Go ahead and try me - tell me what you REALLY think of this post!

So…back on January 4^th, I wrote about the 3 topics I wanted to cover here that I was going to remember based on the letters S, O and T which was a great idea in concept though at the time, I forgot what the O was for. And I wrote about the S, which stood for Strategy, but that post was a total disaster.

And here we are a week later and I remember what the O was for now – Opinion (I think) - but forget the T. I think it had something to do with my niece’s husband, whose name contains no Ts. So I have that to work through.

Fascinating, eh? And of great concern to you all, I’m sure.

So…Opinions. Here’s my take, and interestingly, I’ve seen quite a few Facebook posts to this same general concept in this new year, including one on a Quakers page (as opposed to a Quaker’s page. This one is directed at Quakers).

I’ve been thinking a lot about why people, and by “people”, I probably mean me, so I’ll just go first person from here out, get so easily offended when people…and this time I don’t mean me…either have a different opinion than I do or say something about me that offends me.

And as often happens when I actually take the time to write these things down, they seem way more obvious now than when I formulated the thought, but in the Seriously? It took me 59+ years to figure this out? category, I realized that for every opinion, there is a dissenting opinion.

If everyone had the same opinion, it wouldn’t be an opinion, it would be a fact.

So, if one starts with that…opinion…fact (!), then why should it ever upset any of us, I mean me, that someone has a different idea than mine?  Certainly sometimes it’s because we believe it so strongly, that we want others to feel the same way, and our frustration isn’t with them as much as it might be with ourselves for our inability to convince them. Or maybe, to us, it is a sign of why the world isn’t a better place. And of course, in those circumstances, the first thought that comes to mind is politics.

But it might also apply to when we are trying to make an important decision with our relationship partner, when they want to go with the blue window treatment and I, I mean she (!), might want Phillies season tickets.

So, also somewhat of a New Year’s Resolution for me is to value our humanness. To allow other people to think differently than I do, to drive differently, to vote differently, to like different seasons of the year and to get the damn blue window treatment.

And of course, the whole thing extends past opinions to that same issue of humanness to include personalities. Why does a particularly outrageous or sullen or goofy or serious person put us off? Instead of allowing myself to be put off by what I don’t seem to enjoy in a person, I will try to look for what Cheryl might call The Connection. What is it about that person that I do like, that I do enjoy, accepting that there are, not flaws, but differences, that needn’t be more dividing than that which brings me pleasure about that person?

And from a Quaker perspective, George Fox’s phrase, “Walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone” does a nice job of summarizing it, though I might substitute the word “seeking” for “answering”.

The tougher challenge comes when someone says something seemingly judgmental about me or my tastes or about people I love. If someone were to visit my house and say “Gawd – how could you live in this weird place? And what was your father thinking with all these windows? Was he some kind of perverted exhibitionist (wow – multiple judgments in one sentence!) ?!”

Or if they were to say something mean about any of my 4 or 5 or 6 kids (give or take an Iraqi or 2), or about Cheryl!? Would I be able to find God in them when they say such things?  

I look forward to the challenge…not that anyone ever could find something negative to say about any of them obviously. Or maybe that’s the key – I’ll just assume they couldn’t possibly mean it, and I’ll laugh.

I’ll try to post some examples in the coming weeks to let you, and history, know how I’m doing.

 

Filling your blog brain shopping cart with News Items aplenty

I'm often torn as to whether to post certain things to Facebook or here. Maybe a handful of people will see them here, but a hundred or more will see them on FB. But is that the goal - to have people see these? As I say over and over - it's all about validation, babee - the secret to life and motivation.

(Or is that one of the dozens of posts that I always plan to write about here? I even have a written list of many of them, that I plan to write about, and then don't because I've thought of it so often, I end up assuming I must have finally written about it?)

So...some random thoughts:

I'm starting to wonder if Bernie can actually beat Hillary. I doubt it for a lot of reasons. One of the biggest, but least reported on, is the hundreds of Super Delegates that have already committed to Hillary. She messed that up 8 years ago, but gets it...and got them...this time.

But if it turns out that Bernie somehow was able to win, this will be the moment that I look back to as the beginning of the end:

News Item: “Girls” star Lena Dunham, stumping in Iowa City, said Clinton faces unfair attacks because she is a woman.

Please. Lena - you're insulting women with this.
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News Item: The Supreme Court today will hear arguments from a group of California teachers who say it violates their First Amendment rights to be forced to pay dues to the state’s teachers union.

Hear me now, believe me later. No chance the unions win this (or should, in my opinion). I'm anything but a huge fan of unions, but this will be terrible news for the country as a whole. Just another shot at lower income folks.
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Finally some good news for American Indians!

News Item: The tagline of a new ad from a Ted Cruz super PAC, going up today in Iowa, is: “You can take your country back.”
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And one more:

News Item: "The Clinton campaign released an ad touting her electability, to air in both Iowa and New Hampshire. It includes clips of Trump and Cruz talking. “Think about it: one of these Republicans could actually be president,” a narrator says. “So ask yourself, who is the one candidate who can stop them? Hillary Clinton.”

And from my perspective, the same answer can be given to a similar question:

So ask yourself, who is the one candidate who can stop Hillary Clinton?

It is the Show Me state after all

News Item from the Kansas City Star : "Lobbyists who have sex with a Missouri lawmaker or their staff would have to disclose it to the Missouri Ethics Commission under a proposed state measure. The bill, sponsored by a Republican, defines sex between lobbyists and legislators as a gift. 'As such, sexual relations would have to be included on monthly lobbyist gift disclosure forms'."

 

Sooo many thoughts:

 - This guy must be so sex-deprived, that he considers it a gift when it happens.

 - Or maybe he has fantasies about sex with lobbyists (he is a politician after all).

 - Or maybe his wife is a lobbyist.

 - Maybe they should offer the Disclosure Forms for sale...and then, with Amuricans' fascination with all things sex-related, those things would probably jump to the top of the NYTimes best-seller list.

 - I suggest that any time the State Legislature f*cks over the good people of Missouri, they should have to report that on there too.

 - I can't help but wonder if the words "a Missouri lawmaker or" were taken out of that first sentence, that if this law included this guy too, he would need to report so many times, he'd run out of forms. Better be careful how the bill is written to get all the commas in the right places. 

 

 

 

 

In keeping with my resolution to be less sensitive in my posts, here are two:

It finally struck me why there have been so many problems in the Middle East for centuries. They don't eat pork at their New Years dinner, duh!

And discovering further evidence of God's love of irony with perhaps a slight sense of humor, I realized yesterday that some things that are so soft make me so hard.

OK!

One more thing - for those of you who receive emailed updates of new posts, but won't see edits to previous posts - after a conversation with Cheryl yesterday, I updated my post about my "strategic interests" from Monday, so if you care, you'd have to go to the actual site to see what I felt compelled to update.

Thus the title above, apparently (Editor's Note - or apparentl not)

Happy 2016, everyone! We had a really wonderful 2015, so I hope for more of the same this year. I need to go back to look to see if I posted any new year's resolutions last year to see how I made out. But in the meantime, here's one for 2016: To post in this blog more often! And to not care about how I might offend anyone reading it, not that that is ever my intent - offending, that is, not caring whether I do.

Last night, I laid/lay/lied in bed (countdown til Sherry corrects me...3..2...1), trying to fall asleep, thinking about 3 different posts I wanted to make in here, and used the acronym of SOT to try to help remember them, and at this point, I only remember the S and the T, so that's frustrating because I'm sure the O one was incredibly profound!

So here's my first post of 2016:

I was enmeshed in a Facebook dialogue with someone whose opinions on such things never fail to impress me, mostly in terms of the care and intellectual depth of his thoughts in this topic, which is one that interests me very little - and that is religion.

And it got me to wondering why so many topics that fascinate others don't interest me at all. Once a conversation wanders away from politics or sports, I have very little of interest to share. And it got me to thinking that there are so many topics in that category besides religion, including gardening, movies, books, the weather, astronomy, dreams, birds, body modifications (Hey - sorry - I googled "things that fascinate people" and that was on someone's list) in which I have little or no interest and it struck me that the dividing definition of my very short list is that my two things involve a great deal of strategy and that list contains none.

So maybe that's what I need involved in a topic for me to have interest.

Except sex. I can talk about that at length too. Probably. Maybe. Depends, I guess, on who's involved. Which at one time would also have defined the other way I would decide how to partner with someone on the same topic. Also as to how much I'd had to drink.

ONE DAY LATER:

It has been pointed out to me by one of my favorite readers of this blog, namely, my amazing wife, that there are a great many things wrong with the post above. To enumerate:

1 - The tone is judgmental, as if there is something inferior about an interest that doesn't involve strategy. I sure didn't mean to imply that, so I apologize.  I think a voracious reader, or even an occasional one, uses a far higher % of the brain that sitting watching a Padres - Phillies game and trying to figure out whether the pitcher should tempt the batter with a low and away slider or bust him up and in with some heat.

2 - You do too like movies! OK, yeah, she has a point there. I do.

3 - There is a great deal of strategy involved in gardening, and believe me/you, I got quite the extensive run down of such crucial decisions, some involving soil amendment indentation implementation, or something involving multiple syllables that my first thing in the morning brain didn't quite comprehend.

 4 - Cheryl didn't mention this part, but I can even disagree with me on another point - racism is also a topic in which I have great interest, and reading newspapers (3-4 a day) and magazines (3-4 a month), so ya know...just forget the whole dang thing.

And now I owe you 5 minutes you might otherwise never get back.