There's a saying that celebrities die in three's. This week it was Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson. Pondering death. Pondering life. When we were kids, we didn't have TV so I never watched Charlie's Angels and didn't really know much about Farrah Fawcett, but my older brother was in love with her. Likewise when Michael Jackson took over the music scene in the early 80's I didn't have access to MTV and didn't know anything about his music. I understood that kids were dressing like him (including the wearing of only one glove). Ed McMahon I was a little more acquainted with in the mid 80's as I was secretly confiscating a miniature black and white TV each night and bringing it into my room and watching late night programming as deep into the morning as I could manage to stay awake. Can't say that I ever found him very entertaining, but there he was every night chatting with Johnny Carson.
Not only have they all left us in the time it takes to recover from last weekend's decadence, but I notice I'm getting used to this sort of thing. When you're a kid most of the celebrities that are old enough to pass away are too old for you to have ever heard of; not so when you grow up. When Jimmy Stewart died one day after Robert Mitchum in 1997, I was devastated. And when Princess Diana and Mother Theresa checked died only five days apart, I was shocked, but after a while you get a little desensitized. This is kind of what people do eventually... you know... when it's not living that they're doing anymore... when it's the alternative.
Yesterday at work I referred to one of my co-workers as Ms. Brinkley. I was just teasing her because her first name is Christy, but the joke was lost inasmuch as she'd never heard of the world famous pioneer of super-modeling, and she began questioning our other co-workers in pursuit of an explanation. A minute later she pounced on me with the discovery that Christy Brinkley is old! How could I have referred to her as an old person? In my signature smartass fashion I reasoned with her, "By far most of the people that have ever been born are dead now - compared to them, Christy is still a baby."
I just wanted to write a blog tonight, you know, during this blink of an eye during which, amazingly, I happen to share Christy Brinkley's statistically defiant status among the living.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Friday, June 12, 2009
Letterman Larger Than Life
This week a feud has developed between David Letterman and Sarah Palin because of jokes he made on his show about her and her family's visit to NY. One of the jokes disparaged her by indicating that she's trying to look like a slutty airline attendant, but the real transgression was when he said that the Yankees 3rd baseman, Alex Rodriguez, got her daughter knocked up during the 7th inning of a game. Not very funny. He didn't say which daughter but Piper was the one that went to the game with Sarah and she's only 14 years old, so the Palin family and their supporters were indignant and have attempted to rake Letterman over the coals for his perverted sense of humor.
So I'm a little torn here because I really like David Letterman's sense of humor. I think he's the king of sarcastic hilarity. He can make me laugh with just a facial expression. Hell, I boycotted Jay Leno for his entire tenure on the Tonight Show exclusively because he was given the throne vacated by Johnny Carson when I felt Letterman was more deserving. Leno was never in the same universe with Letterman when it comes to being funny.
And I don't like Sarah Palin. For all the accolades she collects as an accomplished governor in Alaska, all I saw from her on the campaign trail last year was a rabid little attack dog foaming at the mouth with derision for Barrack Obama, and it seemed to me that if I looked at her for more than two consecutive seconds, I could actually watch her head expanding with all the national popularity.
No excuses, though. Letterman should say he's sorry.
So I'm a little torn here because I really like David Letterman's sense of humor. I think he's the king of sarcastic hilarity. He can make me laugh with just a facial expression. Hell, I boycotted Jay Leno for his entire tenure on the Tonight Show exclusively because he was given the throne vacated by Johnny Carson when I felt Letterman was more deserving. Leno was never in the same universe with Letterman when it comes to being funny.
And I don't like Sarah Palin. For all the accolades she collects as an accomplished governor in Alaska, all I saw from her on the campaign trail last year was a rabid little attack dog foaming at the mouth with derision for Barrack Obama, and it seemed to me that if I looked at her for more than two consecutive seconds, I could actually watch her head expanding with all the national popularity.
No excuses, though. Letterman should say he's sorry.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Confessions of a Hardcore Bibliophile
For me the mere sight of an old leatherbound book connotes inspiring appreciation for knowledge. When I'm watching a scene in a movie that has a personal library in the background with antique books on the shelves, I find I suddenly can't wait for the movie to end so I can rush home and start reading books and hopefully furthering my ambition to one day become a literary genius.
When I was a younger and (hard to believe) lazier fellow, I would sometimes acquire books with the intention to read them, but easily grew weary if the narration dragged for a page too many. And the book would find its way onto a shelf there to reside perpetually with anywhere from 20 to 400 pages forever unread. Then another book would catch my eye and the process would commence once more until little mountains of unfinished readings piled up around me. Occasionally, in the course of straightening up my living quarters, I would relocate one such book or another and a dull pang of guilt would reverbrate through me as I recalled how I'd always meant to get back to it and complete the reading I'd begun however many months previous.
I guess it was during my college years that I developed a stronger resolve about such things and determined to finish reading books I'd begun no matter how unsatisfying. And happily I pounce on every opportunity to show off to people the bookcases in my living room in which I have arranged, however neurotically, collectible editions of all the books I've ever read in the very sequence in which I read them.
Nevertheless, it still happens sometimes that my literary appetite gets unrealistic and I try to read more than one book at a time. And some of them, while I know they are not eternally abandoned, do get neglected for tragically extended durations with the result that I can now profess to be reading all of the following somewhat simultaneously (numbers in parentheses indicate how many pages I've read so far):
There Will Be Dragons ~ John Ringo (80 pages)
The Idiot ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky (10 pages)
The Stupidest Angel ~ Christopher Moore (130 pages)
Walden ~ Henry David Thoreau (125 pages)
Tobacco Road ~ Erskine Caldwell (7 pages)
Ghost Writer ~ John Harwood (212 pages)
The Spear ~ Luis De Wohl (18 pages)
Xenocide ~ Orson Scott Card (98 pages)
The Acts of King Arthur ~ John Steinbeck (216 pages)
Frankly, I didn't realize the list was getting so formidable until I compiled it here for the purpose of writing this blog, and it occurs to me blatantly how necessary it is for me now to buckle down and do some marathon reading. Which is a good thing because I've been babying myself with inmoderate intellectual idleness lately and it's really time to fulfill the promise of supreme nerdiness that I have always been blessed with as my destiny.
When I was a younger and (hard to believe) lazier fellow, I would sometimes acquire books with the intention to read them, but easily grew weary if the narration dragged for a page too many. And the book would find its way onto a shelf there to reside perpetually with anywhere from 20 to 400 pages forever unread. Then another book would catch my eye and the process would commence once more until little mountains of unfinished readings piled up around me. Occasionally, in the course of straightening up my living quarters, I would relocate one such book or another and a dull pang of guilt would reverbrate through me as I recalled how I'd always meant to get back to it and complete the reading I'd begun however many months previous.
I guess it was during my college years that I developed a stronger resolve about such things and determined to finish reading books I'd begun no matter how unsatisfying. And happily I pounce on every opportunity to show off to people the bookcases in my living room in which I have arranged, however neurotically, collectible editions of all the books I've ever read in the very sequence in which I read them.
Nevertheless, it still happens sometimes that my literary appetite gets unrealistic and I try to read more than one book at a time. And some of them, while I know they are not eternally abandoned, do get neglected for tragically extended durations with the result that I can now profess to be reading all of the following somewhat simultaneously (numbers in parentheses indicate how many pages I've read so far):
There Will Be Dragons ~ John Ringo (80 pages)
The Idiot ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky (10 pages)
The Stupidest Angel ~ Christopher Moore (130 pages)
Walden ~ Henry David Thoreau (125 pages)
Tobacco Road ~ Erskine Caldwell (7 pages)
Ghost Writer ~ John Harwood (212 pages)
The Spear ~ Luis De Wohl (18 pages)
Xenocide ~ Orson Scott Card (98 pages)
The Acts of King Arthur ~ John Steinbeck (216 pages)
Frankly, I didn't realize the list was getting so formidable until I compiled it here for the purpose of writing this blog, and it occurs to me blatantly how necessary it is for me now to buckle down and do some marathon reading. Which is a good thing because I've been babying myself with inmoderate intellectual idleness lately and it's really time to fulfill the promise of supreme nerdiness that I have always been blessed with as my destiny.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Does God Have Hormones?
I guess it began at prayer meeting when I was only four years old. My father would condescend to keep the kids in the church entertained while the adults discussed more sobering nuances of the scriptures. He would conduct Bible quizzes and he got a little repetitious from one week to the next so that I began to memorize the answers. He would ask "Who was the first younger brother?" and I would think... gee... seems like every time he asks that one, the answer is Abel. So I would blurt out the correct response and I liked the expressions on people's faces as they turned to look at the little four year old Bible whiz.
So at the early age of seven, I opened my Bible to the first page and began reading. I was determined to read the whole thing and enjoyed plenty of encouragement along the way from older people who seemed to approve of my youthful dedication to God's word. I finished the Old Testament while recovering from Chicken Pox when I was 12. Sometimes I would petition my father for permission to visit the neighbors so that I could watch NFL games on their TV. He would gravely observe that if I would spend as much time reading the Bible as watching football, I would have a better understanding of God's will than many adults. Dutifully I would follow his advice and read for three hours before kickoff.
The next year I lived with my mother in the Smoky Mountains and would often wander up into the hills after school and sit down and read and pray with the breeze whipping through the grass serving to represent the Holy Spirit. It was as close to God as I could get. I finally finished reading the Bible from cover to cover when I was 14.
The next year my older brother pronounced a disturbing opinion to me. He suggested that the Song of Solomon was not necessarily inspired by God. If you've read this portion of the Bible you know it's basically a romantic poem in which Solomon gets pretty mushy about how delicious he finds every curve and contour of his lover (forgetting I presume the other 2000 women whose responsibility it was to sexually pleasure him and make as many children as possible).But I refused and resented this notion of my brother's.
You can't just arbitrarily point to one part of the Bible and say this part isn't inspired by God. If you do that, I argued, someone else can come along and point to another part that they don't happen to relish, and say the same thing. Hey... you know the verse in Exodus that says thou shalt not commit adultery? Well, I think maybe that was added by some scribe who was worried about the way his wife had been ogling the plumber. See how that could spin out of control?
Yeah... maybe God didn't have anything to do with that passage about turning the other cheek. I think maybe that was just some pansy inserting his own ideology in there because he was tired of people ridiculing him for his lack of gonads.I reminded my brother how it says in II Timothy 3:16 that
And I was thoroughly perplexed when this failed to pesuade him. My stance was that you have to accept the entire word of God as being literal and infallible or you may as well discard the entire volume inasmuch as it would defy credulity to ascribe to any man the wisdom to go through the book and sort out what God agrees with and what is irrelevant. No, I persisted, God would not let anything imperfect into a book upon which rested mankind's best hope of getting to know his maker and his salvation. If God wants us to understand vividly just how hot Solomon was for his concubine of the moment 2995 years ago, then it must be of the utmost spiritual significance. And trust me, somewhere someone is making the most earnest argument to this effect, replete with symbolism about how Solomon represents Christ and the concubine represents the Church and her twin breasts signify the alpha and the omega while the erection is obvious code for the resurrection.
Ah... how black and white the world was then. I reminisce rather often back to that fraternal discussion because you see, it was a different time for me. Since then my older sister became an atheist. And then my little brother. And then I did too. The older brother who was able to hold onto the Biblical baby while simultaneously throwing out the bath water was the last holdout, but four years after our conversation about Solomon's virility, he too acknowledged a lack of faith in God's existence. But beyond a rejection of religion, I've relinquished my proclivity for seeing the world and its issues with such rigid perception.
By which I mean that I rather frequently shrug my shoulders with the realization that there are not so many good guys and bad guys as I used to think. There's just a whole lot of people. And it always comes back to how you look at a thing.
Hitler. What if he'd frozen to death because of his nurse's negligence when he was only an infant? Is there anyone, who having learned of such an incident, would not view it as a pitiable tragedy?
Or consider the plot in the movie Crash where a cop, infused with racist bigotry, is sexually and spitefully molesting a black suspect in front of her husband. At that point you're just sick with the despicability of what you're watching, but then later this same cop is the first on the scene of a car accident and heroically saves the life of the same woman he'd violated earlier. Hmm... what to make of that! My inclination to rip his fucking head off had I been witness to his earlier transgression, wouldn't have done the woman much good, had it deprived her eventual rescuer of his life.
Politically I look at the wars we wage against terrorism. How much propaganda is our support based upon? How much corruption. Does torture save lives? Is it really torture? How much torture do we not know about? Are we really the good guys? Which side has killed the most innocent lives? And how many of those innocent lives were destined to grow up and become the next Hitler?
Yes I sometimes miss my simple childhood when it was all crystal clear black and white.
So at the early age of seven, I opened my Bible to the first page and began reading. I was determined to read the whole thing and enjoyed plenty of encouragement along the way from older people who seemed to approve of my youthful dedication to God's word. I finished the Old Testament while recovering from Chicken Pox when I was 12. Sometimes I would petition my father for permission to visit the neighbors so that I could watch NFL games on their TV. He would gravely observe that if I would spend as much time reading the Bible as watching football, I would have a better understanding of God's will than many adults. Dutifully I would follow his advice and read for three hours before kickoff.
The next year I lived with my mother in the Smoky Mountains and would often wander up into the hills after school and sit down and read and pray with the breeze whipping through the grass serving to represent the Holy Spirit. It was as close to God as I could get. I finally finished reading the Bible from cover to cover when I was 14.
The next year my older brother pronounced a disturbing opinion to me. He suggested that the Song of Solomon was not necessarily inspired by God. If you've read this portion of the Bible you know it's basically a romantic poem in which Solomon gets pretty mushy about how delicious he finds every curve and contour of his lover (forgetting I presume the other 2000 women whose responsibility it was to sexually pleasure him and make as many children as possible).But I refused and resented this notion of my brother's.
You can't just arbitrarily point to one part of the Bible and say this part isn't inspired by God. If you do that, I argued, someone else can come along and point to another part that they don't happen to relish, and say the same thing. Hey... you know the verse in Exodus that says thou shalt not commit adultery? Well, I think maybe that was added by some scribe who was worried about the way his wife had been ogling the plumber. See how that could spin out of control?
Yeah... maybe God didn't have anything to do with that passage about turning the other cheek. I think maybe that was just some pansy inserting his own ideology in there because he was tired of people ridiculing him for his lack of gonads.I reminded my brother how it says in II Timothy 3:16 that
All scripture is given by inspiration of God,
and is profitable for doctrine,
for reproof, for correction,
for instruction in righteousness.
And I was thoroughly perplexed when this failed to pesuade him. My stance was that you have to accept the entire word of God as being literal and infallible or you may as well discard the entire volume inasmuch as it would defy credulity to ascribe to any man the wisdom to go through the book and sort out what God agrees with and what is irrelevant. No, I persisted, God would not let anything imperfect into a book upon which rested mankind's best hope of getting to know his maker and his salvation. If God wants us to understand vividly just how hot Solomon was for his concubine of the moment 2995 years ago, then it must be of the utmost spiritual significance. And trust me, somewhere someone is making the most earnest argument to this effect, replete with symbolism about how Solomon represents Christ and the concubine represents the Church and her twin breasts signify the alpha and the omega while the erection is obvious code for the resurrection.
Ah... how black and white the world was then. I reminisce rather often back to that fraternal discussion because you see, it was a different time for me. Since then my older sister became an atheist. And then my little brother. And then I did too. The older brother who was able to hold onto the Biblical baby while simultaneously throwing out the bath water was the last holdout, but four years after our conversation about Solomon's virility, he too acknowledged a lack of faith in God's existence. But beyond a rejection of religion, I've relinquished my proclivity for seeing the world and its issues with such rigid perception.
By which I mean that I rather frequently shrug my shoulders with the realization that there are not so many good guys and bad guys as I used to think. There's just a whole lot of people. And it always comes back to how you look at a thing.
Hitler. What if he'd frozen to death because of his nurse's negligence when he was only an infant? Is there anyone, who having learned of such an incident, would not view it as a pitiable tragedy?
Or consider the plot in the movie Crash where a cop, infused with racist bigotry, is sexually and spitefully molesting a black suspect in front of her husband. At that point you're just sick with the despicability of what you're watching, but then later this same cop is the first on the scene of a car accident and heroically saves the life of the same woman he'd violated earlier. Hmm... what to make of that! My inclination to rip his fucking head off had I been witness to his earlier transgression, wouldn't have done the woman much good, had it deprived her eventual rescuer of his life.
Politically I look at the wars we wage against terrorism. How much propaganda is our support based upon? How much corruption. Does torture save lives? Is it really torture? How much torture do we not know about? Are we really the good guys? Which side has killed the most innocent lives? And how many of those innocent lives were destined to grow up and become the next Hitler?
Yes I sometimes miss my simple childhood when it was all crystal clear black and white.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
153 Days
In November I wrote a blog about my determination to quit gambling. That was 153 day ago which breaks my old record (set last summer) for abstinence by one day! Economically I have benefitted immensely from putting my money into my checking accounts instead of into the bottomless pit of my habit.
But it would be dishonest of me to say I'm out of the woods. In fact breaking this record may be the single most motivating factor to my achievement. I know at any given moment that I can set a new mark. The first very successful effort was when I was dating my last girlfriend. When she found out how serious my addiction is, she cried, and because I so much wanted to make her happy, I managed to stay away from casinos for 86 days and could possibly have extended that quite a lot if our relationship had not imploded and subsequently launched me into escape mode. Then the next year, much more for myself and in an effort to improve my life (with the help of some incredible encouragement from my friend Alyssa) I set the mark at 142 days.
So my best efforts at breaking the habit look like this:
2006 86 days
2007 142 days
2008 152 days
2009 153 days
Which to look at, causes me a great deal of pride because I know so many people that suffer from the same affliction and they can't really go a week without it, nor do they very often bother to try.
It's not the same as breaking the habit. Let me not fool myself on that point, but what makes me happy is to see an indication here of something quite like self~discipline.
I believe a person's character has to change in order to really conquer gambling and I'm not much closer to this than I was 153 days ago. But I am richer.
But it would be dishonest of me to say I'm out of the woods. In fact breaking this record may be the single most motivating factor to my achievement. I know at any given moment that I can set a new mark. The first very successful effort was when I was dating my last girlfriend. When she found out how serious my addiction is, she cried, and because I so much wanted to make her happy, I managed to stay away from casinos for 86 days and could possibly have extended that quite a lot if our relationship had not imploded and subsequently launched me into escape mode. Then the next year, much more for myself and in an effort to improve my life (with the help of some incredible encouragement from my friend Alyssa) I set the mark at 142 days.
So my best efforts at breaking the habit look like this:
2006 86 days
2007 142 days
2008 152 days
2009 153 days
Which to look at, causes me a great deal of pride because I know so many people that suffer from the same affliction and they can't really go a week without it, nor do they very often bother to try.
It's not the same as breaking the habit. Let me not fool myself on that point, but what makes me happy is to see an indication here of something quite like self~discipline.
I believe a person's character has to change in order to really conquer gambling and I'm not much closer to this than I was 153 days ago. But I am richer.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
My Pathetic Fantasy
I seem to remember reading a comic book once about a couple guys who survived a nuclear apocalypse by confining themselves to an underground shelter with about a dozen gorgeous babes. How convenient, I thought, while rolling my eyes.
But my imagination isn't much better. Not much more sophisticated, I'm afraid. It's occurred to me recently that there's a 20 year class reunion coming up not long from now. Forever I've assumed I would skip it, but now that it's on the horizon, I'm having the most pathetic daydreams of how I will impress everyone I went to high school with.
Oh I will show them how much they underestimated me! That's why I'll be doing pushups today and running a few miles... you know so that I can finally add the 15 pounds of muscle I've been anticipating since I was eight years old.
Oh and I'm finally going to get published. Yeah... I just figured it out in a lovely moment's epiphany... see... I'll write something every day... Just anything. I'm sure it will be great stuff and ummm... everyone that went to Madison Academy in the late 80's will read every word and have nothing else to talk about at the reunion.
And about the wet dream that will be holding my arm... wait... maybe there should be two wet dreams... one on each arm... well I could easily hire a couple escorts with all the money I'll be making from my breakthrough writings. And I'll hire them a few days prior to the big event so I can coach them on how to appear as though they've known me and loved me for several months already.
I might have to create a band so that everyone will be looking for me and then suddenly realize I'm the lead vocalist in the night's entertainment. . . performing all my favorite songs that, coincidentally, will suddenly be everyone else's favorite songs too!
Then there's that one special girl that rejected me. Ummm... I need her husband to be especially boring that night... maybe he can get drunk and throw up on himself. That would be so thoughtful of him. Hmmm... how ethical would it be to lace his beverages with ascerbic acids?
And of course I can just rent the Ferrari. That's the easy part.
God in Heaven, it takes a long time to grow up.
But my imagination isn't much better. Not much more sophisticated, I'm afraid. It's occurred to me recently that there's a 20 year class reunion coming up not long from now. Forever I've assumed I would skip it, but now that it's on the horizon, I'm having the most pathetic daydreams of how I will impress everyone I went to high school with.
Oh I will show them how much they underestimated me! That's why I'll be doing pushups today and running a few miles... you know so that I can finally add the 15 pounds of muscle I've been anticipating since I was eight years old.
Oh and I'm finally going to get published. Yeah... I just figured it out in a lovely moment's epiphany... see... I'll write something every day... Just anything. I'm sure it will be great stuff and ummm... everyone that went to Madison Academy in the late 80's will read every word and have nothing else to talk about at the reunion.
And about the wet dream that will be holding my arm... wait... maybe there should be two wet dreams... one on each arm... well I could easily hire a couple escorts with all the money I'll be making from my breakthrough writings. And I'll hire them a few days prior to the big event so I can coach them on how to appear as though they've known me and loved me for several months already.
I might have to create a band so that everyone will be looking for me and then suddenly realize I'm the lead vocalist in the night's entertainment. . . performing all my favorite songs that, coincidentally, will suddenly be everyone else's favorite songs too!
Then there's that one special girl that rejected me. Ummm... I need her husband to be especially boring that night... maybe he can get drunk and throw up on himself. That would be so thoughtful of him. Hmmm... how ethical would it be to lace his beverages with ascerbic acids?
And of course I can just rent the Ferrari. That's the easy part.
God in Heaven, it takes a long time to grow up.
Friday, April 17, 2009
A Treatise on Kindness
Recently I opened my journal to write about the kindest people I know. I sat there brainstorming a for a while. I thought of my older brother. He's always been capable of remarkable selflessness. I have seen him command immense popularity by showing interest in the least popular of the people he meets. I think of my mother who relentlessly instilled in her children the habit of thinking of others. There was no greater transgression than that of being inconsiderate. Whenever she found us feeling sorry for ourselves she would say the best way to feel better is to find someone else who is unhappy and do something to cheer them up. This was a lesson that took me many many years to learn and even now too many days and weeks go by at a time without me pondering it as much as I should, but I thank my mother for teaching us this divine wisdom even if I was slow to grasp it. I think of Con Arnold, a friend of our family that passed away a few years ago. When my mother had to move to a new house in 1996, while her husband was incarcerated, it was a monumental task, but out of nowhere Con showed up with nearly a dozen fellows from our church and several trucks and the moving was finished almost quicker than you could blink. And he was that way with everyone. Always working behind the scenes to help people out in an almost magical way without ever the least interest in taking credit for anything. I think of Marianne where I've worked for nearly six years now. When I was still a very new employee, she was the first person to talk to me and ask me about myself. I'll never forget the gratitude that swept over me as I felt like a real person instead of just the newest idiot that didn't know what he was doing. And often I've tried to follow her example with many of the several hundred new workers that have been hired since then.
When measuring kindness, it seems to me there are about four different classifications. There is the kindness you show your dearest friends. This variety I practically dismiss because it's so basic and natural. But the other three intigue me.
The kindness you show to people you know but are not close to. The next time you hear someone at work talking about their father being sick or their sister getting divorced, try this. Ask for names. Find out their father's name or their sister's name. Then the next time you see them ask about their loved ones by name. It can really amaze people. If you say "Did Laura get the information she needed from her lawyer?" it will make them feel as though you have really taken a genuine interest. You will have automatically separated yourself from all the uncaring masses of people that otherwise surround us.
The kindness you show to people you really don't know. One time my former fiancee and I had just arrived in the parking lot of a shopping mall and a foreign man approached us asking for directions. We knew the street he was talking about, but when we tried to advise him how to get there, it was obvious he was becoming hopelessly confused. We decided to go there ourselves with him following in his car behind us. It only took maybe 25 minutes of our day, but it made us feel like angels to have helped someone out that we didn't know. I'm sorry to say that's nearly the last example I can think of for having done something like that, and it was just about five years ago so I really need to brush up on such things.
Then there is the kindness you show to people you can't stand. This one gets a little biblical and I advise caution with this one. I used to think it was a great experiment to make a project out of someone you dislike intensely and to see what positive effect you can have on them by being very nice. The problem is you might still despise them anyway and when you eventually cease your experiment, it kind of makes you look flaky and disingenuous.
Maybe you've noticed this too, that even the kindest people can get pissed off sometimes. I guess I don't really know anyone who's a perfect saint. But you never know when someone might be sitting down to write in their journal and brainstorming about the kindest people they know... how would you like to be on their list?
When measuring kindness, it seems to me there are about four different classifications. There is the kindness you show your dearest friends. This variety I practically dismiss because it's so basic and natural. But the other three intigue me.
The kindness you show to people you know but are not close to. The next time you hear someone at work talking about their father being sick or their sister getting divorced, try this. Ask for names. Find out their father's name or their sister's name. Then the next time you see them ask about their loved ones by name. It can really amaze people. If you say "Did Laura get the information she needed from her lawyer?" it will make them feel as though you have really taken a genuine interest. You will have automatically separated yourself from all the uncaring masses of people that otherwise surround us.
The kindness you show to people you really don't know. One time my former fiancee and I had just arrived in the parking lot of a shopping mall and a foreign man approached us asking for directions. We knew the street he was talking about, but when we tried to advise him how to get there, it was obvious he was becoming hopelessly confused. We decided to go there ourselves with him following in his car behind us. It only took maybe 25 minutes of our day, but it made us feel like angels to have helped someone out that we didn't know. I'm sorry to say that's nearly the last example I can think of for having done something like that, and it was just about five years ago so I really need to brush up on such things.
Then there is the kindness you show to people you can't stand. This one gets a little biblical and I advise caution with this one. I used to think it was a great experiment to make a project out of someone you dislike intensely and to see what positive effect you can have on them by being very nice. The problem is you might still despise them anyway and when you eventually cease your experiment, it kind of makes you look flaky and disingenuous.
Maybe you've noticed this too, that even the kindest people can get pissed off sometimes. I guess I don't really know anyone who's a perfect saint. But you never know when someone might be sitting down to write in their journal and brainstorming about the kindest people they know... how would you like to be on their list?
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