In re: The Good & Heroic
1. It's not that the good die young. It's just that they die too soon.
2. A hero is not a person who laughs in the face of death, walks about life
fearlessly, and feels no pain. A hero is the one who does his duty, despite
being frightened to death ... while feeling complete dread ... while being
entirely subject to pain & suffering. The key is that the hero is sensitive
to your pain and vulnerabilities, as well as your fears and need for help.
In re: The fact that life is a collection of unlikely outcomes & improbability
3. Of all the coined expressions to come out of the British Empire in the past few
centuries, the most true one was Lord Byron's "The truth is strange; stranger
than fiction. In fact, it was once commonly said that things are not always what
they appear to be. From personal experience, things are rarely what they seem to
be.
The Mystery of Love
4. The mystery of love is that of transforming into the object of your love.
In the end, you become whom or what you love. Then, when you depart
this life, the love within goes with you.
5. The greater the capacity to endure suffering, the greater the capacity for love.
True Saints . . . as opposed to TV's and radio's sacrilegious hypocrites
6. A certain sign that you are in the presence of a saint is that you feel as
if you've known that person all your life.
Saints don't act abracadabra and conceitedly unapproachable. They act like
the boy (or girl) next door. There is a sense of familiarity with them.
The true saint is the person who will get up at 3 am and go help a widow
get her heater/furnace running again. The fake says, "I'll pray about it."
Anybody can appear to be a saint when in a vacuum. A saint is proven
when everything is falling apart and has become a chaotic & overwhelm-
ing aggravation.
A One-line Intermission
7. Incidentally, I read a book on Alzheimer's Disease the other day, but
forgot what it said.
People who are too gutless to be honest
8. A person who answers your request by saying "I don't know" means 'no.'
Don't waste your time. Go to someone else immediately.
9. The person who assassinates other people's characters in front of you is
the same one who will assassinate your character behind your back. That
person always hides behind a sense of protection, like a coward who throws
stones at you from behind a stone wall.
10. Greed kills and the greedy don't care, The cowardly, like dogs looking for
table scraps, praise and defend the ill-gotten gains of the greedy.
11. The ones too cowardly to go to war are the ones who end up waving the pro-
military flag. War heroes know how devastating war is to the human psyche.
They are inclined to advocate peace and understanding. Chicken Hawk flag
wavers are patriotic with the blood of others.
A Stereotype that needs undone
12. It's a total falsehood to think of construction professionals as tough thug
bullies who plosively go through life like bulls in china shops. They ...
... we ... are little more than little boys building tree houses. It's just that
the tree houses are made of metal and concrete block.
Plus, the toys are bigger, sharper, louder, and faster. If you don't know
how to operate some of the sharper toys, you'll instantly find yourself
spurting blood all over a construction site. However, some construction
tasks consiss in contemplative work that doesn't strain or accompany an
element of danger. None the less, there is very little difference between
construction workers and kids building tree houses, in as far as goes the
psychological makeup of the two types of people.
In addition, Mack truck (trailer truck) drivers aren't the big muscular
moose men that right wing radio talk shows and TV fictions make them
out to be. They don't do heavy work on construction sites. They are the
least athletic and most out-of-shape ones on any construction site. You
actually feel embarrassed for them when they show up and get out of their
trucks. In as much, the trucks do all the heavy work . . . not them.
13. That which makes a construction professional roll his eyes is the sight of
white collar office males acting all so tough around the water cooler, in
Melvin Milktoast decor, especially after Monday Night Football.
Only the Strong Have the Power To Be Gentle
14. To be a master in construction, you have to be the master of the gentle
touch. Yes, we use extreme physical force on the job from time to time,
but everything has to be targeted in a narrow space. If you don't have the
gentle touch on a construction site, structures buckle, blocks get chipped,
bolts bend, things get lodged where they shouldn't be, glass breaks, hands
get bloody, metal gets dented, heavy equipment slams into structures, pipe-
lines snap, and workers get hurt. In fact, if you don't have the gentle touch
in life, people get hurt in any one of many ways.
All in all, only the strong have the power to be gentle. The weak are not
gentle. They are clumsy and/or self-absorbing. They are the ones with
the sudden violent streaks. The spout out and take hissy fits.
You have to let the dove within coo. The dove within is the God of Kind-
ness. In fact, God is more real within you than you are in yourself.
The Most Dangerous
15. The most dangerous person to society is the one who does not feel
other people's pain. This would be the Rush Limbaughes, the Paul
Ryans, the Sarah Palins, the Michele Bachmans & the Rand Pauls of
society.
16. The person most dangerous to you is the one frightened of you the most.
That person will try to hurt you badly one day. I've seen it happen. The
person equally dangerous to you is the one envious of you. That person
will keep on trying to hurt you.
Southern Animosity toward the North & the federal government
17. If the South were to secede from the Union and declare war on the
North again, all that the North would have to do is stop sending
federal tax subsidy dollars to the South. War over.
This is because Democratic "blue" states pay more federal tax dollars
than they receive, while Republican 'red' states receive more federal
tax dollars than they pay. After all, how much income do you think
that people in South Carolina, Alabama, & similar states make that
they would contribute to the federal treasure chest? Not very much
for as long as good ole boy networks run the Southern states.
18. The South needs to understand that the Civil War doesn't have much
significance to the North, because most Northern families of today
weren't in America until forty+ years after the Civil War ended.
Thus, they had no ancestors in the war.
The North is a collection of immigrants from Italy, Lebanon, Armenia,
Croatia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Poland, Lithuania, Hungary, Greece, etc.
The ancestry of these people didn't arrive in the United States until the
early 20th Century. Thus, they had no one in the Civil War. This is
why Southern animosity toward the North over the war is asinine.
The Way to Win a War
19. You don't win a war by going to the front line and duking it out to the
last man. You win a war by going behind enemy lines and destroying
the enemy's stockpiles of ordnance, food, & materiel.
20. In war, everyone is a casualty; even the victors.
The Final Rule of Business & Sales
21. In business, once you make an offer, simply remain silent after that
point in time. The next person to speak loses. If you are the next one
to speak, you will lose the sale.
Also concerning business and promotions, it's not what you know, it's
who you know that causes your advancement.
City Slickers
22. To a city-born metropolitan guy, having to listen to Country Music
is considered cruel and unusual punishment ... and then some.
23. The funniest people in the world are the ones who can get you to laugh
at yourself.
24. As a person who currently possesses three security clearances, I can
assure you that the best policy to have, when in a rowdy bar, is to put
your arms to the side, walk out the door, and stay out of the court sys-
tem. Drinking with the guys is such a waste of time.
Martial Arts
25. When you encounter a stranger who fears violence from you, and then
rounds off, placing his side facing you, as if to be making a Kung-Fu
stance, know that he knows nothing about Kung-Fu. This is because
you never advertise that you're poised to strike your potential opponent.
When you see a guy place his hands in the prayer position, and then he
pleads for you to not hurt him, know that his hands are in the position
to strike you. The prayer position man is the one who knows at least
one of the marital arts. Chances are that it's something known as Muay
Thai; a martial art which is no stranger to US Navy SEALS. When you
see the prayer position step back and say, "I have no intention to harm
you." I'm very serious.
Of course, if you do come to reach this stage, it means that you're a
jerk who wouldn't take any advice from anyone, anyway. If you're
stupid enough to trigger a martial arts master into the prayer position,
you're stupid enough to provoke him/her into decking you.
Man & Woman
26. Man and Woman are not opposites. They are designed to be comple-
mentations of each other and blend together well. The "battle of the
sexes" thing is impish and asinine, as well as unwomanly & unmanly.
Man and woman are supposed to blend and not battle.
When a Woman is Most Moving and Heart-Touching
27. It's more moving to see the look in a woman's face while she is looking
at something fascinating than to look at the fascinating thing itself.
28. Incidentally, when a woman refers to you as "that interesting guy" to
your friends and/or fellow workers, she is interested in you, personally.
Two Universal Axioms
28. The closer you approach perfection in any subject or field of endeavor,
the more intensely you notice your imperfections.
29. The more you learn in life, the more you realize how little anyone knows
about anything. The phrase is, "The more you know, the more you don't
know." This is an element of the observation that, the closer you reach
perfection, the more intensely you notice your imperfections. When you
reach this state of understanding, you find yourself at peace in the knowing
and simultaneous unknowing thereof.
