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How many thoughts gets out alive?
Do you ever find it fascinating how little of our truth we communicate in the flow of our conversations?
I am not talking about consciously telling lies. I’m talking about all the thoughts we don’t share because we’ve learned that there is an appropriate time and place for everything, and the scope of what’s inappropriate has been growing like a wild weed patch. We sense that too many of our thoughts would be perceived as impolite, naughty, irrelevant, inappropriate. So much good stuff gets lost in the translation from the flow of raw thought to the refined politeness we eventually utter in our social conversation.
“What do you really think about me” gets blanched into “Great weather we’re having, huh?”
Celebrate Your Life Now Day
While driving around West Salem a few months ago, I pulled into a bank parking lot, heading for a routine cash withdrawal from the money-spewing machine. In the middle of the lot between the ATM and me rested a patrol car, a police officer, and a dead man not walking.
Not a violent death, I was told moments later by a bank teller at the drive-up window. The fellow underneath the yellow tarp had suffered a massive coronary.
I am not accustomed to seeing real-life, end-of-the-line scenes like this, so the emotional impact jarred me. One thought wrestled from my freshly scrambled brain was this ponderous question: what would it be like for me to drop dead right now?
Making connections on Facebook
When I first began playing on Facebook I took the term “friends” much more in harmony with my own love of real-life friendship. A friend was someone I knew, liked, and shared intimately with, by which I mean share our life stories and our feelings in an authentic way.
I didn’t feel right making friends on Facebook with people who weren’t real-life friends. It just seemed weird. But I discovered that I quickly maxed out on people I knew in real life to be friends with and many of my real-life friends didn’t hang on Facebook nor were they that crazy about email correspondence.
Simple pleasures don't cost a paycheck
Over much of my life, my lifestyle has been material moderation. I’ve lived in nice but modest houses, driven nice but modest cars, and enjoyed comfortable but reasonably priced living.
Some of the time that was based on a deliberate choice that the high-paying staff writing jobs I had were great for producing income but bad for spiritual morale. I loved the money, but I dreaded going to work because I did not have any emotional involvement with the words i was writing. It was just a job.
Some of the time it was the economy, usually after just being laid off or trying to find work when there were few good jobs around. I found myself earning just enough money to get by, but not enough to splurge on a bunch of extras.
I generally found that much of the time when I was in the worst shape financially, I was not in the worst shape emotionally. In fact, some of those periods were more exciting and fulfilling than when the money flowed copiously.
