Fate vs Free Will

How do I reconcile Fate and Free Will?  Well, here's an attempt.

At birth we are given a jigsaw puzzle with a picture on the box.  We are not required to construct that picture.  We are just required to use the pieces in the box.

~~~

Six Thoughts In Addition To The Previous Ten

Genius is the ability to do what no one thought possible, and to do it in a way that can clearly be improved upon.

One thing you can learn from your dog is when to go lie under the dining room table and await developments. 

You'll know that AI has completely replicated human intelligence when it forms a Flat Earth Society. 

If Time were to pause, say for ten minutes, how exactly would it know when to start up again?

Never act for "a whole list of reasons."  Rarely does a compelling reason occur as part of a list.

It is perhaps fortunate that the intelligence it takes to be a human being is not a requirement for admittance into the species.

Ten More

 I wish that politicians who can't add 2 + 2 would stop saying, "By my calculus... ."

We all have a life story, and the clue to the ending is not necessarily in a chapter already written.

It's curious how so many people who are old and cynical believe exactly what they were taught when they were young and gullible.

There is this sense you get in old age of having outlived your completed memoirs.

One of the easier questions to answer in life is why you have so little when you ask so little.

The strongest person is vulnerable in some way, and the weakest person strong in some way. In exactly what way neither knows until they are tested, and in fact, until they are tested, neither knows which person they are.

Maybe the world is made such a perilous place so that no one would ever think they were meant to face such peril alone.

You get to an age when fewer things pique your curiosity than pique your don't-give-a-damn.

In explaining one's self to others, one should make especially clear the part where the explanation is over.

 

After a lifetime of receiving consolation prizes, I finally finished first, and know what -- it's actually more consoling.

Happy Michaelmas!

September 29, Michaelmas Day, is almost upon us. There's still time, however to send a greeting to a friend or relative.  Why would you?  Well, here are a few reasons you might.

To a Friend:

Here's wishing you a Michaelmas
That's cheerful, warm and homy
And filled, dear pal, with mem'ries of
The fifty bucks you owe me.


To a Neighbor:

Dear neighbor, just a word to say,
Wish you well this Michael's Day,
Wish you joy in everything,
Wish return of following:

-- one lawn rake

-- one weed trimmer
-- one pair garden shears
....


To a Sister:

A cheery card to darling Sis
To wish you Happy Michaelmas,
And just to mention, by the way --
I've had Mom since Labor Day!

Just Sayin'

I've just been to a seance.  Everyone sat around trying to conjure up ghosts from the past.  No, wait, that was my class reunion.

The devil on God:  "If you ask me, He does have a tendency to demonize His opponents."

I am not your dog, but if every time you saw me, you gave me a backrub, I would run to greet you, too.

How to decline an invitation:  "I'd love to come.  Sounds great.  I'll really look forward to it.  Wait, Friday?"

Don't know about you, but I have never seen a high school diploma on a doctor's wall.  I mean, if you had a high school diploma, would you hide it? 

Maunderings, Old and New

 Test your self-esteem:  "If you were the last person on earth, would you be ugly, beautiful or of average good looks?"

Two things I don't have to worry about -- being liked just for my money and being liked just for my likability.

You wonder if there are people comfortable in their own skin who would still like to be somebody else, only keeping their own skin. 

If you had drop-dead good looks, and everyone you met actually dropped dead, would you ever get tired of it?

Do you suppose there are people in the world actually starving to death because they don't know how to work self check-out?

There are couples who will always be first to arrive at a party no matter how many times they drive around the block.

I'm not saying that history is not interesting, although I don't understand this obsession with its chronological order.

Thoughts From Our Resident Cynic

 There is no more fruitless exercise than trying to impress your relatives.  The only thing that impresses your relatives is your ability to fool other people.

I have never heard the words, "It's all part of God's larger plan" without wishing God had a smaller plan.

It is hard to respond to ignorance, since it rarely has any questions.

Nobody ever said, "That's a very good question" and answered it.

In Genesis, we have the story of Adam and Eve, a then-average couple living in Paradise, a then-average neighborhood.  It is the story of the insatiable human desire to rise above the average.

Thoughts for the Thoughtful

An Elderly Skeptic Looks Back

Often in thought did I question and doubt,

    But always, when stricken by grief,  

Did I find on my tongue a questing prayer

    To the God of my disbelief.

***

We all have conversations with God, the churchgoer weekly and in public, the skeptic daily and in private.

Life is an ongoing battle, the ultimate triumph finding someone to surrender to.

"You can accept a falling out that changes your plans, but it's hard to accept a betrayal that changes your memories."

As much a part of friendship as offering help when needed is accepting help when offered.

A Lone Wolf Laments

Those times I pridefully said, "No, thanks." 

Oh, how I've come to regret them.

Oh, why, when people offered to help

Did I not just smile and let them.

Speaking For Myself

All I have ever asked of a teacher is this:  "Teach me not what you have been taught but what you have learned."

What makes evil so hard to uproot is that it can usually cite tradition.

If everyone would know their own best interest, and act upon it, the world would have no need for altruism.

The difference between instruction and education?  Parents instruct their children; children educate their parents.

It varies from person to person,

One multiple doesn't suffice --

The number of times you must do it

To learn not to do it twice.

How's That Again?

You get to a time in life when you would consent to be ignored just for the attention.

There was never an awkward silence that could not be turned into a regrettable conversation.

Before there can be a theory that explains everything, one must define everything.

It is hard to have a political debate with a person whose brain has been redistricted.

There is in most religions a patriarchal strain that believes it was actually Eve who tempted the serpent.

It is rare that the circumstances that give you an advantage in life cannot configure themselves into a set or principles.

Always An Easy Way

 "There is always an easy way out, and it often comes disguised as some kind of noble act, as when you decide that someone who deserves better from you would be better off without you." 

No Need For Words

In the end a loving relationship consists largely of silences, trust having no need for words. 

 

Mental Droppings

 Where do I get my ideas?  I have a microwave with a HALF BAKE setting.

You'll know that AI has completely replicated human intelligence when there are robots who believe they were made in the image of God.

You can be happy for a reason, or you can be inexplicably happy, the latter supplying more occasions. 

The words, "winning is everything" are most often used when there is no other discernible purpose for the activity.

The truly charitable heart does not give some and hold some back but rather gives all it has and trusts that some will be given back.

You will never disprove by evidence what has always been believed despite the evidence.

You'll know that time is traveling backwards when annoying becomes cute.

Afterthoughts #2

You don't know loneliness until the person in this world you most confided in dies, and you run to tell them who died.

Whether you believe in God or you don't, it's very hard to prove the contrary.

There are few earned rewards in life that a person will not sacrifice to preserve an unfair advantage.

It is often wise to reserve judgment -- and wiser still to recognize the moment  you've been reserving it for. 

Most people have a hidden agenda, hidden mainly from their own awareness, known pretty much to everybody else.

The words, "If I had it all to do over again, I wouldn't change a thing" would make even experience want to leave teaching.

Afterthoughts #1

 A milestone in life is the day the challenge of discovering who you really are is replaced by the challenge of being the person someone thinks they married.

The most basic strategy is to get time on your side.  The most basic tactic is to sit and wait.

Evidence: a body of facts insufficient to prove anything you don't already believe.

Truth: whatever justifies your advantage in life.  If you have no advantage in life, then everything is a lie. 

Reality: a set of default perceptions for people with no imagination

Nothing unites people in a tighter bond than denying the same obvious truth.

The painter has this in common with the golfer -- that both know how hard it is to apply a proper stroke to a still object.

First Love

From somewhere there came a harmony

Of trumpets and strings and saxes, 

And the planet seemed to be standng still.

'Twas I spinning on my axis.

This And That

"Fate is a fancy name we give to the absence of a plan."

 Nothing strains a relationship like revealing a secret that is past its "best-if-revealed-by" date.

A domestic spat is a saga of streaming episodes without, unfortunately, a "Skip Recap" button.

"Maybe you're not the best person you can be, but you have the best shot at it."


"Life is a continuing attempt to overcome the personal shortcomings that make us likable."

"You can break up a marriage and remain friends.  It's a harder thing to break up a friendship and remain married."

"If you never eat a ripe banana until you finish the overripe ones, you will spend your life eating overripe bananas."

"The problem with living happily ever after is that it means the story's over."

Reflections Before A Mirror

Who be this stranger in my glass

This ghost from yesterday,

Whose battle scars I carry still,

Whose debts I must repay,

Whose trinkets fill my attic space,

Whose idle thoughts my brain,

Whose sins reside upon my soul,

Will someone please explain

How came this mortal coil to be

My final residence,

This house forever haunted by

Its previous occupant(s)? 

More From The Miscellany Bucket

What makes the daily moral clash between mind and body so challenging is that the body actually has no morals. 

It is hard to change someone's mind who believes it in their head bone. 

The intangibles of life not only bring the greater happiness, they require less closet space.

It is often wise, before giving up on a relationship, to try one more degree of separation.

Perhaps worse than never realizing your dream is never enjoying your consolations.

One of life's harder calls is whether someone who understands you is ready to hear the rest.

We Stayed Together For The Kids

We stayed together for the kids,

Two kids we barely knew,

Who once upon a moonlit night

Back when the world was new,

Resolved to love forevermore 

And stay forever true.

 

Wait...Say That Again

If you can remember it without tears, it wasn't happiness.

Ever wonder what history would look like if we stopped trying to force everything into chronological order?

 

It is probably true that everything we were taught as a child would be thrown out of a court of law as leading the witness. 

If today the world were perfect, with what aching nostalgia would we look back on the Age of Possibility. 

If God is an illusion, then I have this question -- can you have an illusion without an Illusionist? 

You can't look at the night sky without wondering how this tiny enterprise called Planet Earth will ever justify its overhead.

Thoughts on Hope, Old and New

You might, perhaps, give up on yourself, but would you so easily give up on others in your life you care deeply about? And might that be the secret to sustaining hope -- each of us being another's hope? I will not give up on you if you will not give up on me.  

Hope is not a plan, but without hope, nothing else is a plan, either.

Why would you chase a hopeless dream?  Perhaps for the dream. Perhaps for the chase.  Perhaps to meet another hopeless dreamer.

What does a lifetime of hope give you?  It gives you a hopeful life, and in the end, what more can you hope for?

And No One The Wiser

 It is now 65 years since I published my first "aphorism," thus striking off on the tangent that became a life's journey. I had, at the start, a high opinion of the aphorism as an art form, characterizing it as 

"A single sentence that totally exhausts its subject."  

In later years, I became a bit less reverent of the genre, offering the following observation:

"The aphorist finds in every truth a wise saying and in every contradiction -- two wise sayings."

And today, in the clarity of old age, I offer two candid assessments, including a definition of the word  "aphorism" that I suspect will prove definitive:

"One is more apt to become wise by doing fool things than by reading wise sayings."

"Aphorism:  a truth trivialized by cleverness."

Don't say you weren't warned. (smile)

Sunday Sermonettes

There resides in the human soul a sense of unworthiness, which, if you deny the existence of a Higher Good, raises the question,, "Compared to what?"

What you know for sure about someone qualified to speak for God is that you are equally qualified.

It is always the good who judge themselves.  The wicked know enough to ask for a jury.

 

A religious belief can be true although all who proclaim it publicly privately doubt it; indeed when all who proclaim it publicly are hypocrites. 

There are the truths you try to live by and the lies that make it possible.

Mind Droppings

 If there is a lesson to be learned from reading biographies, it is that no one enters this life with a plan.

To know all the facts about anyone is to be considerably more informed on the subject than they are.

It is always the member last admitted who believes that standards for membership should now be raised.

Many a high school drop-out believes in a God who is all-knowing, but few believe in a God who is better educated.

You will never change someone's mind who regards everything you tell them as a nefarious plot to change their mind.

If you believe that there is only so much wealth to go around, you will eventually believe that there is only so much freedom to go around.

If there's one thing evil does well, and good not so well, it is to establish societies for its preservation. 

It is the goal of the unjust not to defy the law but to become the law.

Thoughts at Age 86+

 "To be beautiful, you need only be beautiful in someone's eyes, and it continually amazes how little actual beauty that requires."

"It is hard, when you discover that someone can't handle the truth, not to keep telling it to them."


"There is a point in getting to know you when people come to understand you, but how do you tell them to stop right there?"


"I shudder to think...which is why I have largely given up the practice."


"Sometimes it seems like you've spent your whole life preparing for an inspection that never happened."

"Life never tires of testing the proposition that life must go on."


"It always surprises how much of any human emotion is just time that needs to go by."

The Daily Battle

 "Remember this -- that you are exceptional, no matter how hard the requirements of everyday living try to make you average."

I, My Shadow

This Sun you speak of, my shadow asks,

This invisible light in the skies,

Why does it never reveal itself?

Why does it hide from my eyes?

This Heavenly Thing that created me,

This lantern somewhere above,

Why do I never feel its warmth?

Where, for me, is its love?

And what to a shadow does it mean

 To be born of some mystical Light,

If only to fade at the end of the day

And vanish into the night?

Monday's Child

A poem written in the final days of the 2nd Iraq War

"Monday's child is fair of face..."

She cradled in her soft embrace
her Monday's child, fair of face,
a winsome brown-eyed baby boy,
in all her life no greater joy.

She watched him grow, a handsome lad,
so much the image of his dad
that neighbors called him little Bill,
but he, he could not wait until --

-- the day he turned a bare eighteen
to march away, a proud Marine
to follow his commander's voice
and fight the latest war of choice.

They brought him home, his face disguised.
To glance beneath was not advised.
She smothered in a last embrace
her Monday's child, fair of face.

-- Robert Brault

Immortality

Would you really want to be immortal -- to live forever in this life with no chance of escape? Is it even possible to remain sane before such a prospect?  Besides which, what crime did you commit that you should be sentenced to life with no possibility of parole?  

More Common Sense From Mom

O, how much wiser I would be

If I could sit me on my knee

And pat myself upon the head

And say the words my mother said.

"My son," she said, so lovingly,

"You mustn't sit you on your knee.

You'll dislocate your lower back

And strain your sacroiliac."

Mental Maunderings

 "If every individual on earth were perfectly objective, would there be such a thing as an individual?"

"What if instead of a parallel universe, there were a perpendicular universe?  Discuss."

Did you know that the Washington Monument was named after Abraham Lincoln? That's right -- Lincoln was named in 1809; the Washington Monument wasn't named until 1888.  

"Why does every person now living think they are going to die when no person now living ever has?"

If you can say, "She sells seashells by the seashore," why is it so hard to say, "I'm sorry." 

Just Saying

  "Most sinners know who their forgivers will be, and that, more than anything, is what makes it a sin."

Nothing is more difficult, after you say, "I love you," than explaining what you didn't mean by it.

Yours Truly in The Quote Garden

The Quote Garden website contains hundreds of my quotes.  Here are a few I especially like.

"Gratitude, friendship, respect -- funny how it's never called loyalty when there's actually a reason for it."

"When you are one of the pieces, it doesn't seem like a game."

"It is easier to be the hero of the moment than the hero of every drudging hour and every grinding day."

"When everybody knows the shortcut, the long way around is the shortcut."

"In the best of relationships you have two people who cannot think of anything that was not part of the deal."

That Daily Grind Again

It's a tricky thing -- knowing the life you want to live, knowing what makes it possible and not letting what makes it possible keep you from living it.

 

There are people who, if they chased a butterfly, it would take them to the office.

A good thing to remember is that it's not usually your employer who writes your obituary.

Never postpone taking a vacation thinking you won't get another chance to postpone taking  a vacation.

The City of Happiness

"Most of us, in our life's journey, never reach the City of Happiness, not because its environs are forbidding but because they are inviting, and so we settle in East Happiness or West Happiness." 

~~ from A Few For The Road 

Bumper Stickers

"This vehicle decelerates in the passing lane."

"Turn signal not a guarantee of future performance."


"I stop for flashing blue lights."

"Driver of the Month -- August 1956"


"My son is an honor student at Ed's Online University."


"This car climbed Death Valley."



 
A Bonus Thought 
 

"Having a monthly subscription payment taken directly from your bank account is not only a convenience but, after death, a form of immortality."

Best Friend

You were the person I'd run to

To tell of some news that I'd heard,

The person I'd always turn to

When life started getting absurd.

You were the one I would run to,

You were the friend  'round the  bend

Who'd always come up with a reason 

Why all would be well in the end.

 You were the person I'd run to,

In whom I could always confide,

Until that day you were suddenly gone...

 ...And I ran to tell you who died.

 

https://www.istockphoto.com/photos/

Time

Time -- that which reveals all lies, revises all forecasts and renders inadequate all excuses.

 

No matter how you rush about, you will notice at the end of the day that you traveled at the speed of time.

  

Nothing lasts forever, although we often underestimate how long it will last in the meantime.

I live on a tiny planet orbiting a minor star.  Each time the planet completes an orbit, I count off a segment of my life.  Why do I do this?  I dunno, it passes the time.

~~ from Short Thoughts For The Long Haul

The Daily Grind

 "There are days when you feel that if you walked down the street in a clown costume, no one would recall seeing anyone in a clown costume."

 

"There is no actual law that says you can't get locked into a daily routine that makes you happy."

"Whatever you're trying to prove, it's good occasionally to spend a day not trying to prove it."

"Never let anything ruin your day that is not on the list of things you will let ruin your day."

~~ from Reflections 

Ah, Contentment!

"If you would find a truly contented person in this world, it would likely be someone no one thinks to envy, who seeks no attention, invites no comparison, whose contentment is their own private business."

 

"Is it surrender, or is it to find contentment -- to be happy with your consolations."

"The key to contentment is the same as the key to worry and anxiety -- you must learn to make a big deal out of nothing."

"Contentment is that rare moment when you forget what you deserve and let what you have be enough."

~~ from A Few For The Road

Memories

 "We speak of creating happy memories, only to discover that all memories are sad.  It is only a question of whether the sadness is bitter or sweet."

 

"What we envy about the folks in an old family photo is not so much the life they lived as the future they imagined."

"The hardest thing about reliving the past

Is reassembling the original cast."

~~ from A Few For The Road