A summer vacation seems wonderful in prospect, but then, in the actual experience, it so often diminishes to the point of becoming a series of irritations, until, inevitably, it retreats into memory and becomes wonderful again.
And therein lies the question -- if you look forward to your vacation with great anticipation and remember it with wistful pleasure, does it really matter if you didn't actually enjoy it?
A working republic consists of the government, the governed and a neutral third party mediator called the Constitution.
A working democracy is a fundamental agreement between an enlightened leadership and a free electorate, the agreement confirmed by periodic elections that don't change anything.
The most basic progressive belief is that if we can get the rich to pay their fair share, we won't have to pay ours.
The most basic conservative belief is that if you weren't born to opportunity, you had your chance.
A political party is like any other conspiracy, the people it targets believing they are part of the conspiracy.
If we of the middle class nearly always support the rich over the poor, it is because we rightly believe that the poor want what we have while wrongly believing that the rich don't.
A free-enterprise system is a meritocracy where a few enterprising individuals eventually control most of the wealth, and where, if left unbridled, the most enterprising single individual eventually controls all the wealth.
Two things are needed to be likable -- you must possess the likability gene, and you must not know you possess it.
You wonder if people with a winning personality worry that they are liked just for their personality.
If there's one question that's always answered eventually, it is why you didn't like someone at first.
Personally I would never want to be liked just for my money -- although I would not refuse money for that reason.
Although dictionaries do not usually define "to understand" as
"to like," that is usually what people mean when they ask to be understood.
What if you eliminated all the faults in your character only to discover that the faults were the only character you had?
There's nothing like a self-improvement program to discover what your friends used to like about you.
If we learn from our mistakes, shouldn't a job resume be a list of our mistakes?
One of life's more jolting discoveries is that you are not your best friend's best friend.
It is less what love sees in you than what love chooses to overlook.
The hardest part of marrying "for better or worse" is when it's better for one and worse for the other.
Mozart died at 35. Alexander the Great died at 32. Makes you wonder what great things you might have achieved if you had only died young.
Next time my analyst says, "If you're unhappy, whose fault do you suppose that is?" -- I got a list of names in my hip pocket.
To ask, "What will it all matter in the end?" is not an excuse to do nothing but a reason to act without delay.
To call anyone a complete fool is nearly always premature.
Sometimes you need to wake up to realize it isn't just a bad dream.
Better than none is an apology past its "best if said by" date.
It doesn't seem right that a greedy few should have all the wealth when you know in your heart you're just as greedy.
The more preposterous a belief, the louder the claim that there are irrefutable proofs nobody knows about.
"We are usually more successful when the goal is the reward than when the reward is the goal."
"The best teachers set their expectations high but not so high as to rule out being pleasantly surprised."
Remember, as you plan for the future, that the future does not announce its arrival with a grand trumpet call. It presents itself, rather, in small segments which we call, "for the time being," and it is what we do in these segments, -- what we do "for the time being" -- that ends up as our future.
It is not so much a "road to success" as an "exit ramp to success," lest the road itself become a never-ending journey.
The devil, on God: "If you ask me, He does have a tendency to demonize His opponents."
It is possible, you sadly discover, to know every nuance and still lack the first clue.
To be happy, though poor, is not only possible but fast becoming one's patriotic duty.
I am not your dog, but if every time you saw me, you gave me a backrub, I would run to greet you, too.
The difference between instruction and education? Parents instruct their children; children educate their parents.
If you spend all your days being someone else's messenger, blame the messenger.
"One of the revelations of retirement is how long life can go on after you've completed your memoirs."
"The older you get, the more you despair of the human race, possibly the result of llimiting your new acquaintanceships to people you meet in traffic.
"A continuing challenge in retirement is what to do when a police officer tells you to go about your business."
"I went to a seance the other day where we all sat around trying to resurrect ghosts from the past. Wait, that was my class reunion."
As a general rule, your life story is more interesting the longer you can postpone the living happily ever after.
If winning were everything, wouldn't your obituary say whether you won or lost?
Obituary -- an account that sums up your life's work in one line and goes on and on about how you loved the beach, dancing and eating breakfast out.
We are all born for a reason, life being a list of things we have to attend to first.
Somewhere amid life's endless distractions lies its purpose, each of us deciding for ourselves which distraction it is.
A best friend is that rare person who can reveal to us our capacity for fun.
I'm not sure what the measure of truth is, although I'm reasonably sure it's not a comfort index,
The first place to look for meaning in life is in something you've always been meaning to do.
We are all human beings, fallible and misunderstood, which is to say, often guilty but seldom as charged.
Do you suppose that evil ever worries that its efforts are too little, too late?
Sometimes we don't win another person's trust because we can't tell the lie it would take.
Life is not fair, a frequent observation of those responsible.
Never put yourself in the position where you consider someone telling the truth a traitor.
You are not a true hypocrite if you merely preach one thing and do another; you must also, simultaneously, deplore hypocrisy.
Not all marriages prove to be true love, but all marriages serve to identify it.
It is easier to engrave it on a monument than to live it.
It's a curious thing, the School of Life, its graduates never known to have a class reunion or respond to an alumni appeal..
One advantage evil has over good is its vastly greater ability to cite precedent.
We learn from our mistakes, especially the mistake of not learning from history.
The problem with self-improvement is that it's usually not completed early enough in life to affect evolution.
Ah, happiness, lying unnoticed beneath the busyness of the moment, revealing itself only to the quiet of our recollection.
In 1492, Columbus discovered America, which, up to then, had been minding its own business.
If there's a lesson in history, it is that you don't ever want to be discovered by a more advanced civilization.
One thing you never get from love is a credible explanation of what it sees in you.
The chief cause of unemployment is getting the job done. If you want steady work, merely show progress.
We get pretty much the happiness we arrange to have, the happiness mainly in the arrangements.
It is a difficult trade, comfort for happiness, and usually done over the loud objections of the body.
When science tells us that nothing prior to The Big Bang can be known, it effectively says, "There be God."
What makes accepting reality so hard is that our perception of reality keeps changing, while our delusions stick to their story.
A human lifetime is that brief instant in all of eternity when we have no alibi.
We find in our imagination the means to overcome most obstacles, a good thing because that's where we find most obstacles.
To believe anything on insufficient evidence is to believe anything, because there is never a shortfall of insufficient evidence.
As much as we crave admiration and respect, it's hard to resist someone who just thinks we're funny.
What is often lacking in people of good intention is a compelling ulterior motive.
There are days when it would be hard to remain an optimist were it not for your army of secret admirers.
The words, "I'm not perfect" are usually accompanied by a willingness to hear arguments to the contrary.
There is a tendency to confuse inherited worth with inherited worthiness.
Nothing makes you question the importance of good parenting like the success of your neighbor's kids.
"The cause of many a broken relationship is someone who craved respect and got love."
"Most sinners know who their forgivers will be, and that, more than anything else, is what makes it a sin."
There are worse moments in old age than recalling some long-ago embarrassment and realizing that you have outlived all the witnesses to it.
You can look upon life as dust to dust or you can look upon life as seed to seed.
Sign over the gates of Hell, "DOESN'T MEAN YOU'RE A BAD PERSON."
We all know them -- people who, if they end up in the fires of Hell, will complain about their neighbors screaming too loudly.
Parenting, too, is an art form, although one in which you don't get to hide your early, amateur works in the attic.
No one really wants to be someone else. We want to be ourselves, only with someone else's brains and talents and physical reflection in a mirror.
We crave understanding, believing that with understanding will come approval. But not everyone who disapproves of us misunderstands us.
"Given that we all believe things on insufficient evidence, why not believe that there's a little good in everyone?"
"If the art of the magician is to distract attention from what's really happening, then what is life but the ultimate magic trick?"
"Need lovers always agree? I dunno -- need poetry always rhyme?
"Ever have a day when you can't get started on anything because nothing else can wait?"
"Have you ever wondered how there came to be less wealth than fair shares?"
As reported in Genesis, the Creator surveyed His handiwork and saw that everything was good, not great, which pretty much squares with my own assessment.
The thing I like best about keeping my own company is that I can usually sense when it's time to leave.
Nothing last forever, which is not to say it cannot seriously overstay its welcome.
If I distrust people different from me, it is because they are not different enough.
According to recent psychological studies, the need to own a dozen cats is really a suppressed desire to own two dozen cats.
I don't want any living thing to live in fear of me.
I don't want anyone to feel that there is a truth that cannot be uttered in my presence.
I want never to see another person's honest ambitions as a personal threat.
I want never to claim that I am anyone's conduit to the Word of God.
I want never to judge or be judged by first impression.
I want to share what I've learned, not proselytize what I've always believed.
I want never to get by force what I can get by persuasion.
I want never to think that people just instinctively know when they are valued or loved or appreciated.
I want, now and then, to say to those I love what I would say to them if they had just died in my arms.
Trouble is, well-intentioned people often make things worse, but ill-intentioned people rarely make things better.
Somewhere amidst life's endless array of distractions lies its purpose, although it is often a challenge to decide which distraction it is.
To correct someone's bad grammar and be accused of semantics is like correcting someone's bad arithmetic and being accused of mathematics.
Happy people are more often happy in spite of something than because of something.
We are all in the course of a lifetime many different people -- strangers to us now, shadows in our past, but their battle scars remain ours to carry, their sins ours to atone, their promises ours to keep. How do you reconcile this person you are with these people you once were?
Who be these strangers from my past
These ghosts who haunt my day,
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,
Forever to remain.
How came this mortal coil to be
My final residence,
This house forever haunted by
Its previous occupants?
We think of Doomsday as when everything will end, but what if Doomsday is when everything began?
We speculate on there being a parallel universe, but what if there's a perpendicular universe?
Science and Religion have this in common -- that they see everything as true or false. But, see, what if it's multiple choice?
"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
We learn from our mistakes, which explains the education level of those who claim they have never made one.
Life is an exercise in the pursuit of happiness, the actual experience of happiness confined to brief pauses in the pursuit..
If you are to succeed in life, you must ignore the advice of those who dearest desire is to keep you from being disappointed.
No one ever entered their teen years with a well-thought-out exit strategy.
The most basic requirement of a job interviewer is to distinguish the skills needed to do the job from the skills needed to pass the job interview.
It is a mistake to subscribe to reality unless you also subscribe to the annual updates.
While I like a politician who claims to know what I deserve, I would hope he/she is better informed on other subjects.
The obstacle to having a better-informed electorate is that the people elected to office rarely see it as a problem.
I have heard many descriptions of hell that sound like hell, but I have never heard a description of heaven that sounds like heaven. Eternal hellfire is easy to imagine. It is harder to imagine an eternity of anything being heavenly.
All I know about wisdom is that it lies somewhere beyond ignorance and short of certainty.
I have never envied another's material possessions, although I have envied the happiness they get from them.
There are days when I am unaccountably happy, and, in fact, that is usually the reason for it.
There are reasons for happiness and reasons for unhappiness, although unhappiness seems to be the more ingenious in coming up with them.
I compare the pursuit of happiness to a day of fishing -- it helps if you stock the pond.
Never say to someone, "I see what you're trying to say." Few people want to hear a clarification of what they're trying to say.
It is sad to think how many domestic disagreements are wordless, conducted in mutual silence..
In a just world you would get what you rightly deserve and everyone else would get what's coming to them.
In the end it's probably less important that you believe in God than that there's a God who believes in you.
It is rare that a woman who does the same thing every Tuesday all her married life has a husband who can tell you what she does on Tuesdays.
Ignorance is the state of knowing only what you've learned from people you want to hear it from.
There is a tendency to blame people of faith for the intolerance of people who know for sure.
Hard Lesson Learned #24: "Never say anything in public that you are hearing for the first time."
People incapable of faith more often find refuge in certainty than doubt.
Sometimes the faith to believe in a miracle comes easier than the gullibility to believe in the rational explanation.
Everyday life for a mortal being is mostly about doing things today that won't matter tomorrow, therein accounting for their urgency.
Generally speaking, the more you learn of how the world works, the less you blame yourself.
Most happiness, like most worry, depends pretty much on how small a thing you can make important.
The most life-changing "what if" we ever ask is, "What if it isn't all about me?"
The trouble with caring only about yourself is that it's always the first step to not caring about anyone.
What you discover about self-love is that it doesn't last, and it's the devil to go your separate ways.
Today's Deep Thought: "A miracle is something without which whatever happened would have taken a miracle."
We shared a vow to love forever.
Now life's a fading afternoon,
And bent with age I fear "forever"
Was always just some whistled tune.
But then I feel your glance upon me,
And in your eyes that light sublime,
And, lo, I realize, "forever"
Had never anything to do with time.
For when a love's a boundless loving,
And when a care's a timeless care,
Then truly do you love "'forever"
In every moment that you share.
I asked, "How can anyone who really knows me ever love me?" only to discover that it was the only way anyone ever would.
"It's not easy -- loving someone through the chinks in their armor -- especially when the love they return is so often trapped inside."
"To truly know someone is to know the thing they never speak of -- and to recognize the silences that speak of it."
