Category: Health

Pleasure, Stoicism, Blade Runner, VALIS and Philip K. Dick

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.  Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.  I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.  All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.” – Blade Runner

valis

I wonder if there is any symbolism in this artwork?  I guess we’ll never know.

Recently I’ve been reading Philip K. Dick’s novel VALIS.

It’s interesting.  I enjoy it.

Philip K. Dick’s work (you never see him referred to as “Phil” or “Phil Dick”, it’s always Philip K. Dick, just like John F. Kennedy is always known as “Sassy”) has taken over Hollywood.  From Total Recall to Minority Report to Blade Runner to The Man in the High Castle, Dick’s work has been made into something like 14 movies and an entire series of shorter television episodes available on Amazon® Prime™.  In what might be the most ironic ending ever, he only really became popular after his death, with Blade Runner being released just a few months after he died at the age of 53.

The story themes that he visited during his life were fairly consistent:

  • What is the nature of reality? What if it’s a lie?
  • How do we know that we are sane?
  • What if reality is insane? What should our response be?
  • What is information? Is it living?
  • Where can I get more drugs? I mean a LOT more drugs.

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VALIS is based on (at least partly) a vision that he had in February and March of 1974, and describes a lot of things that Dick said personally happened to him, which include a secret Roman Empire that still existed, aliens, and the fact that his son had a hernia that would kill him if he didn’t have the doctor look at it.  The hernia part is verified.   The secret Roman Empire?  Not so much.  Oh, did I mention he did a LOT of drugs?  Yeah.  He made Hunter S. Thompson seem like a virgin.

However, as a writer he had an amazing amount of insight, which may account for the popularity.  One quote that struck me was an interesting philosophical digression in VALIS:

Masochism is more widespread than we realize because it takes an attenuated form.  The basic dynamism is as follows:  a human being sees something bad which is coming as inevitable.  There is no way that he can halt the process; he is helpless.  This sense of helplessness generates a need to gain some control over the impending pain – any kind of control will do.  This makes sense; the subjective feeling of helplessness is more painful than the impending misery.  So the person seizes control over the situation in the only way open to him:  he connives to bring on the impending misery; he hastens it.  This activity on his part promotes the false impression that he enjoys pain.  Not so.  It is simply that he cannot any longer endure the helplessness or the supposed helplessness.  But in the process of gaining control over the inevitable misery he becomes automatically, anhedonic (avoiding pleasure – JW).  Anhedonia sets in stealthily.  Over the years it takes control of him.  For example, he learns to defer gratification; this is a step in the dismal process of anhedonia.  In learning to defer his gratification, he experiences a sense of self-mastery; he has become stoic, disciplined; he does not give way to impulse.  He has “control”.  Control over himself in terms of his impulses and control over the external situation.  He is a controlled and a controlling person.  Pretty soon he has branched out and is controlling other people, as part of the situation.  He becomes a manipulator.  Of course, he is not consciously aware of this; all he intends to do is lessen his own sense of impotence.  But in his task of lessening this sense, he insidiously overpowers the freedom of others.  Yet, he derives no pleasure from this, no positive psychological gain; all his gains are essentially negative.

This idea is fascinating to me.  In this case, a virtue, self-restraint and stoicism, is turned into a vice.  And not only a vice, a vice that replicates itself and spreads its misery around.

I see this most often among people who have no real control or power in their lives – the people who sit on Homeowner’s Association boards and send out little notes that my grass is too long, or that my siding needs to be washed, or that they object to the new “sheet metal hammering and shredding at midnight with strippers” business that I set up.  The phrase that I’m reminded of that describes these people is:  “The fight is so bitter because the stakes are so small,” which is a paraphrasing of Wallace Sayre’s original quote, “I hate going to the Department of Motor Vehicles”.  So, not only do you not like going to the DMV, we’ve learned that they hate being there as much as you do, so they share their misery as much as possible.

But Dick’s quote also explains why people become self-destructive.  If they sense that they’re going to fail, well, they’ll toss some gasoline on that fire and get it going now.  The logic becomes simple – I don’t really fail if I control my failure.  Or deprive myself of pleasure.  I know I don’t deserve the money, so I’ll just save it until I die and leave it to my cats.  My ability to defer today’s pleasure becomes . . . a way to punish myself today.

And yet . . . there’s that leading stoic, Seneca:

“Therefore, explain why a wise person shouldn’t get drunk, not with words, but by the facts of its ugliness and offensiveness.  It is easy to prove that pleasures, when they go beyond proper measures, are punishments.”

Could it be that people subconsciously (or consciously!) punish themselves through pleasure as well?  Theoretically, being a philosophical stoic isn’t about avoiding pleasure, it’s about striking that balance.  Seneca himself was very, very, rich, but struggled with whether or not he should be a vegetarian.  Seneca decided not to be a vegetarian – it might have been seen as being pretentiously virtuous, like the vegan who does Crossfit™ and drives a Prius© – what do you tell people first???

vegan club

Absolutely there is virtue in self-control.  Right up until it becomes a vice.  Like lots and lots and lots of drugs.  Lots of drugs.  And maybe Crossfit™.

crossfit

Pencils, Rocks, Attachment Objects and Socialism

“And the first question is for you, Karl Marx.  The Hammers.  The Hammers is the nickname of what English football team?” – Monty Python

shortpencil

I tried writing with a broken pencil once.  It was pointless. 

I have the same pencil since the Clinton administration.  Not just in a junk drawer someplace, but as my daily use pencil at work.  It’s not some yellow No. 2 pencil that I’ve sharpened until it’s a microscopic nub, rather, it’s a blue mechanical pencil, made in Japan.  It’s a Cross® pencil, and has the original eraser but the eraser is so old that it looks more like a green petrified pterodactyl nipple rather than something that belongs in a book bag, and it’s harder than year-old chewing gum and just tears the paper rather than erasing anything.

I’ve used the pencil so much that the paint has worn off the brass and tin metal parts.  It’s been dropped, chipped, and glued back together.  The part that’s supposed to clip it to your pocket is loose and wobbles.

I won the pencil for a speech I gave during a corporate training program, about the time my career took off, so it has some special memories for me.  I never intended to have this pencil forever, it just hung around at first.  And then I noticed it was there on super-awesome days, like when I got divorced, or when I met The Mrs.  And after six or so years, I decided I’d keep it.

I have a pen, too, but it’s really new.  I got it in 2000, so I’ve only had it for 18 years.

Quirky, I know.

I mentioned my pencil to a friend, and she noted that she has rocks.  From places.  She knows where and when she got each one.

She mentioned that when she met her husband, he pointed out a closed box.  It contained the rocks.

Husband to be:  “What’s in that?”

“Oh, you’d better not look in there.”

Now, I believe, they’re in her garden.  She knows where they are, and when she moves?  She’ll crate up her rocks and they’ll go with her.  Obviously, I understand.

A psychologist would call these “attachment objects.”  Given the choice between my beat up, old Cross™ pencil and a brand-new and shiny Cross® pencil?  I’d take my scuffed up ancient pencil any day.  A new one could never replace a pencil I’ve had with me for most of my career.  In my mind it has some sort of property ate differentiates it in some way from every other pencil on Earth.

This pencil is mine.

Another example – I bought a Blackberry® in 2008.  Oh, sure, it was only six years old when I got a new Samsung™ in 2014.  I know, how un-American of me.  You should replace your cell phone weekly.

But I picked it up a few weeks ago.  It felt . . . dead.  It felt alien, inanimate.

I know, it’s not like the Blackberry© was a dancer beforehand, but still it wasn’t the same.

This tendency to place value on inanimate objects is greatest in people and groups that score highest in individuality, and lowest in collectivist-oriented people, so I imagine that Karl Marx went through pencils like nobody’s business.

And Venezuela?  Don’t even get me started.

Perhaps that’s why socialist societies always fail:  all of the means of production eventually become focused on generating replacement pencils?

Medical Advances, Pop Rocks, Agriculture, and Nic Cage

“News team, let’s hunt.” – Anchorman

office and turtle 047
The view from the coffeemaker (story below).  No coffee was injured in the making of this post.

I was talking with a coworker at the coffee machine back when I was working in Houston.  Our offices were in the 45th story of a gleaming skyscraper.  Very futuristic.

“So, Mr. W, what do you think the most important invention was?”  I have no idea why he called me Mr. W, but it’s been a theme – Mr. W.  No idea why.

“Ever?” I asked.  This was the setup.

“Sure.  Most important invention ever.”

“Agriculture.”

I love it when I look into a person’s eyes and literally watch their brain slowly melt from the answer they just got.  That was the case here.  For a full fifteen seconds he didn’t move, blink, or breathe.  I think his brain was rebooting.

After he got past the login screen:  “That’s . . . that’s a good one.”

I had that answer ready because I’d been thinking about just that.  What was the most significant invention in history?  Heck, even the Bible talks about it – the story where Cain (the farmer) killed his brother Abel (the sheep herder)?  It’s potentially an allegorical story about where agricultural civilization replaced the earlier pastoral civilization that’s come down to us over thousands of years.

Or maybe Cain was just a dick.  I kid.  We all know Abel had it coming.

However, agriculture was transformative.  Prior to that, it was hunting, gathering, and herding.  Or starving if you didn’t know how to hunt, gather and herd.

Notice that I didn’t say that agriculture was good for us.  There are plenty of ills that came from agriculture, but it was undoubtedly the most significant transformation that humans have ever encountered, with the possible exception of the invention of Pop-Rocks©.  I heard a kid ate a whole bunch of Pop-Rocks® and then drank a Pepsi™ and his stomach exploded.

pop-rocks-cola-faq

I found this, oddly, at the Pop Rocks© website, where they assure me that their product hasn’t killed anyone recently.  That they know of.  I kid.  Pop Rocks™ has a website to assure you that you are in no danger of a stomach rupture eating their product – it’s here (LINK).

I heard that they experimented with a product called Pope Rocks©, but it was made illegal because it reportedly turned water into wine, which is totes illegal in Utah.

Oh, yeah, I was talking about agriculture.

Agriculture was an important step – it made people stop moving around.  If you planted a crop, you had to stay there and grow it.  And if you stayed there, and had food?  Now you had to defend it.  And you had to have houses.  And you could make pots.  And buy furniture from StoneAgeIKEA®, which was largely abandoned by 3000 B.C. because no one had invented screws or hex wrenches.

Just that one invention changed economics, developed division of labor could exist.  Mankind now had farmers, soldiers, generals, and developed taxation and accountants.

Yeah.  Taxes.

But this didn’t make mankind a bit healthier.  In fact, it made the average person die sooner.  Oh, and when they died?  They had new diseases like arthritis.  And they didn’t grow as tall or as robust as their nomadic ancestors.

Why did we do it?  Dunno.  Women like houses, probably.  And men could brew beer (which happened to show up about the same time as the first agricultural settlements.  That same downfall occurs throughout history – women and beer.

native american

I assure you that you didn’t want to mess with this guy.  And he was probably average.  Not sure that Twinkies®, cars, and air conditioning helped his overall health . . . . and I’m sure that Google® now thinks I want to see pictures of shirtless men.  Oh, the things I do for you, readers.

Let’s face it, not everything that modern medicine has done has helped our health.  Some studies have shown that the nomads and herdsmen, on average, lived longer than the farmers that followed them in history.  Oh, and don’t forget, if you don’t have farms, no need for slaves, right?

But let’s look at medicine more directly:

What actual changes have made life healthier?

  • Well, agriculture has increase the overall amount of nutrition. We wouldn’t be able to feed everyone on Earth if we didn’t have that.
  • Maternal vitamins and nutrition make healthier and smarter babies. That’s good.
  • Sanitation is amazing. Not living in poop somehow makes you healthier.  Who could have imagined that?
  • Cheap food. Hard to be healthy if you’ve starved to death.
  • Pest control. Vermin are also not real healthy to live with.  Plague and all, right?

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  • Clean drinking water is much better than the alternative, but not as good as Scotch, which I guess is another alternative, so clean drinking water is second.
  • Antiseptics are good. Much less Civil War surgery.

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  • Antibiotics are also pretty good. I’m pretty sure that they’ve saved my life more than once.

antibiotic

  • Trauma surgery is now awesome – many things you would have died from 20 years ago are now survivable, from gunshots to car accidents.
  • Vaccinations are, on balance, probably good. Is there proof that they kill people?    More people have died from HPV vaccinations than from HPV.  So, yeah.  But I’ll skip the small pox, thank you.  Oh, they don’t vaccinate for that anymore?

So, what’s not on this list?

  • End of life care. It’s expensive.  And it barely makes life longer.
  • Many cancer treatments are difficult and require hacking and poisoning the sick person. Some really do extend life, for decades even.  (Some don’t do much of anything.)  But none are more important than clean water, exercise, and PEZâ„¢ to human health.
  • Most really expensive diagnostic tech. Sure, some of it is awesome, but I’m not sure an MRI machine is all that awesome.

What societal changes are actually hurting health?

  • Cheap food. Yeah, it’s a paradox.  Starve or be fat.  Sue me.
  • Automatic stuff.   As a whole, we have to do much less work than 20 years ago.  Much, much less than 40 years ago.  And 100 years ago?  Oh, my.  Elevators replaced stairs.  Natural gas replaced firewood.  Cars replaced bikes.  Exercise drops through the floor.
  • Climate controls. I’ve got a theory that if you turned off the air conditioning and the heat in your house you’d actually be healthier.  But this theory will never be tested because I have The Mrs., for whom climate control is a right up there with free speech and free shotguns.  Thankfully she likes it about 60°F in the house all the time, too.
  • What is in Doritos?  40 different ingredients, many of which have never been incorporated into the diet of a human until the last 50 years.  What’s in a steak?  Cow, which we’ve been eating as soon as we developed spears.  Because steak is worth building a spear and chasing a wild, untamed giant auroch through the forest.
  • Lack of genetic culling. I’m not in favor of this as a policy, but it is a fact that the genetic pool is degraded over time when people who would have died out reproduce and pass along defective genes.  Let’s look at me:  I wear glasses, and developed the need about age 20.  I would have made a crappy nomadic warrior, so, unless I was smart, I would be squinting at the horizon while Ugg and Trevor chased the hairless caribou across the frozen tundra of the African veldt.  And no food for my family.  So we died off.  But wait!  This is 2018, and I’ve got lots of kids because I don’t have to squint, but glasses?  Yeah, that’s a thing for half my kids.  Ugg and Trevor had kids with keen eyesight.  Again, not a policy since I like my life and the kids I have, but as we save more people with health issues like my nearsightedness that can be passed along genetically?

Like anything, there are good and bad effects of changing our civilization.  Without agriculture, we never get to the Moon, but we also never get Nicholas Cage movies.  A tradeoff?

nicteroid

Health, Wealth, and Boundaries. Complete with fake IDs.

“We’re out of towels and I’m too old to go diving into lockers.” – Minor League

boundary

It would be nice to have Morgan Freeman narrate your life.  Except for after you did stupid stuff.  Or boring stuff.  Nevermind – skip that.

A number of years ago my boss called me at 11pm.  There had been an incident at work.  As it was a Thursday and I was planning on taking Friday off, The Mrs. and I had already consumed the better part of a bottle of wine.  I decided that I’d go to bed – certainly vacation was off.

In fact, I worked the next 45 days, straight.  I averaged at least 12 hours a day, every day.

During that time, we worked really hard.  Stressful situations daily.  New decisions daily.  But the team met all the goals that were set on that first day, and then some.   We even ended up at budget.  But 540 work hours in 1.5 months is about 225% of a typical work week (40 hours).

I break my time into a triangle:

  1. Work – Ideally, work should server multiple purposes. It should put money in the bank and food on the table.  Another, very real purpose of work is to create value for society.  A well-run business generates wealth for the owner, sure.  But the jobs that it creates can generate wealth for a community.  And most businesses can’t stay in business unless they serve a need in the community.  A power generation plant has to make power to stay in business, but if it operates well and efficiently, it produces power at a low cost, which allows people to have the relative luxury of electricity cheaply, so they can read this blog, or watch Green Acres®.
  2. Family – As a husband and father, taking care of my family is a primary responsibility – it means more than the money from work, it means being there to be dad – both as a bad example of the kind of dad you don’t want to have, as well as teaching children responsibility through situations that force them to figure things out. I mean, what 12 year old shouldn’t know how to make a fake id so he can buy smokes?
  3. Personal Health – If I’m not healthy, I’ll die, and that makes it hard to shower consistently. Also, I won’t be able to lead my family, or work amazingly long hours.  Health may be its own reward, but it also supports the other two legs of the triangle.

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I’d say “bad dog,” but I am out of beer . . . and thanks to practice and parental neglect, Pugsley makes a much better fake ID.

So during this 45 day period, a big stretch of the triangle was possible.  Heck, I was in the best shape I’d been in for at least six years.  Life was good.  I’d focus on work, but put my second focus on family.  Personal health can wait, right?

And during those 45 days, I didn’t exercise like normal.  Also, I don’t eat lunch (I hadn’t since fifth grade) and in those days just worked through lunch.  But we had team meetings (complete with lunch) pretty much every day.  It turns out I can gain 2 pounds a week just by eating lunch more than once.  Yeah.

So, forty five days later, we finished.  And we were exhausted.  And 45 days later?  I entered into yet another work death-march that lasted a year and a half.

Yeah, and that second death-march ended with 45 days straight, too.  And then time required for activities related to The Boy and Pugsley multiplied.  It seems like when the work demands went down, the family demands went up.  And I could safely ignore the health demands, right?

My take on this is that I’ve set my boundaries too far towards work in the past, but the bright side is all the hard work and family stuff seems to be paying off.

But it’s always (a bit) irritated me that Hollywood types get so buff.  I saw Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible 12 (or whatever) this last weekend, and it’s undeniable that the man is in great shape, not only for his age, but for any age.  Cruise was certainly in better shape than he was during his early movies.  He’s seven or eight years older than Simon Pegg, but manages to look ten years younger.  I guess maybe Scientology® might pay off, if you can deal with whole “completely made up” parts.

And Tom Cruise has a luxury that most of us don’t – he has the ability to spend 2,000 learning to fly helicopters so he could do it for this movie, plus countless thousands of hours of training.  I’m lucky to get 250 hours a year to myself for training.  And more power to Cruise!  But most people don’t have that option.  The iron triangle of work-family-health keeps showing up.

In the end that’s part of why I named the blog wilderwealthywise.com – it focuses on that triangle of important things in the average person’s life.  Wealth buys time, and time buys health.  And health . . . buys more time (on Earth).  And with health and time?  One would hope that you can end up with wealth.

And then you could have Morgan Freeman narrate . . . but hopefully not these lines:

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It will all be worth it.  Now, back to the elliptical . . .

Smart people live longer, and they all love Red Dawn.

“Check out the big brain on Brad!” – Pulp Fiction

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Okay, my dog ate my hard drive, so I’m stuck using memes tonight.  Let all of your memes be dank, my friends!  And, yes, that’s Charlie Sheen pretending to be Patrick Swayze’s brother.  Thankfully, no C. Thomas Howell was injured during the writing of this post.

So, there’s a very strong correlation between health and IQ.  It’s even stronger than the correlation between living in California and being forced to have a statue of Karl Marx™ in your front yard.  Really!

The short version is this:  if you’re smarter, you’ll live longer.  And not only will you live longer, but you’ll enjoy your life more.  It’s like winning the lottery twice, though I’m reliably informed that smart people don’t play the lottery – they own the lottery, just like Elon Musk gets a bright new penny every time someone plugs a toaster into the wall.

But the smarter you are?  The longer you’ll live.

Bright people live longer than average people.  Geniuses live longer than bright people.  And people like me?  Maybe I’ll live forever, if the beer holds out.

And the correlation is so very strong, that people actually wrote papers that said that we should increase educational funding.  Why?  To make people smarter.  This is similar to exercising to make yourself blonde, but, hey, there’s lots of government money in stupid ideas.  Justin Bieber® is actually a cyborg made from spare Justin Timberlake© parts and genes from a mutant chicken in a government lab in Kentucky.

But education can’t help ensmarten yourself.

IQ is baked into the baby from the start – the top number is almost all genetics.  Can you mess a baby’s IQ up?  Sure!  If Mom loves Margaritas, well, that’s a good way to bake a few brain cells while the baby is cooking.  Likewise, youthful malnutrition can hurt intellect – but this type of malnutrition isn’t “eating Big Macs® instead of “vegan free range kale,” no, this is starvation-level malnutrition.

Extra study, extra education can’t make you smarter.  You are as smart as you is.  You are as smart as you ever will be.

But there is a limit – once you reach the age of 80?  All the life expectancy logic changes.  The measure then is how much IQ you’ve lost.  If you went from 160 IQ to loving Two and a Half Men, well, your days are numbered.  Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but the truth is if you love Charlie Sheen you’re halfway to dementia.  Except it’s okay for you to like Red Dawn.  Which is just awesome.

WOLVERINES!

There’s another limit.  If you’re one of the 100,000 to 140,000 people on Earth with an IQ of 163 or more?  Yeah, that’s the limit.  More IQ than 163 won’t help you live any longer, so thankfully Bill Gates won’t be around in the year 2573.  But I’ve heard his clones will, so there’s that.

So what else do the statistics say about being smart and your likelihood of death?

If you’re smart, your mortality against cancer is better, but only if that cancer is from smoking.  All other cancers are the same between normies and eggheads.  What about suicide?  Yeah, smarter people do that a bit more often.

But high IQ people take MUCH less sick leave than lower IQ folks.  (Coincidentally, I haven’t taken a sick day since 2002, and that day was because I was shot while saving Emilia Earhart from being cooked and eaten by Kevin Spacey.)

But let’s look at how being smart impacts health.  If you’re smart, you have a:

  • Lower risk of heart disease.
  • Lower level of obesity.
  • Lower blood pressure.
  • Lower risk of post-traumatic stress disorder, and this was correlated to people who had stressful events in their life, like being forced to watch a movie starring Amy Schumer.
  • Lower risk of stroke.
  • Lower risk of schizophrenia.
  • Lower risk of schizophrenia.
  • Hey, I said that first.
  • No you didn’t.
  • Yes I did.
  • Lower chance of being bipolar, which I think refers to having houses at the North Pole and the South Pole. But not being a bear.  Or belonging to a homeowner’s association.

Oddly, if you have a high IQ?  Your risk of skin cancer goes up.  I have my theories there, but they mainly relate to our naked smart people sunbathing parties global warming.

Downsides of being smart?  You drink more.  Sometimes a lot more.  Oh, wait, that was a downside?

Also?  You smoke a LOT more weed.  Which makes me think that you’d be ready for some dank memes.  What are they, really?

Dunno.  But the fifth image for “dank meme” on my Google® search led me to this:

DANKMEME

What is health? My definition. Bonus topics: Indiana Jones. Snakes. Super Glue.

“It’s not the years, honey, it’s the mileage . . .” – Raiders of the Lost Ark

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If only I could find a temple to raid, then I could pay for insurance . . .

Okay, this is listed as part I.  I don’t have a part II planned, really, but I sometimes think we look at health in a really messed up way so I’m sure at some point I’ll have another post, or I’ll forget about this one and do it again.  Guess I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing Super-Glue®.

First, what is health?  I did some thinking about it (it was in the morning, and I’m not sure I had enough caffeine for this function) but I came up with my own definition.  Enjoy!

  • Physically able to do stuff you want to do.
  • Mentally able to do stuff you want to do.
  • Not in constant or unreasonable pain.
  • The body is (generally) working the way it’s supposed to.
  • Stuff that should stay in, stays in. Stuff that should stay out, stays out.
  • Not missing critical bits and pieces.
  • The bits that are left, generally work pretty well.
  • No bits are ready to fail right away (that you know of).
  • Absence of current system disruption (you don’t have a cold or the flu).

I think this is a very different definition from the rest of the world.  I’ll argue that this definition makes a lot of sense if the goal is happy people.  If I want to go run, and I can do it, and am not suffering from some sort of stress thing that makes me think that if I go running that the kimono-clad ghost of Tom Petty will chase me around with a butcher knife, well, I’m healthy enough to run.

And I am healthy enough to run.  Once per week.  Maybe.  My knees, after a lifetime of football, wrestling, and running from booby traps while pilfering South American treasure are, well, shot and will hurt like Bernie Sanders trying to explain how a socialist mayor is a multimillionaire.  And I like running.  So, I guess when it comes to running, I’m not exactly healthy.

indianajones

My hair.  Where did it go?  Oh, my back, and my ears.  So I’m missing some bits, but unless it’s sunny outside, well, I’m okay – these aren’t critical bits.

So, if I had a sudden heart attack tomorrow and died, am I healthy today?  Surprisingly, by my definition, I am totally healthy.  Nothing in my definition of health implies indefinite or infinite life.  Nor should it.

Tonight, The Boy dropped a glass cup on the floor of the kitchen.  It shattered, since we live in a reality where glass doesn’t bounce.

Twenty minutes later?  The Mrs. walked into the kitchen and stepped completely on a shard (not a shart, which was my original typo) of glass.  Immediately blood poured from her heel like money from Elon Musk’s Tesla® factory.  Yeah, it was a lot of blood.  I mean a lot.  I immediately asked The Boy to wipe that up so the dogs didn’t get into it.   Even though the dogs are small enough that you could stomp them if they went crazy, I have a strict policy of NOT teaching the dogs to like the taste of human flesh.

So, The Mrs.’ inside bits became outside bits.  Healthy?  Sure.  I think.  The Mrs. claims she has a tetanus shot that’s recent enough to keep her alive, so I’ll go with that.  But the line that I said to The Boy and Pugsley that is worth repeating is this:  “You’re Mom’s going to die!  I mean, not tonight, but sometime.”

And that’s normal.  Death is normal.

A lot of the current focus of medicine is on saving life.  Duh.  But a huge amount of the money is spent on the last year and last month of life.  When life sucks.  If the outrageous spending on the last month of life, when let’s face it, you have much worse problems than a shard (shart) of glass in your heel, well, is that money well spent?

Not by my definition.  Literally, not by my definition above.

Hey, I’m not trying to stop you from spending whatever money you want on whatever you want.  If you want to spend $400,000 for a 50% probability of living another two months stuck in a hospital bed at 147 years old?  Sure!  Go for it.

But that’s not how it works.  Virtually no one spends their own money on health care when they’re in the last year of their life – this money is coming from Medicare®.  And Medicare™ money?  It comes from you.  And me.  I’m not happy about public radio, let alone public funding of health care, but it’s a real thing, so how do we make it suck less than it does now?  (Not the radio, the health care.)

I’d much rather spend that money on making life better for people who are Kinda™ Healthy®.  People who are in otherwise pretty good shape.  I’m also entirely against euthanasia.  It’s murder.  Make whatever argument you want – but when you turn doctors and hospitals into consciously life-ending organizations?  Yeah, you’re not on the side of the angels.  “OMG – this baby has NO chance of making it into Harvard™!  Better end it all now.”

Part of the problem of healthcare today is that we’ve disconnected virtuous actions with reward.  Sure, they can charge you more money for insurance if you’re a smoker, but the current system allows anyone to skip out on paying for insurance, and then only purchasing it after they get sick.  That’s not insurance – it’s a con job.

That’s not insurance, that’s a cheat.  And it irritates me.  I’ve been paying for insurance for myself (either directly or as part of a job) since I was 22 or so – hundreds of thousands of dollars into a system that we’ve pulled very little out of.  Heck, I haven’t been to a doctor since 2012 (being healthy) and I just needed some antibiotics at that point.  Allowing people to be non-virtuous (be a freeloader until sick) breaks the system.

My brother, Other John Wilder, told me a story (a LONNNNNG time ago) about a wife and mother who was without insurance.  She got cancer.  She didn’t have insurance.  The doctors wouldn’t do anything to help her.  She died.

A tragedy?  Sure.  And I’m sorry for her.

Plan better.  Really.  If the taxpayer (or, worse yet, insurance payers like me) bails out every sad story?  Yeah, the insurance costs will explode.  Like they have.

What else ails our system?

Litigation.  I think our system would be much better if we removed judicial and jury decisions and replaced it with trial by combat to the death.  With the attorneys involved being the combatants.  It might not be a fair decision, but it would be awesome television.

grail knight

Sir Habeas Corpus, Attorney at Arms™.  Okay, Attorney at Arms™ might be a really cool idea for a short story or a book series.  I hereby trademark thee!

Insurance is really a problem.  It requires a ton of codes, and billing staff, and it’s a risk (if you’re a doctor or a patient) if you’re going to get the money.  I was reading on the Internet about the Surgery Center of Oklahoma®.  No insurance.  They don’t take it.  Cash only.  And if you don’t have cash, don’t show up – they won’t treat you.  Their costs for surgery are often less than the copay for insurance or Medicare™.

Don’t believe me?  Go to their website and check it out (LINK).  It would be nice where . . . you could just avoid insurance and government altogether . . . .

But insurance isn’t cheap – Obamacare© has resulted in (or occurred at the same time as) huge cost increases in premiums for insurance that only covers injuries resulting from meteorite strikes on alternate Tuesdays and pregnancy services for men.

And hospitals mark stuff up.  Here is a bill of a guy who got bit by a rattlesnake.  Note the cost for “Pharmacy” – this is almost all anti-venom.  Costs $200 a vial in Mexico.  Let’s say this guy had to have 20 vials.  That’s $4,000.

snakebite

Snakes.  Did it have to be snakes?

Yeah.  They marked the stuff up 20 times.  If you or I did that?  They’d avoid a trial and just execute us.  But for lifesaving drugs that you have no choice but to take, like anti-venom or insulin?  The hospitals look to remove your wallet through your throat, like they did with Pugsley’s stitches.

Yeah, he was camping with the Organization Formerly Known as Boy Scouts.  He had his knife out, and was whittling a piece of wood.  No, his finger.  The Mrs. took him to the emergency room.  Three stiches.  $4,000.

Yeah.  If it would have been up to me?  I’d have Super-Glued® it shut and we’d have solved the whole problem for $1.42.

Super-Glue®.  Can it save American health care?  Only one way to find out . . . .

Why the media is driving you crazy (with all the Tom Cruise and Tommy Chong you can eat, but only in Wisconsin)

“You rang?” – The Addams Family

tom cruise2

You can see Hollywood® height in action here.  In reality, Tom Cruise is only four inches (like 10 centimeters) tall!  He’s a pocket celebrity!

One criticism I have of the media is that it sets an expectation of the way the world should be.  The media does this in a silly way:  single girls in New York City own 3,000 square foot apartments and work as flunkies at the local ad agency as the wacky receptionist.  The media indicates that Tom Cruise is 6’2” (37 meters) tall, even though we have pictures to prove that Tom Cruise fits as carry-on luggage in a 737.

tomcruise

So, Tom Cruise is shorter than the average height of a 3rd grade girls’ basketball team.  Doesn’t matter, they haven’t carded him since 2015!

The biggest bias, however is that of the news writers, Internet publishers and national broadcasters.  Every piece of news is advocacy.  How can I justify this bold statement?  Besides the incredible mixture of Pinot Noir and steroids flowing through my veins, only awaiting the caffeine as the activator chemical, I offer this bit of evidence:

When The Mrs. was involved in news broadcasting, she selected the stories that would be covered in the broadcast.  And, since The Mrs. didn’t like the NBA®, NBA™ news never made it to the broadcast.  Never.  Michael Jordan might have had LeBron James’ love child in a Swiss robot factory with Larry Bird as the godfather and she wouldn’t have broadcast it.  Instead?  The Mrs. inserted stories about a sport she did like, NHL™ hockey, even though there wasn’t a professional hockey team within a ten hour drive from where the broadcasts originated, and ice had to be imported from Utah, which, strangely forbade that the ice be properly mixed with bourbon.

Even though the stories themselves were without bias, the selection of the stories wasn’t.  Although the topic The Mrs. didn’t wish to cover was (and is) exceedingly trivial, it sank home with me:  the gatekeepers choose the stories and the narratives.  The gatekeepers do so with the express purpose of furthering their viewpoint and silencing dissenting evidence.  And even though much of the news today has a significant bias in straight news reporting, it’s the stories that you never hear that also contribute to that bias.

How bad is the bias?  Only 7% of journalists are Republican.  You can simply view election night footage from the 2016 presidential election to verify that.  And, I think much of the street-level misbehavior in recent days has been a reaction to the increasingly polarized news.  Much of the news media we used to consume in the past was locally sourced and sustainable and gluten-free.  It was the town newspaper, which could be had in most small towns and was run by the local boy who decided that ink was in his veins and he wanted to put a daily out to the locals.  Heck, even a hamlet of 1100 people had a newspaper that had an 80 year history in my memory.  It was a small paper, but everyone got it.

The values that the local newspaper editor/publisher/journalist/typesetter put in the paper mirrored the local values for over 200 years.  These values were always tempered and supplemented with news from outside the small town – the town didn’t exist in a vacuum.

Now many of those papers have vanished, and others have long since stopped being the local source for in-depth news.  You read the local paper to figure out who won the softball game, and which kid was on (or not on) the honor roll.

What’s replaced it?  Television and news via the internet.

Where does television come from?  New York and Los Angeles are the two big metropolitan areas that are the headquarters for the major broadcasters.  And the internet?  It’s got San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and Seattle as the hubs for the major news operations.  None of the major locations that now serve the majority of news to Americans is on the right – each of these cities is exceptionally far left.  I know it doesn’t seem that way to those of you that live there, but, good heavens, those governments have more regulations than the old Soviet Union (even though I just made that fact up, I’m pretty sure it’s true – I heard that Stalin® was arrested in Seattle for trying to open a lemonade stand – too capitalist.  Plus Stalin™ couldn’t prove the lemons were free range, vegan, locally sourced, and carbon neutral.  He claimed Lenin© ate that paperwork.  Stupid Lenin®.

And thus, when Donald Trump was elected president, through the process as outlined in the Constitution and followed since George Washington was drinking brandy by the fire at Mt. Vernon with the Hooters® girls, calls immediately came to “restore our democracy.”  People took to the streets to protest a president before he had been inaugurated – and immediate calls for his impeachment went out.

Why?

The left had been living in a lie, sort of like the mirror the Kardashians® keep on their wall.  In this world, Donald Trump is a monster – all of their media, all of their news told them so (just like they said the same things about George W. Bush™, who is now totes okay).  Trump was not a political opponent with a set of positions that were backed by millions and millions of decent, smart, hardworking Americans.  No.  He was an evil villain who wants to eat children and send them to his hellish pits under the Earth to mine for Trumpenite, a substance known to cause really unusual hair.  However, per my last count, he has eaten no children, nor put any into concentration camps (despite what the media might say, and they told me the Arctic would be ice free by 2014, so, you know, my trust level is low).

But no one who reads this will be able to do a thing about it until November, 2020.

The media frenzy against all things Trump, the bias, has whipped millions of normally sane people into a rabid frenzy to the point that they defend Haiti as a great place to send their toddlers out to play in the streets, point out that MS-13 murderers are probably great neighbors as long as they don’t move to the suburbs, and come to the conclusion that Kim Jong-Un either is awesome or such an evil genius that he blew up his own nuclear facility just to prove that he didn’t need nuclear weapons to have nuclear weapons.  Or something.

And this is the point of this blog – the inability to deal with reality is just . . . unhealthy.

Take a deep breath, if you’re on the left.  Step back.  Trump has done something you like.   Admit it.  It’s out there.

It’s also a paradox – standards and expectations are necessary for excellence in anything.  There must be a burning desire to turn “what is” into “what could be.”  But when that same desire is thwarted because no reasonable action will make any difference, the matter is beyond your control.  This leads to the profound sense of helpless misery that many on the left are feeling about the election (that happened in 2016!) – and that many on the right are feeling about, say, Robert Mueller®, who starred in the 1960’s comedy series The Addams Family as Lurch©, the butler.

mueller

Is it just me, but shouldn’t he say this every single time he testifies at Congress?

And not one person who reads this can do anything about Mueller, either.

And not one person who this who is in a frenzy about either Trump or Mueller is at all healthy.

I’ve written about this before in The Coming Civil War (United States), Cool Maps, and Uncomfortable Truths and I think it’s tearing us apart even faster than I had originally thought.  I try not to take sides, but the left has really inflamed this situation to a point of incivility worse than any episode I’ve ever seen of The Big Bang Theory (spoiler, I only saw one, and it was awful).

All of this brings me back to The Mrs.:  If I come home and have the expectation that she’s arranged my PEZ® dispensers into the outline of the Danish coastline like I asked her to do, and find out she hasn’t, I have four choices:

  • Get as angry as a liberal restaurant owner at Sarah Huckabee Sanders, or
  • Appoint a special counsel to investigate her, or
  • Riot in the streets that Denmark is really a part of Germany, and should be open to all Germans, or
  • Don’t care and do it myself.

I assure you that I’m a last bullet point kind of guy.  Earlier in my life, I might have had higher expectations, but then I realized – if The Mrs. has a hot meal ready for me when I get home, I should be grateful.  I should say thanks.  If she doesn’t, I know where the fridge is, and there’s probably a good reason we don’t have dinner ready.  Or not.  If I let myself get as twisted as Bill Clinton’s lingerie collection, well, I’ll be unhappy AND hungry AND have thong marks on my butt until they bury me in 40 years or so.

So, I don’t have that expectation.  I have the expectations that The Mrs. is faithful, holds our family relationship as at least her number two priority in life (there has to be room for a higher entity, and I don’t mean Tommy Chong), and that The Mrs. flushes the toilet so I can pretend The Mrs. doesn’t poop.  The Mrs. meets those criteria, so everything else is groovy.

chong

I loved these Cheech and Chong when I was a kid.  As I understand it Tommy Chong’s toenail clippings are considered a controlled substance in every state except Wisconsin.

One amazingly significant source of frustrations for people is looking and the world, and seeing it as . . . wrong.  If there’s a solution or something you can do to change it, then work to change it.  If there’s nothing you can do to change it, it just is a fact.  So, relax.  Breathe deep.  You can make it.  And remember to vote on the first Wednesday in November of 2020!

THIS IS NOT POLITICAL, HEALTH, OR VOTING INFORMATION.  Seriously.  How could you think that?

CPAP – Three Week Review, Plus Chainsaw Hands. Because Everyone Wants Chainsaw Hands.

“I heard Sutler’s going to make a public statement tonight . . . It’s nearly time.  The masks were ingenious.  It was strange to suddenly see your face everywhere.” – V for Vendetta

guymask

Oh, my, this is sexy!  It’s either a Halloween costume or . . . a CPAP mask.  I wish my CPAP mask was this cool.  Then I could take over Britain.  But I guess I’d have to get in line . . .   Photo credit – somewhere on the internet.

Okay, I promise I won’t keep going on and on about the Continuous Positive Air Pressure (CPAP) breathing device – this is just a three week (and likely final) review of the device unless something significant comes up.  My first post on this is here (Sleep Apnea, CPAP, and how the Medical Mafia is Killing You).

First comment:

The name.  CPAP.  I just sounds . . . icky.   I think it might be the “pap” part.  “Pap” is defined as a soft food for infants, a “Pap” smear is a woman’s parts test that I don’t want to even know about, “pap” is also defined as “nonsense,” and “pap” is also South African slang for “spineless and without character.”

No, a really bad name.  I, John Wilder, suggest that in its place we call it “life-giving energy machine.”  Heck, even something more specific like “Sleep Suffocation Harm Reduction And Care” is better, and has a much cooler acronym – SSHARC.  Shark.  That sounds cool, like something you could tattoo on your bicep (ladies, you could just put the SSHARC . . . nowhere – iffin’ you’re a lady, you don’t get a tat).    And it’s true:  untreated sleep apnea can cause a host of problems like arrhythmia (which leads to stroke), heart failure, diabetes, and that little rash under your wristwatch band if you wear it all the time.

Next:  The machine is quiet.  I half expected it to sound like Darth Vader was on my bedside table, but it was not at all loud – I think the dwarves (Tolkien dwarves from the underworld, not little people) we keep in the closet make a lot more noise, especially when they nip into the mead.  I can’t even hear it at all unless I open my mouth.  To sleep with a CPAP, you have to have your mouth closed.  Totally closed.  The air pressure is jammed into your nose, so that when you inhale, your throat can’t close up (which makes the snoring sound).  When I open my mouth with the CPAP on, I get the (really weird) feeling of exhaling through my mouth without moving my lungs.  Weird.  It also makes a “whooshing” sound, like the end of Quentin Tarantino’s career.

I slept through the night the first time I used my CPAP.  No issues.  I’ve checked the readings, and the number of sleep apneas I’m having is now . . . zero.  And the number of times I breathe shallowly during the night (hypopnea) is one or two.  This is considered super-human.  So that means I’m a man-machine now?  Maybe.  I can crush cans with my machine hands.  Oh, wait, they’re regular hands – and the cans are aluminum, so they’re easy to crush.  Maybe my doctor will prescribe chainsaw hands?  Yeah.

chansawhands

If we all had chainsaw hands, then almost 18,000 chainsaw injuries to the hands could have been stopped in 1994!  Call your congressman NOW to demand that all hands be replaced with chainsaws today.  And that we develop time machines so people in 1994 can be saved from chainsaw related head trauma. 

For those that SSHARC (or, CPAP, if you must) has helped, it becomes a near-obsession.  Most fanatics won’t go a single night without CPAP – or even a single nap.  I have noticed that my daytime drowsiness level continues to drop.  That’s very nice for me and anyone else on the highway as I drive.  As the old saying goes, “I want to die in my sleep, like grandpa; not screaming like the passengers in his car.”

There are listed side effects:  allergies and sinus impacts that seem to bother some people.  So far, not me.  My eyes are much puffier, which the folks put down to an insufficiently tight mask blowing air into my eyes at night, but I also think that there might be something to do with a radically different blood chemistry (less CO2) and less stress hormones from not choking yourself (so to speak) every night.  This has been the most significant side effect I’ve seen personally, but it’s fairly common according to Google®.  More severe side effects appear to be edema (fluid retention) in folks that aren’t having any sort of problems that would normally cause fluid retention.  That’s more difficult to deal with, since  (according to the message boards) doctors seem to think that edema would be some sort of witchcraft that can only be fought with sacrifice of a virgin – and California doctors seem to be all out.

Per the studies I could find, the minimum amount of therapy required for significant death reduction is 5 of 7 nights, 4 hours nightly, which seems low to me.  But, hey, I didn’t take the data.  However, the message board people (again) wouldn’t fly in an airplane and sleep without using their CPAP.

About 54% of users stick with CPAP after being prescribed.  15% give up after an average of 10 months of trying, and 31% . . . never started.  These percentages are nice, because they add up to 100%, so you know they must be accurate.  I just wonder how many of the 31% never start because of the stupid name.  CPAP.  Ugh.

I’ve found the following personal benefits – I’ve got more energy during workouts – a lot more.  I can exercise harder and for longer duration, about 40% more.  I’ve also got a “more full feeling” (less desire to eat), which I hear is a benefit of not getting choked every night.  I tried to replicate these findings, but The Mrs. seemed to object with me randomly choking her for two minutes 10 or so times an hour.  She’s so closed minded!  This is ¡Science!  How dare The Mrs. oppose ¡Science! by not letting me choke her ten times an hour?

And, obviously, since I’m getting better sleep, I’m not as sleepy during the day.  Since nobody is choking me.  Except The Mrs. in some weird retaliation.  I mean, she’s not even writing down the results, so her choking me isn’t science, right?

The weirdest side effect?  My dreams have been much more vivid.  And not always good.  I rarely have nightmares, but I’ve had several since starting CPAP.  And these aren’t your normal nightmares – these are nightmares that make Silence of the Lambs look like a Pixar® movie.  I mean, there were both Kardashians and Madonna® in that dream.  Ugh.  I still feel like I need to take a shower.

My only theory is that previously my sleep would have been disrupted and I would have woken up.  I’ve always had the ability to alter my dreams when they got too weird, and I still can, but in order for me to alter the dream, I have to realize I’m dreaming – and these dreams are so very vivid that on several occasions in that “drowsy-waking up” time, I’ve been convinced these dreams were real.  So, I’m either sleeping better or I’ve got a “back order” of vivid, crappy dreams I have to have to catch up with everybody else on planet Earth.  You poor, poor, people.

Regardless, I’m going to experiment a bit – maybe try a night without the CPAP SSHARC to see how that goes . . . I’ve been 100% compliant for the past three weeks, and maybe, just maybe, I’m feeling a bit naughty.

Call me a rebel.  A SSHARC rebel.  Yeah.  But no SSHARC tattoos for me.  They’ll just get droopy and look like bad cartoons when I go into the old folks home.

Note:  I AM NOT A DOCTOR!  This blog is just my strange, odd, and personal experience:  don’t do any of this nonsense without talking to your doctor.  Really.  I’m not a good role model.  I’m what the warning label said NOT to do.  Except ladies, don’t get a tat.  Really.  Ugh.

Purpose, Retirement, and Life. Spoiler: You need a purpose.

“We’re the middle children of history, man.  No purpose or place.  We have no Great War.  No Great Depression.  Our Great War’s a spiritual war.” – Fight Club

Retirement-pencil

I love Demotivators.  You should buy a calendar a year from them.  Or more, if you have more than one year each year.   

Men must have a purpose.  If they don’t have one, they’ll either find one, or die.

During the vast majority of my career I’ve been a supervisor of between one (which is the minimum you can be a supervisor of, unless you have multiple personalities) and 200 people (they worked for the eight or so people working for me, so I was like a great-grand boss).

I’ve seen all sorts of weird things – an employee on day one had his company laptop stolen out of his hotel room in New Jersey and then got punched in the face at his apartment building the next day and showed up to work with two horrible black eyes (this story is true).  I worried he would be an awful employee – bad luck often seems to follow some people around, but he turned out just to be unlucky that week – the rest of his career has been pretty good.

I’ve seen employees quit for no real good reason, I’ve seen them quit for very good reasons.  I’ve (unfortunately) been in the position of forcing an employee out (i.e., letting them know that the hammer is coming down so they’d better find something soon) and I’ve had to fire people.  Firing is the roughest, but it also helps the employee find a place that they can be that will help them – most of the times, they’re just not a fit for the job.  One employee developed diabetes and ulcers while working for me.  The job wasn’t high pressure, but the employee just wasn’t cut out for it.  Or, maybe I’m an amazing jerk.  Nah, it must be he wasn’t cut out for it.

Sometimes the happiest occasion is when an employee retires.

fozzie bear

Not that I want them to retire, especially if they’re good at what they do and fun to be around.  But after 45 or 50 years, it’s nice for them to be able to spend the next few months before they die doing whatever they want to.  I kid!  But how many people retire and then die within a few months?  Far too many, and I think I know why.

I was fortunate enough to be a supervisor to two employees that retired on the same day, Kermit and Fozzie.  Kermit and Fozzie had worked together for decades.  They had vacationed together.  They lunched together.  I think they even shared shoes and toenail clippers.  It was only fitting that they retire on the same day.

Fozzie was ready to retire.  Really ready to retire.  He had plans.  He had a big RV, plans for fishing and grandkids.  He had bought a house about 100 miles away and sold the one near to town.  He’d calculated his retirement down to the penny – and figured out how to maximize every benefit he could think of.  And he was done.

About six minutes after we cut the retirement cake, he was gone.  The last time I heard from him was as he walked out the door at his retirement party, essentially telling us if we ran into any problems and needed his help, he’d be available approximately never.  His last act was to place a huge poster on his office door specifically mocking in a humorous way about a dozen employees that he found fault with.  (Thankfully I wasn’t on the poster.)

Fozzie was done.

In truth, he was probably done two or three years earlier, but he had waited for Kermit.

kermitretire

Kermit had a house that he had bought that was closer to 200 miles away.  But Kermit didn’t have plans.  He rarely saw his grandkids, and his hobby, his passion was really work.

Both Kermit and Fozzie had a great amount of technical knowledge – and I promised either of them that they could get an hourly consulting contract to assist teaching the 24 year old kids that were replacing them.  Fozzie told me in rather distinct medical terminology exactly where I could put that contract.  Again, nothing personal.  Fozzie was done.

Kermit?  Three months later Kermit was in the office at least 20 hours a week.  I rarely tasked him with anything specific – I mainly had him help and teach the younger employees (which I think he loved).  I’m not in that position anymore with that company, but Kermit is still coming in every week.

Why does Kermit keep coming in?

It’s his purpose.  If he wasn’t at work, he wouldn’t have a purpose.  That’s not an indictment of Kermit – he’s a heck of a guy.  He simply understands (or maybe feels) that he has the ability to keep going and to keep adding value in the workplace.  And he’s got nothing in his life outside of work that makes him that happy.

Kermit would do it for free if he wasn’t being paid.  I actually think there are some months he didn’t bill the company – and I recall having to nag him about turning a bill in at all.

I’m certain that if Kermit wasn’t coming in?  He’d die.  It’s who he is.

Men must have a purpose.  If they don’t have one, they’ll either find one, or die.

What’s your purpose?

catpurpose

 

 

Possibility, Your Choices, McDonalds, and Your Responsibility . . . (and too many “Your Mom” Jokes)

“And in Paris, you can buy a beer at McDonald’s.  And you know what they call a Quarter-Pounder with Cheese in Paris?” – Pulp Fiction

DSC02743

This is a picture of the McDonald®’s shoe car, circa George W. Bush’s presidency.  Notice the French fries dangling from the rear view mirror.  Must be some sort of talisman that makes him attract your mom.

There is a brief moment at your birth, when every single possibility of who you will be, and what you can achieve is open to you.  If your genetics support it, you can do it.  You will never have more possibilities open to you than at that moment.  And, over time – slowly at first – those possibilities narrow.  Your life is a funnel, and the wide open end is the possibilities that you have on day one.  Eventually, that funnel narrows.  You make decisions that cut off possibilities – you decide to dedicate yourself to a single sport rather than trying to letter in three.  Possibilities disappear.  You decide to go to college rather than open a business.  Possibilities disappear.

Possibilities never reappear.  They were always there.  You can’t conjure them out of nothing, but you can fulfill them.

Your life consists of two things:  the choices you make (which determine the possibilities that you have) and time.  And your choices even determine how much time you have.  Choose wrong?  You lose a few options.  Want to shoot up heroin?  Chances are poor that you’ll live very long, unless you’re Keith Richards – honestly, I imagine that if you could isolate how to kill him you could make cockroaches AND mosquitos extinct with a single drop of that stuff.

But your life consists of your choices.

kaepernick

Some good choices, some bad choices . . .

Ray Kroc was the guy who got involved with a little restaurant in 1952.  He helped franchise it.  Kroc built it into a brand we all know today – his vision drove the entire process.  Ray Kroc is the single person most responsible for McDonalds™.  He created, single-handedly, the concept of a clean hamburger place where you could get a decent meal inexpensively and wouldn’t be afraid that bikers or rowdy teenagers would cause a scene in front of your family.  Sure, a dollar burger isn’t five star French cooking, but it’s a dollar burger in a clean restaurant with a clean parking lot.

What Ray was doing at the time he got involved with McDonalds® was selling milkshake mixers to the McDonald brothers (who owned the restaurant).  He looked at the hamburger shop and saw it had great possibilities.  He went to work with the McDonald brothers (named Ronald, Bono, and Sting), and eventually bought the brothers out.  Oh, and in 1954 when Kroc started with them?  Yeah.  He was 52.

He was a FIFTY TWO year old milkshake machine salesman, and let’s be real – nobody puts that as their career ambition under their senior picture in the annual.  And Kroc was trying to sell a dying brand of milkshake machines.  Like your mother, his machines weren’t very popular, and unlike your mother, they were expensive.

He didn’t create a single new possibility when he made the jump from being a travelling salesman – that possibility was always within him.

Ray made the choice.  He was going to do more, and be more than a washed-up 52 year old milkshake salesman waiting to collect social security.  Why didn’t he do it before?  Don’t know.  Maybe in 1954 he just got up feeling like he had nothing left to lose – at 52 you know you’ve got more weeks behind you than in front of you, and maybe he sensed he had to make something go.

I know that many people like to put the cause of their situation in life and give up.  And it’s easy to blame everyone around you.  It’s easy to blame society, or your mother (let’s face it, we all blame your mother) or genetics.

Sure, it’s pretty unlikely that Ray could have been competition for Elvis in 1952 – Ray was too old.  Likewise, his shot at pitching for the Yankees® was finished.  He was past his prime – he would have had to start much earlier, rather than, you know, fight in World War I.

Those possibilities were closed down for him – but the reservoir of possibility was still open for him to lead a restaurant franchise system that’s served billions of meals and created an entire industry – without McDonalds® there wouldn’t be a Burger King™ or a Wendy’s©.  And if he hadn’t created that industry, there’d be no place for your mom to work.

Kroc eventually bought the San Diego Padres®, so there’s an argument that not all of his ideas were great, although he bought that team (when he was 70) for $12 million dollars, roughly as much as a current Major League® ballboy makes per inning.  As of today, that team is probably worth about a billion dollars.

So, I guess even that was a good deal.  True story:  when he told his wife he bought the San Diego Padres™ she asked, “What, is that a monastery?”

Friday is the day for health posts, so why am I posting about choices and Ray Kroc?

You are where you are today, almost entirely due to the choices you’ve made in your life.  If you feel that your situation is beyond your control, and blame everything else besides you, you’re done.  And those are a horrible people to hang around with – always whining and complaining about how the world is out to get them and the deck is stacked so they cannot win.

People who believe that the world outside controls them and their ability for success have what’s called by nerdy psychologists an “external locus of control” – and that’s not a good thing.  People who feel that way are stressed out all the time, and it shows in the results:  people who an internal locus of control believe the ball is in their hands.  The have better jobs that pay more.

Perhaps, oh, just perhaps, people who think that their output matter – work harder, and get better results.

So, short version?  Get your big boy pants on (or big girl panties on) and understand that your life is what you make of it.  The crappy time that you’re having at work isn’t because people are out to get you.  Unless your last name is Kennedy.  Then?  Yeah, maybe.

mommcdonald