Question of the Day - June 29, 2006

Another big if: You have two job offers on the table and you must decide which of the job offers you are going to accept. After reading the description of the two jobs, which job offer would you accept?

Job One: You are going to be paid a lot of money. You will receive a lot of hard-to-get perks, like four weeks of vacation a year right off the bat, and the job is good stepping stone to even better jobs, but you will need to travel 50% of the time and you will be away from your family a lot.

Job Two: You will make less money and enjoy fewer perks, but the terms of the job are still very attractive. However, taking the job would still be a good choice. career-wise and still keep you on your career track, plus you will get to be at home each night with your family.

Islands In Time

Somewhere along way, I decided I was no longer going to look back in my life and catalog the regrets I had. Like most people, I have made a lot of mistakes, made some pretty questionable decisions and taken more than my share of wrong turns. Anymore, I keep my eyes on the road ahead. Even so, I really would like to understand why so often I ended up so far off track and found myself in places in which I really didn't fit in very well.

Here's the thing. I get busy and have too many things that need to be done, every day. One day ends and almost seamlessly another day begins. Time gets away from me and before I have realized it, another week has passed... another month has passed... another year has passed.

Most of the time I just have too much to do. I am trying to juggle too many responsibilities, and I just mindlessly start living on autopilot. Late in the game, I am discovering that is not a good thing to be doing.

On autopilot, I just cruise along. I am busy and productive and everything seems okay. The problem is that I am in danger of being mindlessly carried along by the unending stream of the demands on my time and my energy. Sometimes my life has simply started moving along a slightly different path that I didn’t plan on taking and I was not even aware that it was happening. Then I begin to have the uneasy sense that something is making me uncomfortable or unhappy. Worse yet, I am not able to put my finger on just exactly what it is that is causing me to feel this way.

There have been other times when I decided I was going to accomplish something in particular and, after putting on blinders, pursued that goal with a vengeance. When I returned back to college at the age of 54, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Events proved it wasn't such a great idea, at least not in my case. But at the onset, I was fully committed to seeing things through to the end.

In both scenarios, I made a fundamental error. I did not give myself permission to just stop once in awhile and take stock of where I was and where I was heading. Now I know that occasionally I need to stop what I'm are doing, no matter what, and declare a necessary break in my routine and clear my calendar for a few days.

Sometimes life steps in and tosses in a small catastrophe or two. When I injured my knee, my life effectively screeched to a hold for a few days. At first, I saw the injury as a totally disruptive event in my life. However over time, I have come to see this down time as a blessing. I was forced to slow down and to clear my agenda. I was able to clear my head and I started focusing on important matters which I had put on the back burner for far too long. I actually got to spend some real quality time with my wife. I work the late evening shift at work, so Marilyn and I don't get to spend a lot of time together. Now that I am on the mend, I know that my busy routine will very soon take over my life again. So I have to make the most of this island in time.

Is it not a little strange it has taken a small catastrophe, to make me willing to give myself this time to mend my life. You and I, we are going to take wrong turns. We are going to make bad decisions. We are going to push ourselves, for whatever is the reason, into situations in which we are profoundly unhappy with ourselves... with our lives. We are willing to scramble to meet the expectations that others have of us. Sometimes, in the process, we begin to forget what it is we want and need. And we get lost in our own lives.

More often than not, we will simply not give ourselves the permission to just take some time off to take stock of our lives and to make necessary course corrections when it becomes necessary.
Our lives are all about the conscious or unconcious choices we make. From this point on, I am choosing to make sure that I set aside the time I need to make sure that my life stays on track. I am finally giving myself permission to do that. I should have done this a long time ago.

The Problem With Always Being Prepared

In the latest issue of REALSIMPLE, I came across a really lovely passage in an article by Molly O'Neill. The title of the article is Ready or Not. She talks about living a life ruled by the notion that one has to be prepared for everything that you do in life. At this point in her life, she has found the flaw in that argument and I wanted to share it with you.

Reality does not always dovetail nicely with theory. My... belief in... Being Prepared, I realized, neither guaranteed a particular outcome nor allowed room for chance, luck, spontaneity, or serendipity, the things that keep life interesting. Any push past the zone of the familiar requires a leap of faith, a moment of terror, a howling careening through unmapped territory. "Ready, or not, here I come!" my brothers and I would cry during our backyard games of hide-and-seek when we were young. It was the unknown that caused our hearts to race, the unpredictable that caused our shrieks of discovery to echo throughout our tidy, well-planned community.

I guess we miss something very important if our lives aren't just a bit messy and unpredictable. Hope you enjoyed this exerpt from her article.

Kindest Regards,

Howard Fireman

Houston Tx.

Walking the Tightrope...Finding A Balance

A saying of Rabbi Hillel: "If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?"

Growing up, we hear a boatload of "wise sayings" and we are taught that we need to remember these phrases. "Someday," our elders solemnly intone to us, "Those words will be worth knowing." And when we are young, we reply, "Yeah. Right." And even when we hear something that does resonate with us and our generation, we can only really understand them in terms of what we have experienced so far in our lives, which usually is not a lot, when we are younger.

All of us have certain books we love very much. On the first reading, we find something in those particular books which is memorable or thrilling or life-changing. Later, upon rereading one of these books, we not only rediscover that which enthralled us in the first place, but also begin to see something entirely different or find entirely new levels of meaning that we didn't see before.

Looking at the saying of Rabbi Hillel, above, you might be tempted to say, "Okay. That is pretty straightforward. If I don't take care of my own needs, who is going to do that for me. You know, looking out for number one first. A very 21st century notion. Being selfish and self-centered is okay, sometimes. But then, if that is all that I am, a total "Me!!!" sort of person, am I going to be able to live with myself, much less other people even wanting to be around me?" The final question of when is it okay to be selfish and when does one have to put the need of others first...even that question isn't that difficult to understand.

Here's the thing. The longer you live, the more you experience. The more you experience, the more you know about how the world really works. You fall in love with someone and your world is turned upside down. You get married and with your spouse, have children and your world changes overnight. You trade in the two-seater sports car that you love for an SUV. You become a daddy or a mommy. Your priorities change. You trade clubbing on Saturday night for changing diapers and watching your children grow up, strong and healthy. And so on. And before you know it, your children have grown up and they have children of their own.

So whether you have made the transition from being a twenty-something to a thirty-something and later on to a forty-something... with every change you see the world with new eyes. Your realities have changed. You understand more because you have made it through yet one more stage of your live, successfully or maybe, not so successfully. At any rate, the three parts of Hillel's bit of wisdom begin to mean a whole lot more than they did before.

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me?" After awhile, that begins to translate into: "If I cannot take care of myself, how am I going to be able to take of anyone else? If I don't get a good job and make sure I get that promotion, I won't be able to pay the house note or the car note. We won't be able to go on vacation this year. If I don't start our 401k early enough, my spouse and I are going to be in deep trouble when it comes time to retire. And what about the kid's college fund?" Suddenly, taking care of number one first isn't being selfish. It simply means being pragmatic... practical... sensible. Up to a point, that is.

Like all things, that has a flip side. "And if I am only for myself, what am I?" Once again, let's translate that into words to which we can kind of relate. We are forced to say to ourselves, "However, I am not the only person in the world. There is my significant other and (maybe) my kids. My parents. And of course, I have to be there for my good friends. And during the holidays, I want to make sure that the people who don't have anything to eat on Christmas Day get a meal. And if there is tsunami in Asia this year....." Well, you get the idea.

We are part of this larger thing we call the community. We want to be full-fledged members so we have to pay our dues. So we do. But belonging comes with a cost. We have to take some of our time, our money and our energy and give it to other people. And sometimes, it is money or time or energy that we really do need to use in pursuit of our own goals and aspirations. But we give these things away anyway, because that is the price we have to pay to join the human race as a full-fledged member.

So here is the tricky part. How do I strike a balance between these two competing considerations?
Don't look at me. I am never always certain how to accomplish that. Every day is a new day and with each new day, the circumstances change. I am a high wire walker just like the rest of you. Folks, I just play it by ear and hope that I make the right decision each time. Being able to strike a balance and knowing what to do about this conundrum every day of my life is not an easy thing to do. I just do the best I can and I suppose so does everyone else, as well, which makes everyone of us A Fiddler On the Roof*, doesn't it?


*A person who tries to stand on a very steep roof and who tries to play a violin there, while doing his best not to lose his balance or fall off the roof and break his neck.

Sam and Emma: A Love Story in Emails - 16 - Emma Checks In

To: Sam T.

From: Emma Landauer

March 1, 2006

My Dear, Dear Sam

Got your email. Sorry I haven't written sooner. Have been been on the run and by the time I get home am too tired to even turn on the computer.

I have been out of town working in the clinics other office in Heidelburg for a few days. At least while I am there, I am away from HER. Now I am back. I dread having to go back to the clinic in the morning but I don't have any other real choices at the moment regarding where I work. So I feel like I am stuck here in this small apartment and this really bad job.

But I do have some feelers out to a university in Iowa. Not sure if there is actually any chance to get on there, but I am going to check things out to see if there is. So as you can see, a lot of things are going on with me and I really need to talk to you on the phone.

I do miss you. Sometimes when I do stop for long enough to clear my head, you are the first person I think about. You make me feel that I am loved and needed. So don't think that just because I don't write you so frequently, that I am not thinking about you.

How is your family? And your granddaughter? How old is she now? I think your are so lucky to be surrounded by a wife who loves you and two really good kids. And a really great granddaughter. You are really so very fortunate. I don't know how or even why you find the time to fit me into your life. Please keep writing me. Don't stop, even if I don't write for awhile. Things are a little complicated for me... as always. But I always know you are out there. So I don't feel quite so alone as I would be if you weren't there there at all.

Bye for now.

Love and kisses,

Emma

To be continued...

Random Moments - 1

A Moment in Time

Reality Check: I went over to The Forum, which is a pricey independent living center for senior citizens. My mother lives there now and as I was getting out of my car, I watched a fellow about 70 years old or thereabouts. He got out of the car. You could tell his legs were hurting. He walked stiffly, slowly and carefully. It was arthritis kicking in or his knees or something like that. I had witnessed older people getting out of cars a thousand times before. I had watched them as they walked, in the manner that older people will do. But this time, I knew how he felt.

Recently I injured my knee and during recovery, my legs complain very loudly when I try to walk. As I watched him, I understood for the first time in my life what he was experiencing. He is not all that much older than I am. I will remember that moment of understanding, because one day I will become just like him.

Buddha Says....

One of my associates at work emailed me this insightful quotation today, a thought that can serve us well, in a world full of hype and misinformation.

"Believe nothing because a supposed wise person said it. Believe nothing just because a belief is generally held. Belief nothing because it is said in ancient books. Belief nothing just because it is said to be of devine origin. Believe nothing just because someone else believes it. Believe only what you yourself test and judge to be true. " ~ Buddha

Imagine That! An Iraqi Conundrum

Who could have ever imagined that Saddam Hussein would probably be the only person in the whole of Iraq who could count on everyone making sure that nothing undue happens to him.Think about it. At least until his trial ends, one way or the other, he can count on a greater level of security protecting him than that which protected him while he was in power. And the US is now doing the protecting at our expense! Everyone else in Baghdad must continually look over his or her shoulder wherever he or she has to go. Just exactly who is getting the last laugh in this case?