1) do unto to others as you would have them do unto you. Its a seflish code, being as its focused on what you would want and all, but its a great way to live life...
2) Start with the man in the mirror. So many things in this world would be better if people took this advice.
Showing posts with label life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label life. Show all posts
Monday, October 31, 2011
Saturday, October 29, 2011
A message to my sons, and daughter
There are two things that I've learned in life that I think are incredibly poignant and true and that I hope to impart on my kids. I wish I could claim to have arrived at them on my own, but the one I read in the Bible; and while I'm not sure where I picked the other up at, I know its origin isn't with me.
So here we go:
1) There is a difference between being frugal and being stingy. Know the difference. A frugal person eats Ramen at home and skips the dinner at the swanky Ramon's Restuarant. A stingy person orders the surf & turf at Ramon's and then wants to split the bill equally among all the diners
2) You should never be shy about what you like, but you should never under any circumstances be finicky. Find that drink, or meal or entertainment you like and make it your signature; but you should never put off if it isn't available. "Real men (and women) are discerning, but they're not disabled if things are not just so."
I hope you three realize them earlier in life than I did.
So here we go:
1) There is a difference between being frugal and being stingy. Know the difference. A frugal person eats Ramen at home and skips the dinner at the swanky Ramon's Restuarant. A stingy person orders the surf & turf at Ramon's and then wants to split the bill equally among all the diners
2) You should never be shy about what you like, but you should never under any circumstances be finicky. Find that drink, or meal or entertainment you like and make it your signature; but you should never put off if it isn't available. "Real men (and women) are discerning, but they're not disabled if things are not just so."
I hope you three realize them earlier in life than I did.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
On being social
I'm social enough.
That is to say that if I know you, I can probably talk your ear off. Its unlikely that - barring you being much, much smarter than I am about a subject and only interested in talking about that subject - we can't find something to talk about. I discuss some pretty nuanced, pendantic and specific things that I figure most people find boring. So I'm even willing to listen and chat about the stuff I don't know much about just to talk. So I'm social enough.
But I'm not really the outgoing type, if that makes sense.
My number of friends have varied over the years. In college I had a group of about 20 people with which I hung out. My group is much smaller now.
Some of that is life: People move away, have kids, enter different periods and phases of their lives. Generally two people become two different people without much in common any more.
I was just thinking about this last night, before what led to this post even happened: I think I have an innate distrust and discomfort with the outside world. I'm certainly not xenophobic. My support for immigration, et al. and general libertarian nature should put that to rest, I would think. It would explain my tendency to be contrarian, I think, and to favor out of favor things. I'll generally favor the underdog in the fight, all the more if I perceive it as an underdog despite what might be read as top dog status. So for instance, I'll favor something like Microsoft, a giant in its industry, from the general hate and distrust of the company in the public and regulatory circles.
I also hate cultish things. So again my distrust explains my dislike for all things Apple and The Beatles. It doesn't help that many people comprising the cult of those two things are people savoring their uniqueness by expressing their cult love of a million-people strong cult.
And its true that I generally feel at odds, even at war at times, with the outside world. Not in a general way, because I like individuals and I love life and like most people I meet. Like I said, I can talk to almost anyone for hours. I do volunteer work. I'm even considering volunteering to be a pen pal with a child from an underprivileged school, corresponding with the student about books.
So I'm not sure what it is. But there is definitely something there. And its somewhat hidden and locked away. Some small part of me that is, as I said, innately distrustful of the outside world. It's something I'll have to investigate. Hey, maybe it can be part of Better Bryan 2011!
As an aside: I find myself, I know I do, interjecting, or trying too, anyway, a lot of thoughts into sentences through the use of commas. Have you noticed, and is it annoying?
That is to say that if I know you, I can probably talk your ear off. Its unlikely that - barring you being much, much smarter than I am about a subject and only interested in talking about that subject - we can't find something to talk about. I discuss some pretty nuanced, pendantic and specific things that I figure most people find boring. So I'm even willing to listen and chat about the stuff I don't know much about just to talk. So I'm social enough.
But I'm not really the outgoing type, if that makes sense.
My number of friends have varied over the years. In college I had a group of about 20 people with which I hung out. My group is much smaller now.
Some of that is life: People move away, have kids, enter different periods and phases of their lives. Generally two people become two different people without much in common any more.
I was just thinking about this last night, before what led to this post even happened: I think I have an innate distrust and discomfort with the outside world. I'm certainly not xenophobic. My support for immigration, et al. and general libertarian nature should put that to rest, I would think. It would explain my tendency to be contrarian, I think, and to favor out of favor things. I'll generally favor the underdog in the fight, all the more if I perceive it as an underdog despite what might be read as top dog status. So for instance, I'll favor something like Microsoft, a giant in its industry, from the general hate and distrust of the company in the public and regulatory circles.
I also hate cultish things. So again my distrust explains my dislike for all things Apple and The Beatles. It doesn't help that many people comprising the cult of those two things are people savoring their uniqueness by expressing their cult love of a million-people strong cult.
And its true that I generally feel at odds, even at war at times, with the outside world. Not in a general way, because I like individuals and I love life and like most people I meet. Like I said, I can talk to almost anyone for hours. I do volunteer work. I'm even considering volunteering to be a pen pal with a child from an underprivileged school, corresponding with the student about books.
So I'm not sure what it is. But there is definitely something there. And its somewhat hidden and locked away. Some small part of me that is, as I said, innately distrustful of the outside world. It's something I'll have to investigate. Hey, maybe it can be part of Better Bryan 2011!
As an aside: I find myself, I know I do, interjecting, or trying too, anyway, a lot of thoughts into sentences through the use of commas. Have you noticed, and is it annoying?
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Such a great weekend.
I had a gin-inspired post all ready, but I'm replacing it with this: I love life. The end.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
It's a tricky thing
It's a tricky thing; growing up, getting older, that is.
One day, you are your parents' child. The world is laid out before you like a red carpet of opportunity and adventure. You are but one grain of sand in a beach full.
You go to sleep one night, and when you wake up, you are your own person. You look around and realize that you are now securely established on that carpet that that was previously laid out before you. You are still one in a sea of a million, but suddenly, its more like you are one person in a sea of hundreds of people on that beach. The individual particles now softly giving way under the weight of your labored step.
You look back and kinda, sorta - through the gray haze of the years - can see the point where you grew up. But, like a star, you have to look with your peripherial vision. Otherwise you lose it in the march of time that is your life.
One day, you are your parents' child. The world is laid out before you like a red carpet of opportunity and adventure. You are but one grain of sand in a beach full.
You go to sleep one night, and when you wake up, you are your own person. You look around and realize that you are now securely established on that carpet that that was previously laid out before you. You are still one in a sea of a million, but suddenly, its more like you are one person in a sea of hundreds of people on that beach. The individual particles now softly giving way under the weight of your labored step.
You look back and kinda, sorta - through the gray haze of the years - can see the point where you grew up. But, like a star, you have to look with your peripherial vision. Otherwise you lose it in the march of time that is your life.
Friday, March 5, 2010
My Theory
I've started The Art of Happiness. The fact is, I generally respond to questions of "how are you" with the response "excellent." Honestly. There are times when I'm so overwhelmingly happy that my insides feel like they will burst. Or melt into some kind of cosmic glow. And not just when I'm drunk - though I'm an exceedingly happy drunk.
Not to brag, but I really feel like I've had almost no bad breaks in life. Good jobs that I've never lost and always loved. Great wife who has a good job she likes and who is just as silly and generally as, or more, optimistic than me. Sufficient income. Nice house. And perhaps most importantly - good to great health. It really is all about having good health. If you are in pain and sick all the time, all those other things mean mostly, well, squat.
Maybe some of that is the choices I've made. Certainly some of it is luck and birth place and family. Some of it is that I'm a master at exclusion. I simply exclude that for which I have little time, or interest, or which is a drag on my happiness. I'm also a pretty good at parrying. I think I have a keen ability to to take most of what would derail me and - like a good karate block - us its own momentum to safely direct it away and around me.
Having said all this, I should note that I'm also sometimes worried that this means that I've got something very dark in store for me down the road. Hopefully it just means that I appreciate what I have and can block out bad stuff. But I'm still sometimes suspicious. And frankly, typing this isn't helping. Its making me nervous. Its like saying Beetlejuice three times. That summons him, right?
So I'll now move onto the real purpose of my post. I was a strong Republican through high school and into the early parts of college. From the last half of college onward though - and I don't remember the exact moment, but Ayn Rand was a key part - I have slowly moved further away from Republicans and more firmly into the Libertarian/libertarian/liberty camp. Some of my distancing from childhood beliefs is probably just natural growth into adulthood from a conservative upbringing. But some of it is the feeling that some of my childhood beliefs were based on lies.
So much so that while I was a huge anti-drug advocate in high school, I've now become disallusioned with the entire anti-drug crowd and now support drug legalization. So much of it seems like lies now that I have the whole truth.
Anyway, that isn't even the real point of the post. I've really come to believe that any use of force, except in self-defense, is a bad idea. Force - and force is almost always the taking something from someone for yourself - represents evil and darkness 99% of the time. Whether it be theft, or preventing gay marriage, or drug prohibition, or book burning, or racism. Sometimes the force is obvious - as in theft - and sometimes its just implicit - drug prohibition, book burning - and sometimes its just covered by a thin veil of morality - racism, preventing gay marriage.
Anyway, my theory: You should strive to be as liberty and openness loving as possible for your own personal place in the world. Maybe you can't bring yourself to support drug legalization for whatever reason. But you should always be open and accepting of those more open than yourself and mostly reject those more restrictive than yourself.
Maybe you don't support drug legalization, but you should always consider it a goal and possibility and option. Maybe you can't get comfortable with gay marriage (and shame on you, if you can't - that's me rejecting the more restrictive point of view) but you should allow it for the sake of liberty and openness.
I know - pure acquintances, mostly from message boards - some anarchists, or minarchists. And while I don't think anarchy has any chance of being imposed in any reasonable, not world destroying, way, I can accept their position and can see it and can wish that it would be possible. I wouldn't support its application here today, as we stand, because I don't think it would work, but I have no problem working toward its implementation. I reject all efforts at more restrictions, however. Its funny, because I've always rejected the "Indians knew best and were perfect" thinking. Until recently. When I've come around to the idea that maybe, just maybe, we would all be better off if we lived, not like them, but more like them. Keep the technology. Lose the subsistence living. Keep the dispersed, underpopulated nature. Its actually quite Jeffersonian, who believed we should be a nation of yeoman farmers and warned against cities.
Anyway, that's where I stand. I know this was long. And somewhat rambling. And somewhat pendantic, perhaps. And somewhat preachy. And not at all peachy - though click-and-sniff internet hyperlinks would be awesome and absolutely have to be the next thing people work on. I hope you managed to read all this and didn't quit. I feel like it was something that I needed to say and put out there. If only to have said it and explained it and made it clear to myself.
Also, I'd kinda like a critique or thoughts about my "more free than you" theory.
Not to brag, but I really feel like I've had almost no bad breaks in life. Good jobs that I've never lost and always loved. Great wife who has a good job she likes and who is just as silly and generally as, or more, optimistic than me. Sufficient income. Nice house. And perhaps most importantly - good to great health. It really is all about having good health. If you are in pain and sick all the time, all those other things mean mostly, well, squat.
Maybe some of that is the choices I've made. Certainly some of it is luck and birth place and family. Some of it is that I'm a master at exclusion. I simply exclude that for which I have little time, or interest, or which is a drag on my happiness. I'm also a pretty good at parrying. I think I have a keen ability to to take most of what would derail me and - like a good karate block - us its own momentum to safely direct it away and around me.
Having said all this, I should note that I'm also sometimes worried that this means that I've got something very dark in store for me down the road. Hopefully it just means that I appreciate what I have and can block out bad stuff. But I'm still sometimes suspicious. And frankly, typing this isn't helping. Its making me nervous. Its like saying Beetlejuice three times. That summons him, right?
So I'll now move onto the real purpose of my post. I was a strong Republican through high school and into the early parts of college. From the last half of college onward though - and I don't remember the exact moment, but Ayn Rand was a key part - I have slowly moved further away from Republicans and more firmly into the Libertarian/libertarian/liberty camp. Some of my distancing from childhood beliefs is probably just natural growth into adulthood from a conservative upbringing. But some of it is the feeling that some of my childhood beliefs were based on lies.
So much so that while I was a huge anti-drug advocate in high school, I've now become disallusioned with the entire anti-drug crowd and now support drug legalization. So much of it seems like lies now that I have the whole truth.
Anyway, that isn't even the real point of the post. I've really come to believe that any use of force, except in self-defense, is a bad idea. Force - and force is almost always the taking something from someone for yourself - represents evil and darkness 99% of the time. Whether it be theft, or preventing gay marriage, or drug prohibition, or book burning, or racism. Sometimes the force is obvious - as in theft - and sometimes its just implicit - drug prohibition, book burning - and sometimes its just covered by a thin veil of morality - racism, preventing gay marriage.
Anyway, my theory: You should strive to be as liberty and openness loving as possible for your own personal place in the world. Maybe you can't bring yourself to support drug legalization for whatever reason. But you should always be open and accepting of those more open than yourself and mostly reject those more restrictive than yourself.
Maybe you don't support drug legalization, but you should always consider it a goal and possibility and option. Maybe you can't get comfortable with gay marriage (and shame on you, if you can't - that's me rejecting the more restrictive point of view) but you should allow it for the sake of liberty and openness.
I know - pure acquintances, mostly from message boards - some anarchists, or minarchists. And while I don't think anarchy has any chance of being imposed in any reasonable, not world destroying, way, I can accept their position and can see it and can wish that it would be possible. I wouldn't support its application here today, as we stand, because I don't think it would work, but I have no problem working toward its implementation. I reject all efforts at more restrictions, however. Its funny, because I've always rejected the "Indians knew best and were perfect" thinking. Until recently. When I've come around to the idea that maybe, just maybe, we would all be better off if we lived, not like them, but more like them. Keep the technology. Lose the subsistence living. Keep the dispersed, underpopulated nature. Its actually quite Jeffersonian, who believed we should be a nation of yeoman farmers and warned against cities.
Anyway, that's where I stand. I know this was long. And somewhat rambling. And somewhat pendantic, perhaps. And somewhat preachy. And not at all peachy - though click-and-sniff internet hyperlinks would be awesome and absolutely have to be the next thing people work on. I hope you managed to read all this and didn't quit. I feel like it was something that I needed to say and put out there. If only to have said it and explained it and made it clear to myself.
Also, I'd kinda like a critique or thoughts about my "more free than you" theory.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
To tea, or not to tea
This is a bit tricky.
I'm a Diest/agnostic/atheist. So I don't have a "Lent" to follow.
And my personal life philosophy adhors the idea of self-sacrifice for its own sake. Doing without/abstaining from something is supposed to make you a better person. Though I have to say, I have yet to witness that effect in practice. I'm begining to think more and more that the "satisfied" poor aren't happy because they don't have anything, but because they have a lower level of satisfaction and thus are happy with what they have and thus haven't gone out to get more. Meanwhile, the rich are likely Type Aers who are never happy.
Having said all that, I usually follow "Lent." Partly out of the momentum of having done it so many years, and partly in solidarity with R.
So, to swing this back to the title: I'm mulling the idea of forgoing tea for Lent. I'm typing this - coffee in hand - at 10 a.m. on Wednesday. That's the day the whole thing is supposed to start. And its just before my review, which means I'm both wasting precious time and divided in my thoughts.
Forty days is quite a while. And while it wouldn't be like my last break because I wouldn't be giving up caffiene altogether, it would be 4x longer. But this is a good time for it. I need to make an order anyway, so I can take these 40 days, make an order, and have some celebratory tea on by B-day, which is conveniently close to Easter this year. A true Brester.
I'm undecided and unsure. And yet I'm 99% positive I'm going to do it. And hopefully it will go better than last time I tried something like this.
I'm a Diest/agnostic/atheist. So I don't have a "Lent" to follow.
And my personal life philosophy adhors the idea of self-sacrifice for its own sake. Doing without/abstaining from something is supposed to make you a better person. Though I have to say, I have yet to witness that effect in practice. I'm begining to think more and more that the "satisfied" poor aren't happy because they don't have anything, but because they have a lower level of satisfaction and thus are happy with what they have and thus haven't gone out to get more. Meanwhile, the rich are likely Type Aers who are never happy.
Having said all that, I usually follow "Lent." Partly out of the momentum of having done it so many years, and partly in solidarity with R.
So, to swing this back to the title: I'm mulling the idea of forgoing tea for Lent. I'm typing this - coffee in hand - at 10 a.m. on Wednesday. That's the day the whole thing is supposed to start. And its just before my review, which means I'm both wasting precious time and divided in my thoughts.
Forty days is quite a while. And while it wouldn't be like my last break because I wouldn't be giving up caffiene altogether, it would be 4x longer. But this is a good time for it. I need to make an order anyway, so I can take these 40 days, make an order, and have some celebratory tea on by B-day, which is conveniently close to Easter this year. A true Brester.
I'm undecided and unsure. And yet I'm 99% positive I'm going to do it. And hopefully it will go better than last time I tried something like this.
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