Health – Page 19 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

The Key To A Great Job? The Right Mixture Of Important And Urgent.

“Daniel Dravot, Esquire. Well, he became king of Kafiristan, with a crown on his head and that’s all there is to tell. I’ll be on my way now sir, I’ve got urgent business in the south, I have to meet a man in Marwar Junction.” – The Man Who Would Be King

Well, maybe not this doctor.

I have a friend that I’ll call “Joe”. Mainly I’ll call him “Joe” because that’s his name. Since there are estimated to be 1,782,432 people in the United States named “Joseph” that’s really not blowing his cover, except to (I think) two readers. And, no, his wife’s name isn’t Mary.

Joe is fantastically smart. He has an intelligence that makes correlation leaps that catch most people by surprise. In one instance he pointed out a basic physics flaw that showed a billion-dollar business deal was destined to fail. The company did the deal anyway. Physics won – physics always wins.

Joe had been right. You’d think that being right about a fatal flaw in a billion-dollar business would be rewarded, that Joe would be sought after for advice.

If you think that, you’ve never worked in the corporate world. Being right about something like that means that an executive was wrong. Executives never like to have people around them that remind them of when they turned $1,000,000,000 into $100,000,000.

There are times it doesn’t pay to be smarter than the boss.

My boss caught me taking NSFW selfies. They’re serious about mask-wearing.

Besides being right when an executive was wrong, one problem that Joe had is that he had a fairly high capacity to do work. Normally that would be a good thing, but most work was routine for Joe. When he and I were working as peers, he would often do no work at all for days on end.

None. He’d goof off all day, or just play and experiment. He’d break the software in his computer just to see if he could fix it.

Then, in a furious burst of energy (often before a deadline) he’d work. Sometimes, the work would last through multiple 20 hour days.

“Joe, you realize that you could have done that work last week when you were trying to get unauthorized access to the company’s main software server and setting up an unsanctioned private e-mail just for the group. Why didn’t you?” I asked.

“That would be boring,” Joe responded, “so I waited until I didn’t think I’d be able to do the work on time and that I’d miss the deadline. Then it got interesting.”

I got pulled over while going to work with my loom in the front seat. The cop said I was weaving all over the road.

In truth, I’d seen some of the same characteristics of creative procrastination in me, so I immediately understood what Joe was saying. The work itself was rather routine, so the way to bring challenge was to wait until the real risk of losing my job led to peak production. I had a mortgage and Joe didn’t, so I didn’t fly nearly as close to the flame.

But that’s not the only kind of job there is out there.

On the other end of the spectrum is a job that’s chaos. Everything is an emergency. Everything is urgent.

Priorities keep shifting on a daily basis – sometimes on an hourly basis. It feels like there’s no end to the work, and the pressure is unrelenting. There are long lists of things that have to be done – now. The previous day’s plan gets thrown into the trash due to the events of today.

Well, that’s not a job that’s boring.

Don’t worry – they got jobs with Elon Musk, so they could go to otter space.

Lose a day on a job like that, and it feels like the business might implode. I once told The Mrs., “I can do any job for two years.” I had that particular chaotic job for 32 months. 32 months really was 8 months too long – there are only so many 70 hour weeks that I could do consecutively and not become as mentally vacant as Joe Biden circa 2021.

An example from my time in ChaosCorp®: on Sunday around noon when I just started to feel normal, I’d realize that tomorrow was Monday, and I’d have to go back to work. Goodbye feeling normal. I knew there would be some fresh crisis on Monday, I just didn’t know what it would be this week.

This was a time when life was too interesting.

Perhaps, though, there was another way?

Going into my Wayback® Machine, I actually created a picture that I can use to illustrate this. This is from a post back in 2018 (Franklin, Planners, The Terminator, My Unlikely But Real Link With President Eisenhower, Star Wars, and Kanban):

Gotta love Microsoft® Paint™, making a $500 computer just as effective as a box of Crayons® and a sheet of construction paper (plus a sticker).

In this particular graph, one axis shows how important a task is, and the other how urgent. We’ll skip the unimportant stuff, and only focus on the two boxes on the right side of the graph:

Important and Urgent, and Important and Not-Urgent.

The job I described above where everything was chaos? Almost all of our work was Important and Urgent. It’s the kind of work that causes people to get ulcers, gray hair, a facial tic, and start muttering to themselves when they’re hanging out by the coffee machine.

That was me for thirty months.

The “boring” first job I described? That was one where almost all of our work was Important and Not Urgent. This was reasonable work that was really important, but we had sensible timelines. Being generally Type-A personalities, there wasn’t enough pressure for Joe (and me), so we had to invent it ourselves.

Recently, though, I’ve come on a revelation: the optimum amount of work types (for me) is probably about 80% Important and Not Urgent and 20% Important and Urgent.

Pareto would be proud of that blend.

I tried to put my dog on a vegan diet, but we ran out of vegans.

The nice thing about Important and Urgent work is that it gets me going. Rather than get to work and plan about the plan I need to schedule to put the Important and Not Urgent work together, Important and Urgent work has to be done. Now. It has immediacy. It gets me going. Once I get momentum and a pace going, well, it’s easy to keep it going.

Then I get the Important and Not Urgent work done.

The great thing about a day with a good mixture of work like that is that, at the end, my productivity is nearly maximum. As I get in the car to go home, I realize that, yeah, I really did give it all at work, and it felt pretty good.

But writing these posts? That’s Important and Not Urgent. Until I wait to 11PM to get started on writing, like I did tonight.

Then writing becomes Important and Urgent.

Joe would be proud.

Hey, look, the Sun is coming up . . . .

A Wolfe, Stab Wounds, Dolphins, And Snot

“I’m Winston Wolfe. I solve problems.” – Pulp Fiction

What’s the difference between a knife juggler and a multiple stab wound victim? Practice.

I first started reading Claire Wolfe back around the turn of this century in Backwoods Home Magazine. I have several of her books and have enjoyed them greatly. Claire is one of the most wonderful of wordsmiths about freedom, and she has a great post up (LINK) now. The title says it all: “Freedom Is Dying: Be Of Good Cheer.”

Of course, regular readers know that I couldn’t agree more.

Claire has a great story that’s contained in the post. A person named “Lox” came into Claire’s Internet freedom group, and the group tried to help him to freedom:

But “poor” Lox sucked up everything we had to offer, then spat it back out. None of it applied to him. He told us a thousand reasons why all our ideas and experiences were worthless. We were blind and insensitive to the depths of his plight. Nobody had ever been as unfortunate as he. Nobody had ever been as helpless as he. No one had ever been as depressed, as oppressed, as mistreated, as ugly, as inept, as trapped, as misery-laden as he.

Of course, there’s more, and Lox shows himself to be even worse than what’s written above. Seriously. I’ll let you read the rest over at her place, because if you’re not going to her place regularly, you should.

Genghis Khan was a ruthless baby. Why, I remember when he took his first steppe . . .

I’d like to focus for this post on what Claire wrote about Lox in the quote above.

When I was younger (and not yet a wiser Wilder) I can recall running into more than one person like Lox. The names were different. The situations were different. But the behavior was always exactly the same, so I will collectively name them Blandy Blanderson:

Blandy has a problem. It is the worst problem of anyone ever.
I try to help, either though giving advice, or giving them assistance. I’ve moved furniture on a Sunday evening when Blandy was being kicked out of an apartment, I’ve waxed dolphin armpits (flipper pits?), and I’ve even lent Blandy money so that the Auckland Auk Ark Cartel wouldn’t break his leg.
Even if the initial problem is solved, Blandy will then have another problem.
I try to help. The next problem is solved. I’m never going to do dentistry on a dolphin again, let me tell you.
Blandy then comes up with problem number three.
I decide that Caller I.D. is worth every penny.

If I Photoshopped® myself a dentistry license, would that a doctored image?

I had finally figured out that Blandy didn’t want the problem to be solved. And I realized that there would always be a problem. Blandy was in love with the problem.

This was new to me. I have always had a sunny disposition – one of my Professors in college always said, “Keep smiling, John.” That’s why it took me so long to understand Blandy. Why would anyone want to be sad?

I couldn’t understand it, so I observed it.

I noticed that whenever I helped Blandy, especially if my help solved the “problem of the day”, Blandy would never, ever say “Thank you.” Why would you thank someone who took away the problem you secretly loved?

I can only speculate the causes of Blandy’s behavior:

If Blandy could blame someone else, then they weren’t responsible for their situation. Someone or something else was responsible. They could live their life blaming others.
How could Blandy get attention? Having problems got people to pay attention.
By having problems, Blandy could get sympathy from others. Without problems, what would start the sympathy flowing from others?

I’m sure that after I stopped helping, I became yet another one of the long list of Blandy’s problems. “Oh, Wilder, he’s so lucky and fortunate, but he never helps anyone else.”

Dracula returned a mirror to the local Wal-Mart®. When they asked him why, he said, “I can’t see my self using it.”

In one sense, Blandy’s behavior is vampirism. Blandy takes a personal tragedy and exploits it so he can get fun and prizes and emotion from others. The bonus for people playing along at home is that Blandy can also shield a fragile psyche from the consequences of his actions.

But wait, don’t people have real problems? Don’t people really need help sometimes?

Certainly.

I recall one time calling up a friend and saying only, “Bar. Now.” It was noon. It was an awful day. He picked me up in 20 minutes, and he got me home safely later that night, even though it took more than a little while to work myself out of the problem.

There are times that people have streaks of bad luck. I can recall once when I was on such a streak. I called my friends for help. They did. But I noticed that the longer I had my problem, the less one particular friend was interested in talking about it.

That’s when I realized: by staying negative on a topic and not owning it and putting it behind me, I was starting to turn into Blandy. That was my signal that it was time to put the problem behind me and stop complaining.

Even Liberals aren’t safe you see; the Left always eats itself, yippee!

Perhaps the biggest takeaway in learning to deal with my problems is that I own my attitude – no one else does. If something bad happens, well, I could spend every moment of my life being mad at the situation. Does the situation care?

No.

Heck, I could spend every moment swimming in the salty warm viscous mucus of self-pity. If I do that, all I get is sticky and become the Michael Phelps of victimhood mucus swimming. Maybe Coca-Cola® would sponsor me?

Good things and bad things will happen to me. If my happiness is dependent upon only good things happening to me? I’ll be forever disappointed because bad things happen, too. Tires go flat. Plates break. The Yellowstone volcano erupts.

Know the difference between snot and broccoli? A five-year-old won’t eat broccoli.

The Truth as I’ve seen it so far: if I’m happy on my bad days, I’m going to be ecstatic on my good days.

Do I see many difficulties in the years ahead? Certainly. Does sitting around worrying about them make them go away? Does it make them better?

Nope.

The Blandy Blandersons of this world waltz through it surrounded by a cloud of misery.

I think I’ll skip that.

It’s much more fun being John Wilder. I’ll echo what Claire says: “Be of good cheer.”

Fear, Rats, G. Gordon Liddy And A Machine Gun Bikini

“Hold them back! Do not give in to fear! Stand to your posts! Fight!” – Return of the King

I can jump higher than any fence. Fences don’t jump very well.

When The Mrs. and I were newly married, and before the stork brought The Boy, The Mrs. and I had time to just do, well, whatever. That often involved driving, and driving in that involved radio. We listened, mainly, to talk radio. We had to, because we had been banned from a gas station for listening to a song by The Who too loudly.

I guess we won’t get fueled again.

One day we were listening to the G. Gordon Liddy show. For those of you who don’t know, Liddy was sent to prison as part of the Watergate break in during the Nixon era. If I had just one word to describe Liddy, it would be intense. I hear that Liddy was doing five hundred sit ups a day, but had to stop – he couldn’t take the ab use.

In particular, I remember one story of Liddy’s very vividly. The dialogue below isn’t exact (this was over 20 years ago and I slept at least once since then) but it’s pretty close:

“When I was younger, I had a particular fear of rats. It was a very, very strong fear. I didn’t want to be afraid of rats, but I was. So, to get rid of the fear, I killed one, cooked it, and ate it. I was never afraid of rats again.”

If a relative passes away, you can get a free Starbucks®. It’s your mourning coffee.

See? Intense. Also the kind of thing that made me glad that Liddy wasn’t afraid of me, since I have no idea if I’m good with ketchup.

On one hand, that level of behavior is bordering on insane. On the other, it showed an amazing amount of self-awareness. If Liddy’s goal was to go through life without fear, facing it was certainly the way to overcome it, although I’ll say the number of times I’ve come face to face with rats is exactly zero. If that’s your top fear, you’ve gotten rid of most common fears.

I’ve related in the past how when climbing a really tall mountain I reached a ridge and looked down over, expecting that there was no way it could be as steep as what I had just climbed. I was wrong. Sheer cliff. I was looking down very far.

Several mountain climbers caught the ‘Rona but didn’t give it to anyone. Scalers aren’t vectors.

I never had vertigo before, in fact I never had much of a fear of height at all. But in that moment, I developed it. From then on, whenever I could find a tall spot to stand on and look down, I would. And I’d stay there until the vertigo went away.

It was a lot harder than just killing and eating the cliff. It also took a few months, but the vertigo went away. It’s mostly vertigone now, though I will admit that sometimes I get a chill when I watch Internet videos of people doing stupid stuff on very tall buildings. Most of the videos seem to come from Russia, for whatever reason. I’m betting it’s vodka, but it could also be . . . no, it’s vodka.

Bad pun? Check. Bikini? Check. Machine gun? Check. Russian hat? Check.

Not all fear is bad, and not all fear is debilitating. A lot of Evil comes from fear. I used to think that all Evil came from fear, but that’s certainly not correct (Three Kinds Of Evil).

But a lot of Evil does come from fear. Why? Fear is fuel for Evil:

Fear leads to cowardice.
Fear leads to deceit.
Fear leads to anger.
Fear leads to hate. (Quote about the Dark Side®, there may be here.)
Fear leads to regret.

Cowardice might be the worst, though.

The reason is that cowardice is, at the root, a betrayal. First, a betrayal of internal values. Second, a betrayal outwards. A perfect (but small) example is someone who is afraid of the consequences of disappointing a customer. That leads to a lie to the customer. Which leads to another lie, which will eventually end up with a very angry customer.

The Mrs. and I started our relationship with a strict “no lies” policy. That’s why The Mrs. never asks me, “Do these pants make my butt look big?” She knows I’ll tell her the truth.

“The pants? No, the pants don’t make your butt look big.”

It was half an hour outside of Bakersfield when the catnip began to take hold.

Fear is natural. A healthy respect for fires and firearms is a good thing. But when any single fear? That fear has to be confronted.

It has to be killed and eaten. It can change the world. Say, if you were afraid of undercooked bat . . . .

#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: __________________

Health, Media, And Distrust

“That’s because there’s no logical reason Vitamin C would cure polio.” – House, M.D.

What’s worse than misplacing your keys? Polio.

I really don’t have to tell you how deep the distrust in society is today. In many cases, it is for good and heckin’ valid reasons. That will be the theme for the next three posts, starting with today’s post.

Media distrust is at all-time highs in the United States. There’s an old Soviet joke about their newspapers, Pravda (which means “Truth” in English) and Izvestia (which means “The News” in English):

“There’s no truth in Pravda and no news in Izvestia.”

Especially in 2020 and (now) in 2021, our news has been so corrupted as to make Stalin jealous. Sadly, this has consequences.

I’ll start off by stating the obvious: COVID-19 is a real disease. There have been fatalities. If you read Aesop’s blog (LINK), you can get a firsthand account of his dealing with it as a medical professional. It isn’t pleasant reading, but it is truth, and when it comes to COVID-19, I trust Aesop more than the CDC. Also? I’d rather read the unpleasant truth than pretty little lies, any day.

Editor: “I want that fable on my desk, AESOP!”

It also isn’t pleasant when he comes over to this place and (validly) punches me in the mouth with all of the subtlety of a Devil Dog storming a German trench when I get my medical stuff wrong. I actually appreciate that since I want the truth to get out, regardless of ideological consequence. (Though sometimes it stings. And I’m sure he’ll remind me to get the shingles vaccine when I get older.)

But yet . . . Dr. Anthony Fauci said this on March 8, 2020:

“There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is. And, often, there are unintended consequences — people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face.”

Remember, no matter how useless you think you are, there’s always Dr. Fauci.

On April 3, 2020, Fauci changed his story:

On masks, he said, “If everybody does that, we’re each protecting each other.”

Fair enough, people change their minds, right? But it later came out that the context of the first statement was built on a lie: “ . . . masks were not recommended for the general public, as authorities were trying to prevent a mask shortage for health workers . . . .”

How hard is it to say . . . “We don’t know. Masks might work. But right now there’s a shortage and we’re asking you to save those masks that are available for health workers”?

It’s not hard. And it’s honest. When they lie to you, that tells you what they think of you.

Now, Fauci recently (January 2021) said that maybe you should wear two masks. In his case that makes sense – one for each of his faces.

I can now tell if a person has a mustache even if they have a mask on. I guess I’m hairivoyant.

Now we end up with the COVID-19 vaccine.

To be clear: I’m not an anti-vaxxer. My kids have all of their shots – that’s why they get the tag from the vet.

What, the tags are for the dogs?

Oops. No wonder Pugsley tries to keep hiding his collar and bell and rabies tag under his t-shirt when he goes to school.

Additionally, there is clear evidence that some vaccines have done some significant amounts of good:

Smallpox has been eradicated – like my jokes, it’s a killer. But smallpox is like one of my obscure jokes – no one gets it anymore.
Polio? What’s that?
Others: Measles and mumps were (for a time) eradicated in the United States, though the number of lives saved annually due to measles might be as low as 400 a year due to the vaccine (LINK) and may be half that or less. Also? The biggest decline in measles deaths took place years before the vaccine was released.

Oh, wait, I guess I just asked.

But let’s go back to polio. While the vaccine was new, one batch had polio that wasn’t “killed” and it infected hundreds of thousands of kids. Another version was contaminated with SV-40, a virus from monkeys (it was a relic of how the vaccine was produced) that produces cancer in some lab critters. SV-40 DNA has been found in various cancers in humans, including non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, though it’s considered controversial to say that the polio vaccine triggered those cancers.

Was it worth it to get rid of polio?

I can sit back in 2021 and easily say, “Sure, those aren’t my kids.” A few parents from 1954 might want to have words with me, though.

Now, the current vaccine is of a type that’s entirely new. It uses strands of RNA (biological spaghetti that transfers information on how your squishy parts are made) to trigger an immune response by making your immune system sensitive to proteins that are a part of the ‘Rona.

A good idea? Sure!

A good idea to try on the fly with millions of people in a science experiment?

Hmmm, now I’m not so sure.

Would I want Pugsley to get the vaccine? At his current age, there is a 0% chance of death if he catches the ‘Rona. Most likely, he’d never even know he had it. If I expand his age group to include the few unhealthy kids in their 20s that caught it and died, the chances of death, if he got it, is 0.001%. For him, driving to school is far, far, more dangerous.

Would I want my son to take a vaccine of an entirely new type when the chances of side effects killing him are by definition equal to (zero is equal to) or greater than his current risk profile from the WuFlu?

Probably not.

What isn’t helping is that discussion of any subject related to COVID-19 is censored on YouTube® if it doesn’t say exactly what Dr. Fauci thinks. And, as we have established, what he says is demonstrably not guaranteed to be the truth. It might be, but we already know one thing: the man will lie to us.

Did Hank Aaron die as a result of the Coronavirus vaccine he so publicly took?

I have no idea.

Who would I trust to tell me yes or no, that the vaccine is safe?

I have no idea.

There’s even a toll in California for tying your shoe. Knot fare.

The radio spouted a daily COVID-19 death toll until the minute Joe Biden was sworn in. Now? Not at all. The only stories I hear now are (mainly) positive vaccine stories.

I just wish we had more Pravda in our Izvestia.

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.

Penultimate Day And 2021 Thoughts

“The Babylon Project was our last, best hope for peace. It failed. But in the year of the Shadow War, it became something greater: our last, best hope for victory. The year is 2260. The place: Babylon 5.” – Babylon 5

Why did 2020 cross the road? To get to the other cyanide.

This year we didn’t celebrate our traditional Wilder family holiday, Penultimate Day. What does Penultimate Day entail?

Well, you drive south for two hours or so. Then you go to Best Buy® and, under no circumstances do you buy a cell phone. But you must look at cell phones. Then, after not buying a cell phone, you go to Olive Garden® and have some nice pasta.

This celebration started (I think) in 2011 or 2012, I think. The Mrs.’ cell phone (a Blackberry®!) was going south. We drove to the nearest cell phone store that was tied to our carrier, which was a Best Buy™ about two hours from us. We got frustrated attempting to figure out the deals after the phone clerk wheeled out a surgical gurney to take out part of my intestines. I told him, “No way!”

“Really? You need to look at the contract closer. It’s in the appendix.”

We gave up on buying a phone.

Then, frustrated at our lack of being able to find a phone, we gave up and decided to have dinner.

Hobbits always use vibrate on their phones – they don’t want the ring to give them away.

And then we drove home. It was impossibly silly, driving a total of four hours to go to not buy a cell phone. And we did it on December 30. So, I made the joke that since the New Year was a made-up holiday, why not make up our own? Thus Penultimate Day – the next-to-last day of the year – became an official Wilder holiday.

Over the years, we took Penultimate Day seriously. There were one or two exceptions where we skipped Penultimate Day, primarily because Pugsley or The Boy had a sports event. That is, of course, acceptable. The goal of Penultimate Day is to do something fun together as a family.

We stuck to celebrating Penultimate Day. Why? Because it was fun, it was silly, and it was ours.

We didn’t celebrate Penultimate Day this year.

First, traveling into a major metropolitan area didn’t make sense to us – here in Modern Mayberry the case-rate for the WuFlu is relatively low, and we have no idea what the requirements are to even go into Best Buy® in Major Undisclosed Metropolitan Area. Second, while we enjoy going to the Olive Garden™, I’m still convinced that the free breadsticks are some kind of con game. I keep expecting a bill to arrive from them in 2028: “owed to Olive Garden© for “free” breadsticks: $257,065.”

What’s the only pasta you can get during COVID-19 lockdown? Macaroni and sneeze.

Instead, we slept in late, played a few games, and more-or-less relaxed the entire day. Our contribution to the economy of the United States? We had a nice dinner The Mrs. cooked for us at home, used some natural gas to fire our heater, and spent about $3 in electricity for lighting the place. That was it. Our participation in the economy on December 30, 2020 was probably less than $20, total.

That’s the problem if you’re running an economy. No gasoline, no money heading to the Olive Garden©, and no tip to the waitress.

I read that Christmas spending was down this year, to $851 from $976 in 2019. That’s a drop of 13%. But this is Monday, not Wednesday when we talk about economics. On Monday, we talk about the big picture.

But 13% is a huge drop-off. And when you add in all of the activities that people aren’t doing? I imagine it was even more. The big picture? Economic contraction increases instability.

I wrote in 2019’s Penultimate Day that we were entering a period of chaos, where entire edifices that we used to stand behind would crumble. Now, we sit in 2021, and a majority of the people who voted in the national election think it was rigged.

How do you get a baby alien to sleep? Rocket.

Also rigged? The system of justice in the nation. We see Antifa® and BLM© “peacefully” destroy cities. The massive number of unindicted felons? It’s okay to loot.

2020 was a mess, but it looks like we got to get a glimpse of the man behind the curtain.

2021 will certainly start out like a mess. January is going to be chaotic. Regardless, I’m optimistic about 2021 – not because I’m insane, but because I know what starts the upward rise: the upward rise starts after you’ve fallen and hit bottom. While we around the world have fallen and are headed toward the bottom, the biggest lesson is this: bring something back up with you.

That’s the question for today: what can we bring back up with us?

Understanding that the world can change around you in an instant. One moment, the world was normal. The next? Lockdowns, the destruction of an economy.
Understanding where your vulnerabilities are. Food? Toilet paper? What can you do to fix them?
Knowing that your job is not “safe” – the entire economy isn’t safe. Be prepared for more dislocations. What skills are you working on?

These are important realizations. In 2021 and for the foreseeable future, complacency will not be your friend. Constantly question your assumptions. Constantly try to understand your side, but also periodically ask yourself, “What if I’m wrong?” Try to understand the other side of the issue, too.

You may or may not be wrong, but questioning (not doubting, but questioning) yourself is key to deep understanding. Hold your own beliefs up to the same scrutiny you use on opposing beliefs.

Thankfully, hindsight is 2020. Or did I get that backward?

As I wrote on Friday, I’m not sure that 2021 will be a great year, but it will be a birth year for the next phase of what happens to our society. What’s probable this year?

Unemployment continues, and likely gets worse. Ideas of a quick rebuild will be crushed. People at the bottom end – twentysomethings and service workers – are already hoisting a white flag.
Society will become even more fractured. Left and Right are guaranteed to be further apart in 2021 – the way this presidential election has gone is sure to inflame both sides, no matter what happens.
The very mechanisms that we normally see as protecting society will continue to erode. People on the Right who are defending the “thin blue line” will become aware that many (not all!) of the police will do whatever the people signing their checks tell them to do. This is not the year to be a cop in Portland, Oregon.
People will continue to flee California and large Leftist cities in a locust-like plague. They will not leave their Leftist ideas behind.
The debt of the United States will continue to climb. My bet? We add another $4-5 trillion this year. That doesn’t include personal debt and business debt. The idea that printing money is better than earning it will continue and probably increase in 2021. This idea will only stop when events force it to stop.

But as I said in the introduction to Friday’s post, I remain weirdly optimistic that, even given all of these trends, this will be a year that we will look back on and say, “That was the year that things changed.” Certainly, 2020 was a year that will likely be looked on as the start of the crisis. 2021 will be looked at as the year that the seeds of the new are planted.

How can I better describe it?

1776 is they year that most people associate with the birth of the United States. What most people forget is that it wasn’t until 1787 that the Constitutional Congress was held. Likewise, it wasn’t until 1789 that George Washington was sworn in as our first President. That was thirteen years after 1776 – thirteen years where there was war, economic failure, and finally a coming together over a very unique document.

Change takes time.

What did Washington say before his men got in the boats to cross the Delaware to attack the British? “Get in the boats.”

So, if I’m right, people will look back on 2021 and say, “That was when things turned around.”

And the good news is, Penultimate Day or not, you’ll be there for it. Again, I never said it was going to be easy. It will likely be the complete opposite of easy.

Freedom rarely is easy. And I’m still pretty sure that the Olive Garden© has a comprehensive spreadsheet somewhere charting my breadstick consumption . . . .

Paranoia, Preparation, and Peace of Mind

“Frankly, your lack of paranoia is insane to me.” – Silicon Valley

In our library, I asked The Mrs. where our books on paranoia were, she said, “They’re right behind you.”

The biggest natural disaster The Wilder Family ever rode out was Hurricane Ike – it passed right over our house when we lived in Houston. And it was going pretty strong when it hit our place. We lost power, a tree, siding, and a whole lot of roof. Thankfully, Led Zeppelin was there to sing that one . . . Whole Lot of Roof . . . .

In review, the hurricane wasn’t so bad. At one point, I had to do my Captain Dan impression, walking outside in the middle of the hurricane at the strongest winds and yelling into the wind after the power went out and the laptop battery died so we couldn’t watch the John Adams miniseries we were watching on DVD:

“Is that all that you’ve got?”

Since I’ll probably never be able to walk away from an exploding helicopter without looking back as the flames shot up into the sky, it was just something I thought I had to do: yelling into a hurricane wearing a bathrobe and athletic shorts.

I’ve done a lot of cool things in my life, but I really enjoyed that one. I’d recommend it, but my lawyer, Lazlo, advises me against advising you to try it. Maybe you could talk pleasantly into a warm spring breeze?

The reason I did it? We had hit the toughest part of the storm. We had ridden it out. We were prepared.

Never smoke weed during a hurricane – lightning always strikes the highest object.

In truth, the preparation had started before we ever bought our house. We picked a house that was so far outside the flood zone that Wyoming would be underwater before we were.

Yeah, I checked that before we made an offer. I’m paranoid that way.

In my life, I’ve always tried to go to the idea of, “How bad can it get?” Then I thought, “Well, how could it get worse than that?”

In the middle of the night when I wake up with yet another scenario, the answer always comes back the same: “It really can get worse.”

Reality can get really, awfully bad. And it can do so more quickly than we imagine.

During the hurricane, there wasn’t a lot we could do. Stores were picked clean of essentials about 24 hours before the storm hit. Oh, sure, you could get things like diet cookies and soy milk, but the food actual humans wanted to eat was simply gone. And booze? Forget about it. All of that was sold out.

The first big lesson: Prepare Before Circumstances Force You To Prepare. If you’re moving out of a disaster zone (cough San Francisco cough) it’s better to be five years too early than one day too late. Especially if they’re out of beer.

Why did people hoard all the toilet paper? It’s just how they roll . . . .

But not having the store was okay for us. I went to visit one mainly to amuse myself and learn – what would be left? If more people prepared, then systems wouldn’t be overwhelmed when a crisis strikes.

Thankfully, at that point in our life, our pantry had enough food in it to keep us fully fed for weeks or longer. Water? We had a swimming pool (they come with every house in Houston, like mailboxes or manservants) so we had thousands of gallons of water.

Don’t want to drink swimming pool water? Well, if you had the water filter system I had, you could. But we also had drinking water stored in plastic jugs for weeks of use. We ended up using the swimming pool water for bathing and toilet flushing and never missed a beat.

The food was good. Even though power was out, cold cooked corn and cold Hormel Chili™ tasted okay. It was “camping” bad, but not “a normal Tuesday in Somalia” bad. The worst part was the second day after the hurricane – temperatures and humidity skyrocketed, so it was uncomfortable to do anything other than sit around and sweat. Even sleeping was uncomfortable since the still, hot, humid air was like living inside a whale that’s spending spring break in a crockpot.

Don’t sweat the petty things. And don’t pet the sweaty things.

The hand-crank radio was our link to the outside world. Cell service was wiped out. And then, FEMA helpfully came on the radio and told us to go to their website for emergency locations.

Huh? Website? We had a hand-crank radio.

But, outside of minor discomfort, we were fine. I even had beer, though it was warm.

The one (and only one) hole in my preparations at that point was I was out of propane for my grill. I had to borrow from a neighbor to cook the steaks that were rapidly thawing out. That was okay, I lent him 20 gallons of gasoline for his generator, so we were very quickly even-stevens.

Yet another lesson: Every Detail, No Matter How Small, Matters.

I was planning for a much, much bigger catastrophe. The hurricane that hit us was, due to the preparations The Mrs. and I made, an uncomfortable inconvenience. It was in this case that my paranoia made our lives (relatively) easy.

The biggest lesson I learned is one that we speak of commonly now: No One Is Coming To Save You.

If we had any issues that would have resulted in needing help? We weren’t going to get it. The “First Responders” had gotten themselves into an emergency operations building and had no food or water. The radio broadcast a hilarious plea for people to come save the “First” Responders by bringing them food and water.

When seconds count, First Responders will be there in minutes.

The First Responders are almost always Second Responders – you and I, when we have a crisis, are the real First Responders.

No One Is Coming To Save You. Get that very simple fact through your mind. It was one we lived with each day of my childhood up on Wilder Mountain. If you couldn’t save yourself – you were going to die. If Pa Wilder cut off his left foot with the chainsaw while we were gathering firewood and my brother John (yes, my brother’s name is really John as well) couldn’t save him, he was going to die.

That never happened. But we were prepared for it.

Sometimes events I write about go beyond what will happen. I assure you, not one of the events that I write about goes beyond what could happen. The descent of a society into madness and chaos has happened again and again throughout history. Sure, that descent into madness generally doesn’t happen overnight.

Generally. But sometimes? It does.

So, when I look at the world around me, I let my paranoia run. I encourage it. “How bad could it get?”

That’s a starting point. What are the additional things current me can do now to help future me? How many human needs can I solve? For how long?

Where I live, there are several amazing advantages. Great water. Good soil. Low-ish population density. Grain elevators filled to bursting with food that the population could eat in an emergency. Good neighbors that I’ve known for years who think as I do, mostly.

We didn’t move to a rural area by accident. From every story that was told to me about the Great Depression – people in the country, surrounded by their neighbors, had a much better time than people in the cities.

Think about preparing not as being about stuff, but as a way to buy time. Saving money buys time. Stockpiling food buys time. Living in a low-pressure area buys time. Living in a high resource area buys time.

Most preppers suffer from Stock Home syndrome.

If you prepare for something big, and nothing big happens? Not generally a loss. I can eat the food in my pantry anytime. If I prepare by building a pantry when times are good? I often end up saving money because food prices keep going up.

If you prepare for something big, and something small happens, like (for us) Hurricane Ike?

You can ride it out. You get a few days off of work. You might gain weight, having to eat all of that food that is thawing.

And you would definitely get the chance to go out and yell into the winds:

“Is that all you’ve got?”

See? Paranoia has its advantages. I’ll simply say this: paranoia is the only way that our ancestors survived.

Don’t sell it short. Preparation after paranoia brings peace of mind. Heck, I nearly have a Ph.D. in that – just call me Dr. Prepper.

I guess anyone can be called Dr. nowadays.

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.