The Speed of Thought? Almost

Bill Gates made a prediction that it would not be long before the internet gave us real time results for our thoughts.

I have to say he is mostly correct, and I have daily evidences of that.

Someone in the next seat over talking to someone about that one movie where so and so was the lead role with whats-his-name and they were being chased all over by this underground organization, and, wow, it's on the tip of my tongue, and within that amount of time, I can usually say, that was The Net, with Sandra Bullock and Dennis Miller, Yeah, that's it, and I did that on my iPhone.

The thing is it happens all the time, what does a rugby ball look like, what is ataraxia, what state has the largest football stadium, all kinds of stuff, and much of it downright trivial in nature.

So why my excitement tonight? Well, tonight I got a call from a young lady I have not talked to in over 25 years, Chrissy, and I am telling you, it was like we were kids on the phone again, just out of high school, never had we met except through letters and an occasional phone call, and then, life happened, and we stopped talking. That was then.

One recent evening I was going over some memories in my mind, and her name popped up so I typed into Google, her name just as I remembered it, and the first three hits were Reunion.com (shameless plug). While at first I was excited to find that I could see some of the details about her that I recognized were probably her, no contact info was available unless I signed up for three months minimum.

So i did, and got her phone number and called her, yep, her message still sounded like her, wow, she had her old name back. What's she been up to? So I left her a message with a few key moments described that I figured would jog her memory if it really was her and would not mean a thing if not, and left my cell phone number.

The next day, right at the end of a perfect day, I was driving home from a run to the store, and she called me and we talked for an hour, and reminisced, and I laughed as I thought about how, tonight we were reunited after more than 25 years, and it took Googling her name, and paying a small price to access a reunion service, and she was now on the phone with me. If that isn't speed of thought, it almost is, and is darn well close enough for most of us.

The Marvel of Modern Technology

I have long said that we would not truly be in the Information Age until we no longer printed to hard copy before something we received digitally was usable to us. Basically, we have arrived and I still print things, and am truly at times amazed at the marvelous things these Printer/Scanner/Fax machines can do. I mean, who thought faxes would even hang on this long, they are like the 8 track tape players in a sea of CDs.

But today I was emailed some UPS shipping labels to print out and put on some boxes to be picked up in a few days and I was again amazed at the intricate detail that this printer can produce on a piece of paper passing under this whirring box with some cartridges attached to it.

Seriously, when I looked at the printout, I was again amazed at a technology that I have taken altogether too much for granted. Still more amazing is the fact that there is a gun that can read that UPC code and get so much information that has already been duplicated and stored at another location so that the data can be compared and tracked at the right points, without having to write anything down.

So here again, Wow, after all these years, a little contemplation of modern technology still leaves me amazed and awed.

So Much Reality Might Not Be Good

Reality TV has made itself onto the web, to the extent that individuals with little or no film experience, put whatever their minds can conceive on the web, at places like You Tube and FaceBook, and many others.

I have noticed a lot of the content has no restraint, no moral limits, and represents to a great extent the very base and animal natures that are finding new expression in the upcoming generation as well as those who have merely found a freer place to bare their minds. There is plenty of good in the world, and I refuse to take too dim a view of this phenomenon, except to say that we still have an obligation as individuals to decide what is real, and what is garbage. Remember the old computer construct, GIGO, Garbage In, Garbage Out, is as true today as ever.

Those who allow media outlets to report what the world is like are often the ones who tend to blame their surroundings and consequences for the way they feel, act, even live. If you allow your life to be a reaction to life around you, then you will find yourself sinking deeper as the world around you does so.

Rise up, create your life, and decide each moment what your reality will be, and you will find a new and wonderful world of excitement manifesting itself to you. And you will be the master of your own destiny.

Technology Provides the Means for Constant Education

As I sit quietly somewhere, about to be content doing nothing, while waiting, I suddenly realize I have a book I am reading in my iPhone, using eReader.  I am currently reading the Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles, but have downloaded many recent Business Best Sellers and have a traveling library that hardly takes any space away from my vast music collection and podcasts of recent talk shows and radio shows that I was unable to listen to while working.

 

All in all, there is very little my little iPhone cannot allow me to catch up on, with its 8Gb of space.  I am simply never without something to listen to or catch up on while I am traveling, on a bus, sitting in a waiting room, or waiting for a seat in a restaurant.  Of course if there is a human companion nearby, I still show respect to them and make conversation, unlike many of my teenage counterparts who can literally be standing in a crowd together and not one paying attention to another in their group, but each engaged in a conversation or concert in their own world.

 

I have never forgotten and will never forget that the primary purpose of these gadgets is to improve communications, and make our connections with others less disjointed, not more.

 

I have to appreciate the wonders of technology, but I still find myself amazed at the abuses.  It certainly does bring a whole world of media to the very one foot square that each person occupies making it unimportant now whether we be in proximity of a TV or a radio as to whether news and media can reach us, or whether we can buy the latest book on the bestseller list.

 

The other day I was lost trying to find an address I had neglected to google beforehand, so I pulled over and googled it right there on my phone, and it gave me not only the map, but allowed me to see the satellite view of the area, and zoom to within 1000 ft of the roof, seeing exactly which entrances pertained to my desired destination.

 

Wow, I am still amazed, for as far as we have come, how much farther we can still go from here.
 
James Williams
infohwyman.blogspot.com
infohwyman.com

One of MY Dearest Friends Reminded Me

In response to my latest post previous to this one, a dear friend whom I have repeatedly mentioned in my writings, Lennox Morey, reminded me that while this might be a major re-dedication of my life, each day, week, and month we must re-dedicate ourselves to that which is most important.

 

It is true and I hope to have him post his comments more than just reply, because I have truly at times of my life, steered my boat by the currents of his wisdom.  He is a hard man to understand, unless you are willing to suspend normal modes of thinking and stop doing anything but listen while he talks.

 

He has been called crazy by so many, but I call him often for inspiration, and hang at times on his every word.

 

He has taught me most importantly, that to be a great leader, I must know who I am following, and not worry or look behind.

 

This past weekend was a weekend of re-dedications, as my lovely wife and I worked to paint our family room and marshall what kids would help, to get the job done before the weekend had ended.

 

Saturday night, Holly and I took a few hours and re-dedicated ourselves to each other, and had a forever memorable moment as we shared thoughts for the future, and our vision of how things will be in the next year.

 

And so I sit on a Monday morning preparing to join a call, and basking in the glow of a huge weekend of re-dedication, and knowing that I cannot fail, and that whatever the circumstances around me, I still create my life how it will be, with my choices and my focus.

 

Most of all, I re-dedicated my life to my Savior, Jesus Christ, and had a wonderful experience listening to our Church General Conference and the myriad of topics covered.

Re-Dedicating My Life

It seems clear to me that there is nothing more important we can do for our life's work than to find something we love doing, something that moves us all by itself, and doing that until we are the best we can be at it. Not compared to everybody else, but compared to all the other things we could be doing with our time. As one man once said, "What e'er thou art, act well thy part." Be the best YOU, that you can be, and that only happens when we stop living on the whims of others and start responding to the call of our hearts, and, as Stephen R. Covey says, "Find our Voices".

The truth of the matter is that some never do, find their voice. So many die with their music still in them. So many never rise above the proverbial "lives of quiet desperation."

What would it be like to not have to awake with an alarm clock, like that morning we were off to Disneyland for the first time.

We live in an abundant world, and we certainly, here in America, have no shortage of the tools God has provided all of us, to live lives of abundance.

Why do so many, in such a land of opportunity lead lives of quiet desperation.

It is our base nature to be selfish, and to seek first and foremost for that which is momentarily pleasing.

Do we have a choice whether or not to live such shallow lives? Certainly we do have a choice, but so many of us fail to find a reason strong enough to motivate us to make the right choice. It is not that we do not want "true joy." It is that so many simply do not see the value in finding something to move us to rise above pleasing the senses, to that joy that can only be felt by a life lived to God's full desire for us.

Can we find the motivation on our own? I don't think so. I think we must seek to feel God's plan for us, to feel about ourselves the way he must feel, if that is possible.

To see things as he sees them. Can we do that by ourselves? No, but he grants to each man and woman, as much of a glimpse as that man or woman is ready to see, and so the challenge; the primary challenge, is to cleanse the channel between us and Him. To make the communication between us and Him so clean and clear, and feel the gratitude for all He has given us, that we can truly acknowledge his hand in all things.

Then can we begin to see things all around us that have been there all the time, but that we never noticed, or whose import we never realized.

I am awakening to a new phase of my life, and the possibilities are limitless.

While America Was Dreaming

Well, here we sit on the brink of the largest possible financial disaster in World History, and we all saw it coming a year or more ago, but while some were saying we are in a recession but doing nothing, others were saying, "the fundamentals of our economy are as sound as ever."

The problem we now have is that many leaders are lining up, happy to try their hand at saving us from this awful mess they have gotten us into, using exactly the same tricks that brought down Enron and other huge corporations.  By claiming that deregulation equals less government interference, they set us up with what feels like the "Free Market Capitalism" we all thought we were living in, all the while, allowing unchecked greed to take its course on weaker players and unaware consumers.  (Enron is a good example of this with massive power shut downs in California because of price gaming by some speculators and traders, affecting millions of people's lives while a few played God.)

When the damage has been done, and the major players that know better have ditched and taken their booty with them, the government then swoops in and says they will save us, but we are all going to have to tighten our purse strings for a few years and there may be a lot of people losing their retirements, but we can't bail out all the little people, because if the big guys fall, we all fall.  So we are going to have to prop up the big guys and you all are going to be okay eventually.  Because of the prior deregulation, what was morally wrong, has not been legally wrong, so those responsible, are guilty only of guessing wrong and losing millions of other people's money while protected from personal responsibility, going down in infamy, to have to spend the rest of their wretched lives consulting, or worse, retiring in some other part of the world with the booty.

Here we go again.  Hurry up and pass this well-thought, carefully constructed 3 page, $700 Billion dollar proposal that gives emperor like decision power over who lives and who dies, company-wise.  The game gets more wild as both sides wrangle to win support, and Bush looks more pathetic than ever with his laymen terms lesson of how all this nucular economics thing works and why this "sitiation" has all of a sudden become so dire there is no way we can just hope it away any more, like we did the whole last 8 years.

What can we do?  Does this now set up our President, 4 months before leaving office, to put into place some huge sweeping reform, an Executive Order maybe, worse than the Twin Towers justification for Homeland Security, wiretapping, the torture and killing of innocent people, and the like?

We can only wait in suspense.  What else is there at this point?

Tick Tock.

Arizona Might Be Hot, But After A Monsoon...

After a summer monsoon in Arizona, there is hardly a sight more worth seeing than an Arizona sunset.

I often ponder where else I want to live, and now that the Global economy is opening up and my world is less geographically dependent, Arizona summers always get me thinking what a big world I really live in.

But now that I can capture these on a fairly frequent basis with my iPhone, I have been getting some really beautiful ones.

It certainly gives one pause, and always takes my breath away. To me, there is no more sure testimony that I am part of a larger plan, and am touched daily by my creator, and my Father.

Some Things You Still Cannot Do on the Web

I woke up late to go to the gym to work-out this morning, so instead, I went for a walk around the neighborhood, something I typically used to do only at night, but here I was in the cool morning after a nice Arizona rain last night, and it was still cool.

The first thing I noticed is that freshness that everything has when it is still wet from rain, not that it is the first time I have noticed it, but as with anything, when we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change.

I have been doing a lot of changing and my awareness of the world around me is heightened. As much time as I spend on the web, I try to never lose track of the fact that everything I do for money, is for the sole purpose of being able to spend more time in the places of the world that I want to be with my sweetheart, Holly, and my wonderful kids and grandkids.

There is no way I can see that we will ever be able to exercise on the web, but even if someday someone discovers a way, I don't think I will ever trade away one such simple pleasure of life.

When the Student is Ready...

I have heard and thought I understood the oft repeated phrase, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear."

 

Today, I understood that on a new and entirely more meaningful level, because of an interview I heard with Dan Millman, the author of "The Way of the Peaceful Warrior."

 

He said that so many of us think of this in the way that when we are finally ready to listen, and learn, we will have some master or wise teacher come along and take us under their wing, and teach us.

 

Dan said this is not the sense we should understand this, and it takes away from the truth of the phrase.

 

According to Dan, and I totally see his point, it can be simply enough read, "When we begin to listen, those things that have lessons for us, will finally get through to us, to teach us, and thus the teacher appears."  In that sense, the teacher is always there, and when we change our thinking, raise our eyes from their downward gaze, we see what has been waiting to teach us, and we finally hear, and to the extent we are indeed ready, to understand.

 

This is really how I understand the Law of Attraction, and the Law of Vibration, which many see as the basis of the Law of Attraction.

 

When you are on a certain frequency, you feel and see those things that vibrate on that frequency.  As you elevate or change your vibration, you come into sympathetic vibration with other things and you become aware of things that, while always there, have not been evident to you while vibrating at a different frequency, much like changing the TV channel.  Those signals were all in the room with us, but as we change the channel, we see those things that we could not, at a different frequency.

 

Seems simple, yet some never get it, or at least they never get the relevance in their own lives, of the need to elevate their own frequencies.

 

I have so much more to find, but at least I am finally searching, a willing student, yes, and learning still.

The Cost of Doing Nothing

I have lately heard many friends and associates say that they are just not going to vote this time around, because they can't stand either candidate. While that feels like a safe route to take, the truth is harder to take. Either way, one of these men will be voted into office, and frankly, one of the greatest costs of doing nothing, is that you have added nothing of your own personal wisdom to the debate or the outcome.

Worse than that is that some of you who do nothing will likely still claim the right to complain or worse, whine, about the way things have gotten with whomever ends up in office.

I voted for the last guy, and yes, I have learned something, but I can't say I would change my choice if I could go back right now and do it again. Sometimes, even when it feels like we have no choice, no voice, it turns out that we do. We just sometimes need to talk louder, or find a better platform. Or build one.

The internet gives so many people, the tools to accomplish a world of good, and to add their voice to the billions of others in such a way that it can indeed be heard, and make a difference.

So, speak up Americans, educate those around you, or learn more, from others, and from the candidates themselves. Don't throw in the towel because the system is not apparently set up for your opinion to count. Make some changes, there is plenty of time, though the clock is ticking on this one.

Some will sit back, and beat their chests, and then change... the channel. Others will speak up, and make their mark upon the world. Still others will never even know things have changed.

How rare indeed was the founding of our great nation. In a world where most rebellions are led by the "fed-up few" who have nothing to lose, ours alone in the history of the world, was led by men of means, who had much to lose, and were willing to pledge it all to the casting off of the tyranny of a king whose usefulness had run out. I still search for its equal in world history.

What will it take for us to be willing to leave our comfort zones and lead a cause for change?

One by one we see it happening. Don't wait. Be the change you want to see in the world; one man proved it can happen that way.

No Snow, No Test Pattern on the WWW

I still remember growing up, if all else failed, it was time to go to bed when the last channel went to snow or a test pattern. It was the end of another programming day.

Now, being connected to the world, and having cyber friends and events happening all over the world, the line is harder to see.

Oh wait, that's my heavy eyelids! ;)

We have to remember, that even though somewhere in the world, the sun is rising, our bodies have a clock, set to local time, and they need to rest. Living on the WWW does not mean we have to be awake for all events.

No worries, if anything important happens while you sleep, someone will come get you, and let you know, maybe even Ted Turner (CNN). Either way, the adage still applies, "early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." You won't find yourself falling asleep in the middle of the day.

Now off to bed with ye.

PayPal really is What it Calls Itself

Living on the web has the potential to make life a lot easier and at the same time, a lot less private. One area that still has a lot of people worried, and with some good reason, is making purchases. The main frustration I encounter plenty, is with the requirement of most purchases, that you default to an auto-renewal of that purchase unless you notify otherwise.

 

This is a very legitimate and profitable way of doing business, and allows people the freedom from having to babysit subscriptions and other recurring purchases.

 

Sometimes we make credit card purchases that turn out to be something other than what we wanted or in some way cause us to reconsider having that recurring charge. Usually, the last information available, and sometimes not available easily, is how to cancel; the less legitimate, the harder it is to find. Well, PayPal has an option, whenever a purchase is made that sets up a recurring hit on the account, that allows the cancellation of that recurring hit, with the click of an option.

 

Obviously, credit card purchases should never be made capriciously, however, many websites use the, "this price available this time only, if you leave this site, the price is gone..." approach, and that does sometimes lead to purchases that are less than well researched.

 

It's nice to know that some places not only guard your online information well, but have safeguards built in that to some extent, make the reversal of a rush decision not have to result in an all night search for the receipt, or purchase information.

 

This is just one more reason that I am ecstatic to be make my home on the Web.

Does it Get any Better than iPhone?

Of course it does and it will, but I am right now enjoying the best of several worlds, now that I am up and running with a WinPwn unlocked iPhone, on my T-Mobile family plan, that has as much battery life and 8GB of space for more than enough music, and pictures, and allows me to listen to Pandora Radio with my internet service on the TMobile account.

It was not simple to get where I am now, and I am documenting the steps it took, and preparing to publish an eZine article. Kudos to all the dev teams working on affordable (not free, unless you are too cheap to donate once you see the benefits to be derived from all their work) solutions to the proprietary lockdowns on this technology.

The solution that worked for me did not end up being jailbreakme.com, though their work is well done; my firmware (2.0) was too far along to be able to downgrade far enough, in fact, FW 2.0 does not to my knowledge allow for downgrading. Nevertheless, the solution ended up being an oddly named product, that allowed me to literally pwn my iPhone. That's right, I said pwn it. It's a product called WinPwn 2.0.0.3 (RC1) and it required me to do more than I expected to have to, but once I was done, I now have a T-Mobile powered iPhone that has full on internet capability, clean running You-Tube access, and I do mean clean running.

I watched a full 1 hour streamed documentary without any pauses or ripples, which I have not done on any handheld computer or phone, even my most recent Toshiba e800 running xcpuscalar which overclocked my xscale cpu in the e800 to 530 MHz, and could run most full length movies almost without a glitch could not stream so cleanly.

Yes, I have long known that Apple memory and cpu access technology is faster and cleaner than the equivalent Microsoft OS no matter what the hardware, as evidenced by Apple lately using Intel and Unix OS. In fact, as it turns out, Unix is the OS behind what I am running on my iPhone, though I must qualify that with, "I do not know much of the details, but am researching it for my article."

Suffice to say, this is the next best thing to the Killer App I have long sought, because this is one tool that just about does everything I have long awaited to be available on one device.
I Twitter with ease now, from my iPhone and as I said earlier, can listen to Pandora radio as if it were music on my phone. That's worth the wait.

Listen and Learn

I had a fun experience while leaving my workplace yesterday. I encountered a man standing by a tree looking curiously up into its branches at a locust (cicada) sounding its deafening screechy song. His name is Anthony, and he works in my building, but unlike the myriad workers who pass that tree each day, he had stopped to smell the flowers, or in this case, to observe life in one of its many forms.

We are very much alike, Anthony and I, and we hit it off and had quite a conversation on the way to the parking lot, but not before both standing and looking up into the tree. It was mostly about taking time to notice things around us and not being so caught up in just making it through each day, as so many do.

We must learn to listen, and that does not always mean just with our ears. We hear with our ears, but truly other senses are employed if we are listening. Hearing happens, such as when the proverbial tree falls in the forest, assuming we are there. But listening is something that only happens as a matter of choice, and involves focus, and stillness.

Be still, and listen. A dear friend of mine, Marjam, a half a world away in Estonia, spoke in her blog about the advice of a monk. When asked if he could teach one and only one thing to the world, what would it be? He said merely, "Listen."

I do not wish to take away from the simple profundity of that statement, but wish to add my own experience to it.

I have learned through my life, to still myself, to find a quiet place, or to be quiet wherever I am, and listen.

Life is moving, breathing, laughing, loving, all around us, each moment, and we see so little of it, as we move from one place to another.

Learn to be still.

Learn to Listen.

Shhhhh.

Hear it?

How Much Do I Matter Really?

Billions of humans live each day almost oblivious of the rest of those who occupy this blue-green orb.

We touch each other often, but mostly we brush each other on our hurried way to some-thing; some event, or some place where we can occupy our thoughts, or our hands, or merely our time.

In a world of growing connectedness, it will no longer be possible to live out our sometimes solitary lives without affecting and being affected by many more people than in any previous generation.

And Yet...

The way many of us go through each day, this transformation will go largely unnoticed.

Is it possible for one person to help a thousand? How about a million?

It happens each day, and many of us fail to notice that it is not by some miraculous event that many lives are changed, but by little shifts in awareness, of one of us at a time.

On a planet of almost 7 Billion people, having a notable effect in the lives of mere thousands is almost not newsworthy. But newsworthy it remains, because of the simple fact that most of us still allow ourselves to be content, with getting through our own lives, without hurting or damaging too many others along the way.

Find your Voice and make a difference. It is part of what gives us joy in the journey.

The Cluetrain Almost Left Me

I have just recently discovered The Cluetrain Manifesto, and while I feel I am a relative late-comer to the concept, I am by far, still ahead of the popular curve on this. Why is it that most of the people in our land still resist change?

I discovered and bought the book last month, and it sat on my shelf waiting for me to find the time to read it, when, quite by accident, I opened up another book which I knew I should read and simply had not. The 8th Habit has turned out not only to be an eye, and mind opener, but again made reference early in the book, to The Cluetrain Manifesto. Now, I have just begun to read both books, and am studying them for what change they can help me effect in my own life.

I am sure I will have much to say about both, as every chapter in either one jolts me again and again, and even when I re-read the words of a chapter. There are some wonderful teachings which I had already begun to feel the need for, but did not realize at the time what I was feeling.

I am finding my voice, and I am beginning to see that there is so much that I can contribute to help those around me see and accept the direction our world is going. The world and the work of the 21st Century, for most of us in the USA, will be work done with our mouths and with our minds and not so much with our hands, and those who resist will merely continue to complain about how we are losing all of our jobs to foreign nations that will do it for less.

Let's all wake up and realize, the changes we see happening around us should not cause us to curl up and hold on to what we know. It should cause us to start learning again, possibly enrich that which we know, hopefully learn some new things. I see this as very positive, and want to be part of the world we are moving into.

To use a phrase from my childhood, "Resistance is Futile."

Independence Day and Change is on the Horizon

I once voted for the man called W, but I cannot see now, what I saw then. Am I blind or do we have at the helm, a man who could not keep his own business ventures afloat during most of his young life, and who has been emotionally absent from most of the important decisions of his current office visit?

I will not rant, I will just say, that I have been doing a lot of soul searching, and, while I am not happy with the Republican party, I am also not sure that either party offers the change we so richly deserve and so desperately need in this country.

I am studying the latest work of Fareed Zakaria, "The Post-American World". To say that America is losing its primacy in the world is not to say that the USA has not played an important role in the improvement of world economic and political conditions. There is no doubt that we have blazed a trail for the world to emulate, but emulate they are, and we seem to be losing sight of the responsibility we have. And so we must of necessity stop trying to dictate to the rest of the world that they must set up a Democratic government. In fact, it was never Democracy that was setup for us by the Founding Fathers. It was a Republic, "if you can keep it," said Benjamin Franklin, and we may actually have already done our best to dismantle it beyond recognition.

Still, without us, or rather US, there would be precious little in the world to prevent the uprising and despotic rule of any of several tyrants. Many have tried and we have been there to maintain the independence and support, for most of the world, and uphold, freedom for the masses.

Can we patch the wounds we have inflicted on our great nation? We have to care as a nation and strive to regain some of the goodwill which has been lost. But we also need to stop trying to be the self-declared policeman for the world. We are well hated throughout most of the world for our presumptuous leadership, and determination that we know better how to deal with our weapons of mass destruction than anyone else.

Democracy does not mix well with some of the highly religious nations we are trying to help with it. Democracy, and the Republican form of government we were given by our Founding Fathers, does not thrive where there is not individual freedom, morality, and sovereignty. We will see what change we can effect this time around, and what good John McCain can do if he can even defeat the growing wave of support Barack Obama is finding even in conservatives who remain unaware of his extreme views in many areas he does not address right now.

Here's to the audacity of hope, no matter what the results.

The Universe is my Playground

The trust we have for what we know to be true, is a powerful element in determining where we are and where we stay. Those who are willing to know that there is knowledge out there that we must find and understand and make a part of us, are constantly in motion, while those who feel they know all they need to know, express that in so many ways.

New ideas bounce off of some people, like a freshly inflated basketball off a wall. Don't try that around here, we already tried that years ago and it doesn't work. Ha!! No it did not work and yet how much of that was you and how much was the thing you tried?? You may never know, and probably will never care that you could have, had you only wanted change badly enough.

I know that my knowledge comes from the ever changing application of new ideas to old ones. I cherish the old ones, for they got me here, but I never feel tied to them such that a new one is not welcome. Some call that wishy washy, or unsure. I am not unsure about how I feel about a great many important things. I am however certain that there a myriads of points of view from which I have not yet seen the same things. Therein lies the importance of this. Two people can see the very same thing and have experiences worlds apart from each other, standing right next to each other. It is not the thing, or even the looking at it that is the reality you experience, but the glasses through which you see the thing, that makes it for you, an experience to treasure, or to ignore.

I could keep going for a long time, but will save some for later. My universe is spinning on.

The Faster Pace Means "Sometimes You Just Need to Steer"

Life in the fast paced world we live in now, can at times seem like it is taking chunks out of us as it passes us by, but I like to think of it all as a refining process. It's like "life in a rock tumbler." It is inevitable that some rough edges will get knocked off and in the end we'll be a smoother version of ourselves, even shinier. The problem for many is that they misunderstand the bumps and grinds as misfortune and go about it with a gloom and doom attitude instead of thinking, "Oh yeah, there goes another rough edge, ouch, didn't need that one either."

Sounds kind of goofy but so does sitting next to someone in a waiting room somewhere listening to them whining as if they were a 10 year old talking about how they can never get a break, when all around them are people worse off than them and people with more problems making a better go at it.

I do not want this to become a rant. It is what it is; my version of why "bad things" seem to happen to good people. Because what we call "bad things" are just things and they happen to all of us, and they are part of the process of getting back to our starting point better for the journey.

I am grateful for all of it, the journey is more exciting that way, and in fact, Joy should never be our goal, but instead should be our chosen method of travel. Peace Be The Journey.