Month: October 2023

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How Could You Not Want This?

Every day there is always something interesting.

Maybe nothing grand, usually it is nothing grand, and often it is something common or ordinary, or just weird.

Like the sun on my face. A storm rolling in. Wet leaves plastered to the sidewalk. A tree burdened with crabapples. Starlings chattering as I walk by. The wind tugging at my jacket, tossing my hat, giving me a merry chase!

I marvel at cracks in the sidewalk and the persistent, amazing weeds that insist on growing there.

I scoop the litterbox and wonder at the way the litter clumps, like miniature hoodoos. I am amazed at how much shit my cat has in him!

I find a spot I haven’t vacuumed in a while and behold! Enough cat hair to make mittens!

I savour a forbidden chocolate bar while no one is looking. Or chip wagon french fries (with lots of no you can’t have this salt).

I hopscotch on faded chalk squares, delight in children’s laughter.

I laugh when I can’t fold my laundry. I spill toothpaste on my new shirt. When I do something stupid (so I laugh a lot).

The list is endless.

Every morning as I go through my usual mundane routines, I ask myself, how could you not want this? How you could you no longer desire to experience the weirdness of life?

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Little Kitty

I was having an unruly mood, walking and talking to myself, kicking stones.

But then I spotted a cat watching me from a window.

Ah, look at the little kitty!

Cats are mood busters. I see it all the time. The hardest of hearts turn to mush when they spot a cat. Ah, look at the little kitty! Here kitty kitty. Oh aren’t you a pretty kitty…

All cats have a cuteness gene, I swear it!

I am forever grateful for the strangest, most magical of beasts, the common house cat.

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Um, I Have Some Bad News for You…

I’ve been reading about the 46 year old man who plans to live forever.

He’s been subjecting himself to all the latest and greatest in medicines, diet and exercise, with a little voodoo in there by injecting himself with his sons blood – ewwww.

He looks great and no doubt he feels terrific. I can attest, my 40’s was by far the best decade of my life too – uh, without all the latest and greatest and millions to burn. I was fit and happy and…

Well, what can I say dear fellow.

I have some bad news for you.

You will get sick. And, you will eventually die.

So sorry. But that is how biology works.

No matter what kind of great shape you are in, entropy is gonna find you, because despite our best intentions, and sometimes because of them, our bodies and minds wear out.

It is called old age.

I did too much exercise (warning to all you extreme fitness freaks) and now I can’t do very much. I had only a few serious overuse injuries in my life but oh boy, do they come back to haunt you and severely limit you. Even without that, our bodies cannot and will not do what they could when they were young. You will find this out. I can assure you, it is a FACT!

I have discovered that there is little difference in life span between those who took care of themselves and those who were a little more lenient.

So just a heads up on this. You can overdo good intentions and shorten your life. Ah, life is a trickster! So don’t be too smug about your health. In an instant you can lose it.

Your life is never on hold. Just enjoy what you have today. Tomorrow never comes, and neither will biological immortality.

Do something that is so wonderful you leave a legacy of goodness in this world instead of concentrating so hard on your own self interests. If you have millions to spend on yourself, you’d do better to help someone who has nothing, or someone really struggling to survive. That is the best way to live forever, and the only way.

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An Apology

I should like to apologize to all the people I have knowingly shamed in my life, and there are many of you. I am so sorry.

I was shamed by others most of my life and you’d think I would know the horrible consequences of that enough to not inflict it on others.

But alas, I did not.

Isn’t that a sad testimony, considering how long I have lived?

All these years I have believed that everyone else was okay, and I had a lot of bad in me that was inexcusable. I caused others to feel this way too.

In the movie, The Mission, slave trader Mendoza attempts penance for his wrongdoings by dragging a big heavy bag of his metal armour and swords everywhere he goes. As if he, and he alone has done wrong in his life. He is eventually set free from this by the very people he once enslaved.

This is what shame and guilt is. That big bag.

But here is the reality of it. Everyone has done wrong. Realizing that was like that indigenous man cutting Mendoza loose from his bag of shame. That man knew the truth. No one should carry all the weight of shame. We have all done the inexcusable at some time in our lives. No one is exempt.

And I’ve learned that those who shame and guilt another the most, are often the ones who have a lot to be ashamed of themselves! The ones who subdued me the most, for what I now see as being petty crimes, were the ones with the blackest of hearts, who did much wrong in their lives.

I am definitely not saying forgive, or even forget. I don’t believe in that. You can’t forgive and forget pain. But you can see the truth about humans.

This is not an excuse. I knowingly shamed others. I am offering an apology and a way for you to be free from a burden that is not exclusively yours to carry.