Advice when given two bad choices...

If we must have an enemy at the head of the government, let it be one whom we can oppose and for whom we are not responsible, who will not involve our party in the disgrace of his foolish and bad measures.

~ Alexander Hamilton, to fellow Federalist the House speaker Theodore Sedgwick

Decent advice

You shouldn’t worry about criticism from somebody that you wouldn’t ask for advice.

~ Aaron Rodger

Hitched

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.

~ John Muir

Well...

A friend of mine told me to shoot first and ask questions later.

I was going to ask him why, but I had to shoot him.

~ John Wayne

Back when men were men

George Washington McLintock: [the two argue heatedly over whom their daughter will stay with] No go, Kate. 

Katherine McClintock: I hate you. Oh, how I hate you. 

George Washington McLintock: Half the people in the world are women. Why does it have to be YOU that stirs me? [passionately kisses Katherine] 

Katherine McClintock: You animal!

~ John Wayne and Maureen OHara, in McLintock

Good advice

Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers. 

~ Voltaire

Inspired indeed

Make friends with people who want the best for you 

Your friendships aren't just social circles. 

They're projections of your future self. 

After hanging out, do you feel inspired or drained?  

The answer will reveal your relationship's quality.

~ Jordan Peterson

Start with your habits

Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world 

Some people complain about everything but can't manage their own life. 

 

Look at yourself first. This makes you confident to face bigger issues later. 

Changing the world is hard, so start with your habits.

~ Jordan Peterson

Read online in a retirement blog

The Lone Wolf: 

Radical independence is the other end of codependence. 

It’s a different way to medicate your pain of not connecting and a lack of trust.

Seems to make sense

Three rules to remember:

1) When you give a government a power, it will never voluntarily relinquish it 

2) If you give a government a power, it will ultimately abuse that power to the maximum extent possible 

3) Nobody ever complied their way out of totalitarianism

~ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Deep heart, yes...

Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart

 ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Yep

If you’re bored, go on a walk.

If you’re anxious, go on a walk.

If you lack ideas, go on a walk.

If you need space, go on a walk

If you need exercise, go on a walk

If you need sunlight, go on a walk.

Walking is a medicine 

Now you tell me...

Don’t chase, don’t beg, don’t stress, don’t be desperate. 

When you relax, it will come to you.

~ Stoic Wisdon 

Word...

Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.

~ Thomas Paine

A child’s poem

They try to tell us stories of hatred, but I know a better one: 

Once, I dreamed I carried love & temperance 

alone through the sand toward your direction. 

But I never made it, did I?

Long, but worth it and enlightening

Excellent speech by Dr. Marty Makary: 

 

I'm trained in gastrointestinal surgery. My group at Johns Hopkins does more pancreatic cancer surgery than any hospital in the United States. But at no point in the last 20 years has anyone stopped to ask, why has pancreatic cancer doubled over those 20 years? Who's working on that? Who's looking into it? 

 

We are so busy in our health care system billing and coding and paying each other and every stakeholder has their gigantic lobby in Washington D.C. and everybody's making a lot of money except for one stakeholder, the American citizen. They are financing this giant expense of health care system through their paycheck deduction for health insurance and the Medicare exercise tax as we go down this path of billing and coding and medicating. 

 

And can we be real for a second? We have poisoned our food supply, engineered highly addictive chemicals that we put into our food. We spray it with pesticides that kill pests. What do you think they do to our gut lining and our microbiome? And then they come in sick. The GI tract is reacting. It's not an acute inflammatory storm. It's a low grade chronic inflammation. And it makes people feel sick and that inflammation permeates and drives so many of our chronic diseases that we didn't see half a century ago. 

Who's working on it? Who's looking into this? Who's talking about it? Our health care system is playing whack-a-mole on the back end and we are not talking about the root causes of our chronic disease epidemic. We can't see the forest from the trees sometimes. We're so busy in these short visits, billing and coding. We've done a terrible thing to doctors. We've told them put your head down, focus on billing and coding. We're gonna measure you by your throughput. And good job, you did a nice job. We have all these numbers to show for it. 

Well, the country is getting sicker. We cannot keep going down this path. We have the most over-medicated, sickest population in the world. And no one is talking about the root causes. The Pima Indians are the perfect example. Here is a group where the obesity diabetes rate was less than 1%. The land in New Mexico and Arizona had its rivers supplied, diverted by ranchers and settlers, and the land and the soil was destroyed. The government, recognizing this tremendous injustice, started to send free government food, but it wasn't organic kale and fruit and vegetables, it was processed and junk food. Instantly, the Pima Indians developed an obesity, diabetes rate of 90 percent. And what did the United States government do? What did our health care system do? The NIH dispatches its researchers to draw the blood of the Pima Indians to look for a gene that predisposes them to obesity and diabetes. What are our leaders doing? 

The H in NIH is supposed to stand for health. Where are they spending their money on food as medicine and looking at the estrogen binding properties of pesticides that are driving our fertility rates down? They're funding research in Wuhan, China, and they're funding research on a new food compass to replace the misinformation they put out with the food pyramid, telling us lucky charms is healthier than steak. Somebody has got to speak up. Maybe we need to talk about school lunch programs not just putting every kid on obesity drugs like Ozempic. 

Maybe we need to talk about treating diabetes with cooking classes, not just throwing insulin at everybody. Maybe we need to talk about environmental exposures that cause cancer, not just the chemo to treat it. We've gotta talk about food as medicine and research these areas. 20% of our nation's kids are on medication. And as you heard, half are obese or overweight. Are they more disobedient than children in Japan or have we poisoned the food supply? Is this a chronic disease epidemic that has been a direct result of what adults have done to children? 

 

We like to blame people for their diseases, but maybe we need to look inward. We see all these shiny objects thrown at us. Politicians talk about, oh, we've got a new healthcare proposal. Medicare can now negotiate the prices of ten generic drugs. Don't be fooled. These are things in the periphery. It's not to say they don't have merits, but the proposed program savings in year one by their own description is six billion dollars. In a four point five trillion dollar economy that's expanding at eight percent per year in the commercial sector, that's a two hundred billion dollar expansion, we save six billion dollars. 

The best way to lower drug costs in the United States are to stop taking drugs we don't need."

Think first of your parents

Your life is a precious gift from your parents. 

 

Think about them and the rest of your family. You don't have to suffer alone. 

~ sign at the entrance of Japan's 'suicide forest', Aokigahara forest, located at the foot of Mount Fuji

Follow the money

The more that is spent, the worse it gets, because the money doesn’t go to the homeless, it goes to the hundreds of “charities” that then treat the homeless as sources of revenue. 

The more homeless there are, the more money these organizations get, so their incentive is to increase, not decrease, homelessness!

Whatever you incentivize will happen.

~ Elon Musk

It's called the Cobra Effect.

In colonial India, under British rule, the city of Delhi had a problem with cobras. To control the cobra population, the government offered a bounty for every dead cobra.

Huge numbers of dead cobra were handed in but the cobra problem got worse, not better. Why? Because people realized they could profit from this bounty by breeding cobras, not to kill them in the wild, but to kill them for the bounty. This turned into a small-scale cobra farming operation.

When the government became aware of this practice, they discontinued the bounty program. Without the incentive, the cobra breeders released their now-worthless snakes into the wild. As a result, the cobra population in Delhi ended up increasing rather than decreasing, exacerbated by the government's own policy.

Marketing 101

You can love me.  You can hate me.  

I don't care.

Buy a ticket.

~ Muhammed Ali

I can relate

I Get Along Without You Very Well

I get along without you very well, 

Of course I do, 

Except when soft rains fall 

And drip from leaves, 

then I recall The thrill of being sheltered in your arms. 

Of course, I do, 

But I get along without you very well. 

I've forgotten you just like I should, 

Of course I have, 

Except to hear your name, 

Or someone's laugh that is the same, 

But I've forgotten you just like I should. 

What a guy, what a fool am I, 

To think my breaking heart could kid the moon. 

What's in store? Should I phone once more? 

No, it's best that I stick to my tune. 

I get along without you very well, 

Of course I do, 

Except perhaps in Spring, 

But I should never think of Spring, 

For that would surely break my heart in two.

Attitude

Anybody can play.  

The note is only 20 percent.  

The attitude of the motherfucker who plays it is 80 percent.

 ~ Miles Davis

Meditate on this

An athlete won’t judge you

for working out.

A millionaire won’t judge you

for starting a business.

A musician won’t judge you

for trying to sing a song.

It’s alway people going nowhere

who have something to say.

~ Unknown

Learned truth

Once you carry your own

water, you will learn the

value of every drop

~ Unknown

Yes

One day, in retrospect 

the years of struggle will 

strike you as the most beautiful.

~ Albert Camus

Can confirm...

Well, there is no greater education than travel.

~ Rebecca, on Ted Lasso

For so many years...

For so many years, I thought you felt nothing. 

I’ll take your anger over indifference any day.

~ Rebecca’s mom, to Rebecca, on Ted Lasso

One way or the other

Aut viam inveniam aut faciam

I shall either find a way, or make one. 

~ Latin proverb, most commonly attributed to Hannibal in response to his generals who had declared it impossible to cross the Alps with elephants.

You mean there’s hope?

Regrets are a waste of time. 

Regrets cause depression. They're a big waste of time.

• You didn't invest early? 
• You didn't treat that person right? 
• You let her get away?
• You didn't practice the right habits? 

It's okay as long as you take positive action today, there's hope.

~ interwebs wisdom

Maybe…eventually…if you say so…not yet...

    tempus omnia vulnera sanat

Time heals everything

Vision for the future

 Gene Rodenberry’s (the creator of Star Trek) vision of the 24th century:

• there will be no sexism
• there will be no racism
• there will be no hunger 
• there will be no greed
• and all the children will know how to read

Lovely, indeed

You’re a good cook, Maggie.

You look lovely in the candlelight.

~ Rock Torrey (John Wayne) in In Harm’s Way

Lack of discipline is the only thing that prevents you from being the best version of yourself.

~ read on the interwebs

Indeed…I will meditate on this for a while

Some people find fault like there is a reward for it.

~ Zig Zigler

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. 

It was their final, most essential command. 

~ George Orwell, in 1984

"Eat at a local restaurant tonight. Get the cream sauce. Have a cold pint at 4 o'clock in a mostly empty bar. Go somewhere you've never been.

Listen to someone you think may have nothing in common with you. Order the steak rare. Eat an oyster. Have a negroni. Have two. Be open to a world where you may not understand or agree with the person next to you, but have a drink with them anyways. Eat slowly. Tip your server. Check in on your friends. Check in on yourself. Enjoy the ride."

- Anthony Bourdain

Ooooooo, spicy!

The problem with society today is that no one drinks from the skulls of their enemies anymore.

~ read on the internet

The world will ask you who you are,

and if you do not know, the world will tell you.

~ Carl Jung

Where your fear is, there is your task

~ Carl Jung

Thinking is difficult.

That’s why most people judge.

~ Carl Jung

Yep

The goal is to die with memories, not dreams.

~ found on the internet

Keep on flowing

Running water never grows stale, 

so you gotta just keep on flowing…

~ Bruce Lee

Interesting thought

The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury

~ Marcus Aurelius

I concur

If there is something I could do or something I could say that would make you be happy just being with me, I'd do it.  

I'd do it in a nanosecond, but I ain't got no control over any of that.

~ Ted Lasso, in Ted Lasso

The truth will set you free… but first, it will piss you off. 

~ Dr. Sharon Fieldstone, in Ted Lasso

Sounds about right...

 A relationship without mutual respect is dead

~ found in a blog post

A Man’s Poem

When I was young, I thought I’d live forever. 

When I was young, I thought fun was the thing. 

When I was young, I cared little for what others thought. 

When I was young, I knew not what regret felt like. 

When I became a dad, I thought I might not live long enough. 

When I became a dad, I thought fun was for the kids. 

When I became a dad, I cared deeply what the kids thought. 

When I became a dad, I understood what regret was. 

When I was old, I realized I’d not live long enough. 

When I was old, I thought fun was the thing, again. 

When I was old, I cared little for what others thought, again. 

When I was old, I deeply understood what regret felt like. 

Now that I’m old, I yearn to be young again!

~ Dan Mills

An Eternal Truth

Adversity is the test of virtue.

~ Senecaha

Applies to personal goals AND with relationships...

If you really wanted it, you would make time for it.

~ Bret O.

One of the saddest things…

‘I have led a toothless life’, he thought.

‘A toothless life. I have never bitten into anything.

I was waiting.

I was reserving myself for later on - and I have just noticed that my teeth have gone.’ 

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Gossip and the Three Sieves - Socrates

In Ancient Greece, Socrates had a great reputation for wisdom. 

One day, someone came to find the great philosopher and said to him: "Do you know what I just heard about your friend?” 

"A moment," replied Socrates. "Before you tell me, I would like to test it with the three sieves.” 

"The three sieves?” 

"Yes," continued Socrates. "Before you speak about others, it's important to take the time to filter what you mean. I call it the test of the three sieves. 

The first sieve is TRUTH. Have you checked if what you're going to tell me is true?” 

"No, I just heard it.” 

"Very well! So, you don't know if it's true. Let's move on to the second sieve, that of KINDNESS. Is what you want to tell me about my friend something good?” 

"Oh, no! On the contrary.” 

"So," questioned Socrates, "you want to tell me something negative about him, and you're not even sure it's true? Perhaps you can still pass the test of the third sieve, that of UTILITY. Is it useful for me to know what you're going to tell me about this friend?” 

"No, not really.” 

"Therefore," concluded Socrates, "what you were going to tell me is neither true, nor good, nor useful. Why, then, did you want to tell me this?" "Gossip is a bad thing. Initially, it may seem enjoyable and fun, but ultimately, it fills our hearts with bitterness and poisons us."

Lesson learned

I learned a lesson - Never half-ass two things

Whole-ass one thing.

~ Ron Swanson

I remind myself of this often

Fitness isn't about being better than someone else. It's about being better than you used to be. 

~ Mackenzie Smith

Me, too...

I want it to be the way it was between us…

~ Daenerys Targaryen to Jon Snow, in Game of Thrones

This guy was a prescient genius

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.

~ George Orwell, 1984

A good Latin phrase to have in your bag of tricks

Qui tacet consentire

Silence gives consent

My vision is getting blurry

It’s hard to be what you can’t see.

~ Marian Wright Edelman

My favorite joke of all time

A woman awakes during the night to find that her husband is not in bed. She puts on her robe and goes downstairs to look for him. She finds him sitting at the kitchen table with a hot cup of coffee in front of him. He appears to be in deep thought, just staring at the wall. 

She watches as he wipes a tear from his eye and takes a sip of his coffee. 

"What's the matter, dear”, she whispers as she steps into the room, "Why are you down here at this time of night?"

The husband looks up from his coffee, "It's the 20th Anniversary of the day we met". 

She can't believe he has remembered and starts to tear up. 

The husband continues, "Do you remember 20 years ago when we started dating, I was 18 and you were only 16," he says solemnly. Once again, the wife is touched to tears. 

"Yes, I do”, she replies. 

The husband pauses...The words were not coming easily. 

"Do you remember when your father caught us in the back seat of my car?"

"Yes, I remember”, said the wife, lowering herself into the chair beside him. 

The husband continued.  "Do you remember when he shoved the shotgun in my face and said, 'Either you marry my daughter or I will send you to prison for 20 years’”?

"I remember that, too”, she replied softly. 

He wiped another tear from his cheek and said “Today, I would have been a free man…"

Tom is the G.O.A.T.

To be successful at anything, the truth is you don’t have to be special. You just have to be what most people aren’t: consistent, determined and willing to work for it.

~ Tom Brady

Indeed

The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.

~ Charles Bukowski

Yes

The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it – 

Basically because you feel good when you are near or with them. 

~ Charles Bukowski