the deductible (which is currently set at my left kidney for my homeowner’s policy, and my cornea for auto), and that’s it.

But would that be the Wilder Way? Of course not.

I can sleep in on the weekends. The Mrs., who is borderline insomniac, feels that this is my superpower. Generally, I can get to sleep in less than five minutes, often in less than one. The Mrs. can only sleep on Tuesdays after 9 P.M. if it’s not Daylight Savings Time. The Mrs. has walked into the bathroom to brush her teeth and returned to find me sound asleep. I can even do it when I’m driving, though my passengers don’t seem to care for it.

What’s green, fuzzy, and will kill you if it falls on you out of a tree? A pool table.

The reason I can sleep is only when I don’t have a Mission. When there’s a Mission? I wake up and I’m ready to go. I don’t even need an alarm clock. The tree on my house represented a Mission.

As it was, I had Pugsley and The Boy available, and daylight was burning. I knocked on each door as I went out to start work.

I started with the branch trimmer. Alone. The sleeping leviathans inside had yet to move.

Branch trimmers are like the scissors that Hannibal Lecter would use to, umm, prune a rose bush. This was my third set. The problem with the first two is that The Boy and then Pugsley pulled the handles too hard and bent the metal. Sometimes, living with them is like living with five-year-olds that don’t understand that they can twist metal with their bare hands.

So, a paid for the expensive trimmers this time.

Trees don’t walk. They lumber.

These trimmers were good enough to cut through about a 2” branch, which is pretty stout. I took the trimmer and started hacking. I was about 30 minutes into hacking when The Boy showed up. Pugsley showed up slightly later. It took us 10 years to convince him he had to shower, and now he has six of them a day. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that he takes a cheese plate into the shower.

When Pugsley showed up, I had him get the chainsaw, mix gas, chain oil and chainsaw sharpener. I showed him how to sharpen the chainsaw blade, which took all of 30 seconds, but then he knew how it worked. I also showed him how to adjust the chain. These may seem like small things, but they are rites of passage. There are many tools in a cabinet, and some are mostly harmless, like a screwdriver. But a chainsaw?

A fear of spiders is called arachnophobia. A fear of chainsaws? That’s called common sense.

For the next seven hours we were like ants, taking branch after branch off of the tree, first with the branch trimmer and then with the chainsaw.

I had a dentist who used to be a lumberjack. He pulled a tooth by mistake. I’ll never to Axedental again.

Finally, we were down to two major branches. By the time we’d gotten there, I realized that what I had done was, slowly, cut off all of the minor support points. It seemed like a good bet. But it was also a nagging feeling that I might be making the problem worse.

I was. While sitting down, I heard a sharp crack.

Like wood breaking. The exact sound I had heard while having a beer in the hot tub during the storm.

One of the two branches left holding up the whole tree was cracking. Looking at the tree, I saw that it was big. I estimated that what remained was about 5,000 pounds (one metric “Your Momma”) and a quick check of my estimate that I did while writing this backed that number up, unless the tree was on a low carb diet.

That 5,000 pounds was going to fall on my deck, and if I wasn’t careful? 5,000 pounds dropping 15 feet is a lot of energy – enough energy to smash a deck, a Wilder, and maybe an insurance adjustor to boot.

I had The Boy and Pugsley run into the garage looking for whatever lumber they could find that was the right length to prop up this rapidly deteriorating situation. After ten minutes, I had two 2×4’s and one mangy plank holding the tree up. It wasn’t moving, but it wasn’t stable, and it was 10.5 feet (one metric Barron Trump) up in the air.

The Mrs. took a picture of my makeshift supports. She sent it to her high school friend list. One friend who is in city planning responded, “Oh, no! This looks like all of the ladder safety videos that they make us watch.”

I thought about what I’d do, and sent The Boy and Pugsley off to buy a 10’ stepladder and some ratchet tie-offs. When they got back, I propped the 10’ stepladder under the branch, shimmed it with lumber, and then got the chainsaw-on-a-stick.

The chainsaw-on-a-stick is just that – a tiny electric chainsaw mounted on a stick. This one has an 8” blade, and is meant to cut things far away. That’s good, because that’s exactly what I intended to do. I would have liked to cut this particular tree from orbit, because it was lopsided – it looked like it wanted to twist, hard, clockwise.

I used to be a lumberjack in the Sahara Forest. Well, it used to be the Sahara Forest. I’m that good.

I tied off the branch to a convenient tree so when I cut it loose it couldn’t fall into the garden shed. I further tied off one of the remaining branches so maybe that it wouldn’t twist as it fell.

Pugsley pulled out his camera to record the action.

“Nope. Put it away.” The situation that I had put myself into was less than optimal. I realize that as men we are here not to live a life without risk, but to live a life. And the Sun was now going down. It was now or never. One way or another that tree was coming down before the Sun went down.

Getting injured because you refused to let someone else clear the tree? That seems like a stupid and futile gesture.

Well, if you’re looking for stupid and futile gestures, you’ve come to the right place. I just didn’t want my particular stupid and futile gesture to result in YouTube® videos of my death. I proceeded to take the chainsaw on a stick and started to cut into the branch.

As far as tense moments go, having the stored energy of a Ford Explorer® 15 feet up in the air, dependent upon your calculations and being right?

It’s tense.

When I was back in Alaska, I could regularly drop trees within a degree of where I wanted them to go. Was I a lumberjack? No. But I had to lay in dozens of metric Your Momma’s worth of wood a year just to heat the house. You get pretty comfortable with a chainsaw doing that.

When I cut wood in Alaska, I didn’t get overtime, even though I logged a lot of hours.

But that was 15 years (3 centimeters) ago. I cut into the tree. I first cut a relief cut in the top of the horizontal branch. I didn’t want stress to build up there and hang the whole mess up. Then I started to cut from the bottom up.

You have to cut a tree that’s acting like a beam from the bottom up. If you cut it from the top down? It will bind the saw, and you end up in a crazy place where you have a stuck saw and a Ford Explorer®’s amount of energy dependent upon you freeing it.

I cut into the tree. A lot. Then paused. The opening the chainsaw had made grew larger as the stress pulled the tree apart. I cut into the tree again. By now, the entire 5,000 pounds was hanging by a 3” by 2” slab of wood. Still no movement.

Finally, I cut deeper. I hear the “crack” as the tree split. Pugsley was watching from a safe distance. He said the tree dropped perfectly down. I wouldn’t know – I was headed the opposite direction. Not only was there the 5,000 pound tree, there was also the bit still on the roof. I could easily imagine that part whipping around as it was pulled by the main branch.

The final crack came.

The tree did come down. Perfectly. The bit left on the roof? Didn’t move an inch. Exactly as I wanted it to go. I sat down as The Boy and Pugsley removed the rest of the debris. Pugsley even got me a beer and said, “You’re done, Pop. Have a rest.”

I trained my kids that if I ever choke on a beer, they should give me the Heineken® maneuver.

The damage to the house was minimal, actually. A bit of gutter needs to be moved back into place. One shingle lost its gravel in a small circle. A solar light was broken. I need to replace one deck board, one chair, and one plastic bench. Oh, and we spent 27 hours of labor. I was sore for the next three days.

If a tree falls on your house and that’s all you lose? You’re as lucky as me. Which is pretty lucky.

Or, more likely? God has factored my stupidity into my life.

An Important Lesson Of Life? Understand Death.

“No. Not like this. I haven’t faced death. I’ve cheated death. I’ve tricked my way out of death and patted myself on the back for my ingenuity. I know nothing.” – Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan

“Vikings don’t worry about death – they know they’ll be Bjørn again.”

When I go to bed on Saturday night, I sometimes wake up before I intend to get up. That’s my favorite luxury of the weekends. One technique that I use after I wake up to get back to sleep is to think about the points I’ll make on my Monday post.

This hypnogogic state (that no-man’s land between sleep and being awake) is a wonderful place for me. I focus on a topic, and let my mind take the topic where it will. Often, it’s back to sleep. That’s okay.

But other times? I end up making connections I might not have made otherwise. I love that. That’s one of the reasons I love my Monday posts. I have that ability to really let my mind explore on the weekend. I’d do that during the weekdays, but if I miss and end up sleeping? Snoring is frowned on at work.

If you need to be creative and don’t use that hypnogogic state, I really, really, suggest you do. It’s a really peaceful sort of place, but I’ve found it’s also one where my mind strips out the pretty little lies that we tell ourselves every day and pops me full of reality. Plus? It’s a great excuse to The Mrs. that I’m doing something important when I’m busy nearly napping.

I hear when Jeff Bezos sleeps, he wears pajamazons.

Monday’s posts are, in general, about philosophy. They’re the “Wise” part of Wilder Wealthy and Wise. Wednesday is about economics. And Friday is about health, though more recently it has focused on clear thinking – which might be the clearest way to real health. I’m not sure anyone wants to come to this blog for nutrition advice, since my nutrition information belongs on Tide Pods®.

All of the posts allow me to think deeply about a subject, research, and learn. On more than one occasion, I started out believing one thing, and after my research for the post was done, I realized my original belief was horribly wrong. Those are some of the best posts for me, because when I do them well, they change the reader and the writer.

But Monday’s are special. They’re my favorite posts, though sometimes not the most optimistic of posts, because, like those transvestite superheroes that call themselves the “Ex-Men®”, reality is not always pretty.

This was a joke when this album came out. Now we call it male fraud.

I had a big post planned for today. Really, I have a big post planned every Monday. In my mind, I want them to knock the socks off of people. Figuratively, of course, because I have no idea what sort of foot hygiene you practice and would not want to actually have to smell your feet. I’ll do a lot of things for a successful post, but I won’t do that.

So, why do I write?

I write because, perhaps, the biggest way I can make a difference in this world is by serving, you, dear reader. If something I can write can make you smile on a bad day, make you think differently about a subject so your life is better? If the cause of Western Civilization is carried forward?

I win.

That’s really why I’ve devoted such an amount of time to writing. As The Mrs. has told me several times: “John, if I didn’t think what you were doing was important, you and I would have words.”

I don’t know if “have words” is fairly ominous where you come from, but here in Stately Wilder Manor, “have words” generally does not lead to a pleasant evening. But, I am happy to note, I have The Mrs. full support in my writing, even though she says, “well, I’m sure we’re on a list now.”

I went to the library to get a book on Pavlov’s dog and Schrodinger’s cat. The librarian said that rang a bell, but she wasn’t sure if it was checked out or not.

This week, however, I wasn’t able to slip my writing tasks off to my conscious/sub-conscious.

Life intruded.

It turns out that today there was a death in the family. It wasn’t one of the regular cast of characters that I’ve written about. Pugsley, The Boy, The Mrs., Alia S. Wilder, my brother, John Wilder? They’re all fine. Ma and Pa Wilder? They passed away years ago.

Actually, I’m fairly sure I have never written about the person who passed away today. But their passing provided the opportunity to talk about life.

The simple truth is this: we are born, we grow, we live, and all we can do is try to make the world better by the lives we touch. As Kierkegaard said, “Life can only be lived forward, and understood in reverse.” Of course, he was speaking Danish, so Kierkegaard probably sounded like he was describing a pastry recipe that involved using a commuter train to mash the dough because Danish doesn’t sound at all like a real language.

What’s the difference between married people from Denmark and Batman’s® parents? It’s simple: one is wed Danes and the other? Dead Waynes.

Death is, of course, inevitable. I’ve written about it on more than one occasion. I don’t expect that this will be the last time I write about it. Our inability to understand that death is a part of life horribly stunts the modern world, which seems to exist to deny that death is real.

Death has many different impacts on families. It can bring them closer together or tear them apart. The choice is, of course, tied to how the family deals with it. The best choice is honesty and transparency.

Some observations:

How can you mess up a funeral? You can’t. So why do we worry so much?
And why do we spend so much on a funeral? I think it’s a unique time where people don’t think straight at all.
Making decisions after the death of a loved one is probably the third worst time you can make a decision. Or is it the fourth?
Never, ever leave something unsaid between you and a loved one. When the ship sails, all debts should be paid, in full. The last thing you say to someone might be the last thing you say to someone.
Death brings life into perspective – it makes people focus on what is really important. So why do we wait until someone dies to focus on what’s really important? Hint: we don’t have to.
Avoid land wars in Asia. Those never turn out well.
Most major religions and all of the atheists think we have one shot at life on Earth. Wasting time is then equivalent to wasting life. So don’t do that, either. Every minute you spend being bored and waiting for something is a minute of your life you wished away.
Life is too short for regrets. Fix your regrets, or live with them. Spending a second regretting is a second you’ll never get back.
Corollary: life is too short to spend it worrying about how long you’ll live. So don’t. Should we be prudent? But don’t let it stand in the way of you living your life. Is that an excuse to do harmful things to yourself? Of course not. But it’s not an excuse to be afraid of your shadow, either.

If I’m ever crushed by a falling piano, I want a low-key funeral.

During the ancient Roman triumphs, which were held to honor victorious commanders, a slave was chosen to accompany the commander. The slave would hold the wreath above the commander’s head. He would whisper in the commander’s ear: “Remember, you are mortal.”

We all are. The only difference is what we do in life. And what we write for our Monday posts.