NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS: 2010

The start of a New Year really doesn't start many things for me other than it is the beginning of another tax year. So I need to make a new yearly spread sheet. Being without any really bad habits like smoking, excessive drinking, drug-taking, I cannot try to make myself feel better about promising to give up that which I already don't do. It seems somewhat ridiculous to make a resolution not to start doing anything addictive that I have never in the past many decades ever longed to do in the first place.

Someone compiled a list of the ten (10) top choices. Since I didn't really know quite where to start, I thought I would [ut myself though another exercise that usually proves, frighteningly, how different I am than most people. That is enough to leave one feeling very alone, often. So what is it that people resolve?
1. Spend More Time with Family & Friends
Part of my inability to organize better (see #10) is that I already spend too much time with family and friends and not enough time on putting things where I can findd them when I need them.
2. Fit in Fitness
I made this one last year and it didn't resolve anything...the only thing that makes me exercise is when in pain, realizing that my muscles have weakened....exercise seems to be the best remedy.
3. Tame the Bulge
That is a no-brainer. I've got the most tame fat of anyone I know. It just lies there while I starve on a perpetual diet. While I think I have as much determination as the will to live if I were hanging on the edge of a 40 foot cliff by my fingernails. My body just smirks and jiggles at me as it waxes and wanes.
4. Quit Smoking
As I have never smoked, I can only do my best to avoid smokers who think the outdoors doesn't blow smoke at warm bodies as they pass or sit nearby. Someday a smoker will experience how distasteful it is to caught next to someone whose clothes and person are shrouded with nicotine tar and offensive odor.
5. Enjoy Life More
Is that a plan or an order? So many conditions need to exist in order to maximize life enjoyment. I live with the illusion that I am already maximizing the pleasure and joy I can get out of life.
6. Quit Drinking
Isn't it great when you get to write N/A? This is not a problem and more reason to refuse invitations to dull parties.
7. Get Out of Debt
This one is unclear. As soon as I pay a bill, another comes in to replace it like the way water comes in to fill itself back up. However, as I make a religion of paying no interest (comparable to flushing money down the toilet in my view) I pay bills monthly but not all monthly bills are due at the same time.
8. Learn Something New
Once again, this seems ridiculous that someone would have allowed themselves to need to resolve this. How can you be alive and not be learning something? With Google and the Internet, how can you not find new things many times throughout the waking day?
9. Help Others
This needed to be written: Don't help others any more than you do so that you can make resolution #5 possible.
10. Get Organized
I live in a blivet which has been hatching new blivets constantly constantly for 43 years. Attacking and organizing is like spooning the ocean with a teaspoon, but my solution is to tell my children that there will be enough money left when I die to rent a huge dumpster and some grunts to fill it with whatever I have left unorganized.

Having worked through my determination to be a better person and do more for myself, family and friends, I am resolved to sleep and eat less, and hope that I won't be like Farmer Jones's horse, Nellie. Just when he got her to when she was eating nothing at all...she up and died on him!

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2010

Until I was old enough to know the world was round, I couldn't understand why time was not the same all over the world. I thought life would be far more simple if it were but realize many of us would not like to live our day in the dark...every day, not just near the poles for a half the year.

After listening to President Obama's New Year's pep talk of hope, warmly delivered with sincerity, I felt hope was more present within me than it had been during the last Administration. However,each New Year may be affected by our politicians, more important are our own choices which are individually effective in our lives and the lives of the people we love around us. Places we scarcely knew existed as children celebrate with us in real time today and some are places to which we have visited or have family living there. Some frightened us as children...some looked gloriously romantic. But wherever you are or have been...it is the same 2010 that fills us with hope for a better life ahead than the current destruction of the world, its people, and our natural earth.

Whoever and wherever you are, I wish you a better 2010 than 2009, lived in good health and with prosperity.

AVATAR: THE MOVIE

Too the point of boring anyone who will listen, I talk about making my stress free life/ Reading and watching tension free books and movies, keeping my bills paid up, doing only the things I want to do and making those that I have to do as pleasant and easy as possible is a basic plan. AVATAR has to be described as an exciting, challenging of nerves, anxiety producing, violent, thought provoking, beautiful, frightening movie. Seen in 3-D it captures all senses.

Those who know me will also be surprised to hear me say that I would recommend it heartily for some of the best three hours I have ever spent in a movie theater. The concept of a world that functions in a network, includes past and present, trust, loyalty, peace and shows an existence which is, perhaps, what this world longs for. However, in our times, we still have people who believe in taking what they want, rationalizing that anyone who is not human in our mankind's image is an alien and not worth consideration. Preemptive striking and killing is rationalized as the Bush administration rationalized going into Iraq, with matching disruption to our world as well as that devastation to the people who were attacked. Not believing that other beings could have a way of life that works for them is key. Those in our world who laugh at those whom they call the 'tree huggers' will likely see and totally miss the main message of this movie.

If anyone reading this is old enough to remember Fern Gully it is a bit like that, but without the humor and simplicity of the pathos in that portrayal of a similar, devastating and careless human action. If possible, see it in 3-D although it would not lose any of its power in flat screen, is my guess. Read more on IMDB.

LIFE IS A SERIES OF CHOICES

There are good and bad choices, made constantly; right and wrong ones; helpful and destructive ones, as well. We must make choices on whatever data we have at the time. That data is often not enough to make an educated choice, in which case, we must guess. Our life and the consequence of that choice to others, is as predictable as the flip of a coin or a roll of the dice.

Choices have Categorical (influenced by issues of morality in certain duties and rights) and Consequentialist (morality is in the consequences of an act)...in other words, most acts do not affect a single person but that effect covers many with its reverberations.

What, then, happens when we refuse to make a choice. Sometimes an issue just fades away, but don't count on it as few things aren't followed up. Forgetting to drink responsibly, then driving drunk so that someone is killed by you in an 'accident' and the consequences are far reaching, changing the future of many lives. If that person (as is most likely) has family, children, parents, dependents and responsibilities to many, the resulting destruction of that act is felt by all those whose lives are altered, remaining lifetimes for many of those people. Few effects from bad choices have only a short-term consequence.

War makes many orphans. What happens to them in their growing up may turn a generation of youth, as in Iraq, into haters seeking vengeance and having no trust for adults or certain groups...especially Americans, the enemy during and after the war. When people leave their choices to trust God, they've totally thrown their control away and left all those connected to them swinging in the wind.

What most people miss is that laws pose an involuntary choice of action. Many people who naturally fight that imposition, missing the whole point of the law, are looking for independence. That is not how maturity and independence are gained. The generation of the 60s and 70s, adolescents who sat in their basements tuned out on marijuana never did the developmental work needed for a normal adolescent. Now these people may have important positions, families, and we wonder why such poor life choices are being made in such a public way.

Healthy coping mechanisms should be taught in grade school and through college. The way to think through choices should be a part of that. Morality considerations should be a foundation. I do not mean morality as the Bible writes it but, rather as our current life style and set of laws dictates morality which is not limit to sexual morality. Instead, I mean morality as our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution define it.

MORE MECHANISMS FOR PEOPLE TO FEEL IN CONTROL

Today I listened to a talk by someone who has replicated a 100 year old bit of research. It confirmed that most people's brains keep superstitions alive. It was mentioned that, because Obama did well on his campaign on the day he played basketball, he will play basketball on every election day. We all know about those of us who touch/knock-on wood to prevent something bad happening after what might seem a brag.Intellectually, people will say they do not believe in these things, but they do them anyway. One asks the question, "Why?"

There is a wonderful site that lists beliefs, old wives tales, bizarre beliefs, omens, etc. Dialogue goes like this, "I don't believe this but, just in case there is something to this, I won't step on a crack in the sidewalk."

Believers in higher powers give the control to that higher power...whether it is God, Allah, or whatever being. Giving the final decision-making to another alleviates the possibility of your own decision being wrong. The responsibility for control, thus, is no longer yours. "It's God's will." as people give responsibility away. Equally effective is, "The Devil made me do it." Research has disproved all superstitions and high powers but people will believe what they wish to believe and that which works for them.

Let's face it, being responsible for one's actions seems to be too much for too many people. There must be a disclaimer here: All people who believe in God do not necessarily give up their responsibilities. Some believe that God believes them to be responsible for their own behaviors.

FINDING SOMEONE TO BLAME STILL RULES

Whenever people feel out of control, they try to bring their lives back into their control. One way they think they have of doing it is to find someone to blame for whatever put their feelings into a place of no control. The recent attempt of a suicide bomber on a plane is such an example. The problem that people want solved is for Homeland Security finding the needle before it gets into the haystack.

Janet Napolitano made the media rounds on Sunday to let people know that there is nothing to indicate that the problem was part of a larger plot. Even though the bomber's own father had called authorities over his concern a year ago, it is like trying to get a patient committed because you think he did something crazy but you can't prove it. Or, it is like trying to get a retraining order before the fact. Our laws have allowed many spouses to be killed before the court had reason to put a restraining order on...making the after-the-fact a moot point.

It is much evidence of the lack of faith we have in our government appointees and elected officials. When the adults are afraid, what can our children feel?



Since we can't do it all ourselves, we need to find trust in something less elusive than religion, which rationalizes everything good as the hand of God and everything bad as the just deserts of evil and sinful mankind. Some children are fortunate enough to have parents in whom they can trust to protect them. However, that is not true for all, in fact, it is not there for fewer and fewer children these days. Instead of the media rustling up more fear and agitating an already painful emotional life for most of us these days in terms of predicting our future, they could do a bit more by having some people on that can truly promote future comfort by spelling out just what is being done to get there instead of the fear mongers or the opinion givers who read the news and propaganda on air.

THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG DISNEY MOVIE

Today I was taken to see the new Disney movie, The Princess and the Frog. I was eager to see it because I had heard that little black girls at last had a heroine as a princess with whom they could relate. Now, I tend to see a movie at face value. I do not analyze its intestines for allegory and failed to see it in the C S Lewis stories as in The Chronicles of Narnia. To me it was a story and the story made logical sense as a fantasy but I missed that it is a Christian allegory. Despite the fear that it will corrupt little minds, it did not turn me towards Christ, or lions. A made-up story is just a made-up story to me.

"Disney's "The Princess and the Frog" Actually Contains a Powerful Message About Post-Katrina New Orleans" says the article posted by Melissa Harris-Lacewell, TheNation.com at 5:15 AM on December 23, 2009. For more detail on that click here.

The story is set in New Orleans, long before the recent hurricane and flooding. Nevertheless, reviewers are 'stitching' the time frame. As with most Desney stories, the disaster happens and is resolved to a happy ending by the end of the movie. All the strength of character resides in the little 'princess' who does not come from royalty but seems to act as royalty should. The ending is a surprise, neatly contrived finish that ties it up properly. All virtuous elements are in this cartoon movie...great values, hard work,warm and fuzzy heroine, but the handsome hero (the prince)is made to look weak while his life as a prince who did little for himself becoems the most frequently demonstrated trait of his.

The movie is fast, may be a bit scary to some little children though it shouldn't be with someone who can talk the kid through. Unless you hate Disney (actually this is a Pixar), I highly recommend it as a pleasant story on a child's level that adults can also enjoy.