My Random Thoughts

          Children, gifts from God and also the curse from our parents. Who of us has not had our parents yell “I hope you grow up and have children that act just like you. ” Of course we do, our children act just like us and we find ourselves using the same trite expressions our parents did. ” Do you think money grows on trees?”, ” If John jumps off a cliff I guess you will to?”, on and on. We have become our parents. For better or worse it happens. One of the great things about children is that although they are like us they are not like us. Early in life they exhibit characteristics that do not seem to come from mommy or daddy. They are little persons with their own unique persona’s. I have 4 children, 3 by my ex-wife and 1 by a long term relationship. Each child has traits that are mine their mothers and their own. We see ourselves in our children, both the good and the bad. It’s such a shame that we pass on both the good and the bad, i wish my kids could of only had the good from their mother and I.

     The decision to have kids was again an act of Fortuna. I love these couples who say they want to wait to have kids until their ready. The human race would die out within a generation or two, we are never ready. My wife and I never said hey lets have a kid, it just happened. I think about all the times in my life I had unprotected sex and how few times I was rewarded (or cursed) with a child. I hear the Pro-choice people demanding the right to choose, it’s my body and I should have the choice. My feeling is you didn’t have the choice, your choice is to have sex. The choice to create a child lies outside of you. You have a choice to smoke but whether you get cancer is not your choice. I’m a long term smoker if i get cancer I’m not going to say oh I made a mistake take it away, I didn’t know. Come on how many women have sex and really are unaware that it could lead to pregnancy, sadly I’m sure there are a few, but not the majority. If we dive into the deep end we better be prepared to drown. Abortion should not be used as a form of birth control and yet that is probably %70 of all abortions. More on my feelings on abortion in later blogs.

      I look back on my life and realize that some of the most importatnt decisions were not made conciously or even sub-consciously by me but by Fate. For better or worse we can only make decisions about how we react to what happens to us. Do we live life happily accepting whatever life throws us good or bad, or do we complain and whine that life’s not fair. To me, we should enjoy the smell of a rose. and the smell of pig s*** because a dead man can smell neither.

Next Up: When in doubt Head or Heart

                                   Marriage we certainly make a decison on whether or not to get married, but we have very little input on who. Love, ahhhhh Love there has probably been more written about love than any subject in the world, and yet I don’t think anybody has got a good grasp of it. I was in college I met a beautiful bright quirky woman who loved to laugh and loved to sing and fell head over heels in love. I’ve always thought fell was a good way of describing it. I don’t know many people who wandered or sauntered into love, most of us trip and fall head first. Nothing is more scary or more exciting than that first revelation that we are totally smitten with another person. I had been in love before but not like this, all the loves before were puppy love, teenage horniness, raging libido but this was the real thing. ( Let me state clearly at this time I have no idea what the real thing is but this was it). Since that time I have been in love again but no love is ever as pure as that First Love. Well once in love the next step was marriage, logical and yet why is that the next step. I grew up in the 70’s living together was certaining more of the thing to do. But when you love you want and need more total immersion into the object of your desire, so I surrendered to Love. I will say that out of all the decisions I’ve made in my life this one probably got the most thought. I was a born again Christian at the time so I prayed and fasted and prayed some more. I finally felt that I had a sign from God ( If you look for a sign you will always find one). So I popped the question and in 6 months we were married. Life changing event happened with the simple words “I do”. 

Next Up : Children the curse all parents put on their own children

    I think about how some of the most important decisions are not ones we make, but ones that are made for us. Careers, marriage and children, decisions that should be thought out, looked at, analyzed, mulled over, these are life changing decisions. Career is something that will effect a good 40 years of our life, a marriage hopefully 50+ and children a lifetime. In my own life these 3 areas were each helped or pushed by Fortuna. ( More about Fortuna and her sisters in upcoming Blogs)

         A person with a Philosophy degree should have no great expectations for a rewarding career. Teaching or writing are about the only options for you. Teaching would of required another 3 to 4 years of school and writing takes discipline( Something I don’t have alot of) after all  how many Philosopher want ads do you see in the paper. “Philosopher Wanted:  duties include thinking about unanswerable questions 24 hours a day, Pay based on experience” So when I finished at UMD and realized with 3 chldren and a wife ( I think the realization was more on my wife’s part than mine) I needed to get on a path that would pay the bills and I had no clue what to do. Fate stepped in as it always does to provide a path. A friend of mine received a letter from a prominent Life Insurance company looking for people with outgoing personalities. My friend put my name on it with my contact info, and next thing I know I’m interviewing for a Life Insurance agents position. Then I’m hired and once you have tasted sales you can never go back. Set your own hours basically set your own pay, work harder make more, work less make less. Sales is probably the easiest difficult job in the world. Easy because if you believe in your product it sells itself. Hard because you have to motivate yourself. Now I’m a freeform sort of person. Like the blob i tend to ooze all over the place into different areas and interests,I need structure to create boundaries, or else I tend to seep in no particular direction. Outside sales is perfect for somone like me no regular hours, freedom from office enviornment, etc. The downside is not enough structure for a blob like me. I can sell great, but sales is not just about selling after all there is prospecting, calling, stuff that is hard to schedule for a Amorphic Creature like myself. Still it proved invaluable for my future, it opened up both the strong side of me ( Sales ability) and the weak side of me ( Lack of self discipline). Learning about yourself is never a worthless task even if what you see is not all that pleasant.

      A friend’s referral led to my career, a letter delivered by fate changed my career objective. Although my career was not carved in stone at the time. I am still in sales but now I”m a manager and I tend to deal with products sold through phone sales. Managing allows me the structure I need to  keep ordered and yet the creativity of making a sale even if it is only through training and motivating others.

Next Up Marriage: Love and Fate….  which came first Eve or the apple

        We make thousands of decisions daily. What time to get up; what to eat to; which way to drive to work? 99 % of the decisions we make we make without even realizing that we’re deciding. Some decisions require a little more effort, Should I ask that woman out at work; Should I buy a new car; Should I buy that stock or put my money in bonds? Then of course there are the life changing decisions. Should I marry; what career should I choose; Should I take chemo or not?  The more drastic the consequences the more effort we put into the decision making process. After all if I choose to wear the wrong tie to work no big deal. If I choose to forgo Chemo it could be deadly.

I look at my own life and how I have made decisions over time and I see a very random pattern. When your young, decisions are limited because your parents set the boundaries. We moved frequently and had no say over it. I went to Catholic school for 6 years and didn’t even have to decide what to wear each day ( Thank God for uniforms). I guess as I entered Junior HIgh and High school there were more opportunities for decisions. What after school activities to participate in, which HS courses to register for( although even here because of curriculum you were semi-limited). I basically went along with my friends. My friends played football and wrestled so I went out for the teams. I got a job at 15 but that was because a friend of my mother’s had an opening at her job and mentioned it to me. So I had a job that I never really looked for or necessarilly wanted, just kind of fell in my lap. The first real decision I made was whether to go to college or not, this was almost an accident. Throughout HS I had planned to go into the Marines, one of my friends was going in, my father was an ex-Marine so I thought why not. The Vietnam War was ending, it seemed like a good way to serve my country and see the world. My parents never pushed me to go to college, leaving that decision up to me. The beginning of senior year a college recruiter came by from the local Community college, I wanted out of Sociology class so i went. Listening to him made sense so I decided why not. I hadn’t taken the PSAT since i wasn’t planning on College, but for community college I didn’t need it. It’s strange to think I ended up in college just because i wanted to skip class. Ironic isn’t it.

        In college I had to declare a major, this is so wrong. How can a 17 or 18 year old expect to know what they want to do for the rest of their lives. Well I had a psychology course in HS and liked it so I majored in that. I took tons of Psych courses, Intro, Adolescent, Abnormal Child, Social Psychology and then it happened……. I took a philosophy course and met my true love, her name was Wisdom. Whereas Psych treated us as animals, granted complex animals, but still animals. Philosophy treated humans with a sort of godliness. WIsdom that indefinable thing that only humans can obtain. I was hooked. I changed my major and ended up graduating from the University of Maryland with a BA in Philosophy. A major decision was made on what I like to call passion, a passion that has not abated to this day.

Next Up Personal Life Choices.