The Sweet Sixteenth Anniversary Post

November Sunset White Oak River

This November will bring up the sixteenth anniversary of my first post on Typepad. November is a time for memories for me. 

I wrote on the web for a few years before I found Typepad and then used other platforms including my own site but I never gave up on Typepad. Spread across a few blogs on the service, I have over two thousand posts.  I write because it helps me figure things out and because I can look back sometimes and see how right or wrong I have been. Sometimes what I write helps people with a decision but mostly I write to clarify things in my own mind.

Perhaps I have never shared any great words of wisdom, but I have managed to get this far in life with respect for our lives and how we have lived them. Writing has helped me do that. My wife, Glenda, and I have had a wonderful adventure. Some of it has been hard with sleepless nights but there have been plenty of enjoyable times also. I have made some mistakes along the way but I have also stood up for a lot of things that I believed. Sometimes doing that was not easy and certainly not rewarding monetarily, but having the courage to do the right thing is how I was raised. I am proud of it and I am unlikely to change.

There are a lot of things in today's world that you cannot understand no matter how much you write about it. This has been a tough year.  If you had any innocence left, like me, you probably lost that innocence in 2020. 

Recently I was driving home from Lowe's Home Improvement on a Sunday afternoon.  Highway 58 where I was driving is a two-lane road when delivers much of our beach traffic to the beaches.  It is often easy to recognize beach traffic.  A mini-van or sport utility packed to the ceiling with a luggage carrier on top is a pretty good tipoff. As I was headed north what looked like a beach-bound mini-van heading south swerved well over into my lane.  It was close enough that I had to swerve also and I also blew my horn. Had I been going faster than the posted 45 MPH or not paying attention, I might have ended up in an accident.  The mini-van was easily doing 60 MPH. We have learned over the years that the closer some people get to the beach, the faster they drive. Supermarket parking lots can be dangerous on check-in days.

I can only speculate why the mini-van came into my lane. My first guess and the odds are that it is a good guess is that the driver was distracted by his or her cell phone. It happens all the time.  The question is what is so important that you would risk your family's lives so close, literally just a few miles, from your vacation destination? It appears some have become so connected that it impossible to disconnect and focus on important things. That includes parents who go on walks with their children but never take their eyes off their cell phone.  Like my mother would say, "Who raised those folks?"

Some other things about the current state of our country baffle me. How can people who exclaim their extreme loyalty to our country think they are helping the country by intimidating others who are trying to vote or participate in the political process?  Since when is it okay to use pepper spray on a peaceful march that included children and was only headed to vote? Even more scary, what gives you the right to force a bus containing a political opponent, the former vice president of the United States, off the road. Intimidation and violence have no place in the world that I hope will welcome my grandchildren. Between political intimidation and people too stupid to wear masks during a pandemic, I am not sure what our world will be like when I write next year's post if I am lucky enough to be around. I hope the future looks a little brighter.

I will close with some observations from my last year's post. They have hardly changed.

1. First, there are many people in the world whose actions either intentionally or unintentionally are hostile to the rest of us. Often we are little but roadblocks in their schemes which often have more to do about their own insecurities than anything else.
2. If you are trying to do what is right for the majority of the people, you are going to run into people who will oppose you. There are people out there who care more about themselves than about anything. The concept of the greater good is foreign to them. I have seen these people, had to deal with them and felt the hurt long after they have disappeared.
3. I have also come to realize that there are people who really do not care for facts unless the "facts" happen to bolster their own opinion. It is hard to understand but they seem to love to cling to the worst stories about people. Even if the narrative has no factual basis, it lets them rationalize their dislike, distrust or divorce from reality.  They deal in lies and rumor.
4. Another fact of life is that many people have trouble admitting that they are wrong. They will try to shovel the blame over on you even when it requires unbelievable contortions.  It is never their fault mainly because they dress in Teflon and everything slides off of them.
5. A goal for us all in our thoughts, our writings, and our actions is to call out the people who are trying to destroy our world. If you are silent, you are complicit.
6. Finally, if you are struggling to demonstrate balance in your thoughts, maybe you need to see if your subject requires a stand instead of balance.