Itinerant Air-Cooled

Ai yi, yi. Let me extract my foot from mouth.

Ayep, a knee-jerk drunken reaction based more on my experience than anything else. Overly simplified and missing nuance. I do enjoy your musings Colin. Generally they resonate true for me. In this case I was focused on purely the love of a primary relationship, assuming unrequited love, which isn't true love in my book. I had just watched The Princess Bride that evening.

Too many people mope around "in love" with someone who doesn't love them, in angst, striving to make them love them. That is a dead end-road. True love is unconditional. I missed the broader application of the definition in my rush to provide "tough love". Conditional love isn't true. A person can never change another despite all efforts. Love is a gift that must be offered with no expectations, whether friend, family, partner. The only person who can change someone is themselves, and a person can't love another without loving themselves first.

I was assuming you were grieving in unrequited love. I do learn, I do take responsibility for my gaffes, I do apologize. We all be human, warts, drunken outbursts and all. Please don't stop sharing. Love is all we have.


neal

ruckman101 wrote:... I do enjoy your musings Colin. ...Please don't stop sharing.
neal

Exactly. Most of us do. In fact, that's the reason I personally beat on him at every opportunity.

If enough of us do so, he'll eventually write that book.




As for the comments about life passing by too quickly: Read my lips: It gets worse.

It never slows down, it relentlessly, irrevocably accelerates.

As far as I can see (and that's not very far) the only way to mitigate the acceleration is to do what the Buddhists seem to be saying: Pay attention.

glasseye wrote: As for the comments about life passing by too quickly: Read my lips: It gets worse.

It never slows down, it relentlessly, irrevocably accelerates.

As far as I can see (and that's not very far) the only way to mitigate the acceleration is to do what the Buddhists seem to be saying: Pay attention.

I have paid and paid and paid attention and all I got was this warning notice??
"Please pay promptly"

In SoCal, over a McD coffee and a hash browns with light rain outside, a nice morning chortle. I offer my transcontinental thanks.

I still wanna put "Driver Carries No Cash" on Frito's door.

Will your travels put you at Portland's door? "We" would like to see you.

Dunno my routing yet, but I won't be able to dawdle in PDX. I'll be packing my new printer (which severely constrains operations space-wise) and I'll be hell-bent for home by then. Gardening duties are piling up.

Sorry. I still need to do a Lucky Lab with yall. Just not this run.

Antisocial bastard.

hambone wrote:Antisocial bastard.

Haw naw, you cain't tell Anti-Social Bastard from Belle Of The Ball, Miss Where's The Party Hambone.

Amskeptic wrote:. I tripped past my one and only childhood, tripped past people I dearly wanted to love more fully, tripped past the great vitality and reflexes of young adulthood, slid through an incomplete education and tumbled down through my 30's and 40's in some blur of imbalanced effort to right myself and do right by others.

A couple weeks ago, just below my place on the street I watched a junkie kid shooting up in his car. Spoon, lighter, syringe, necktie, a couple smokes, some Reeses, a phone call or two and a flurry of text messages later, he went on his way. A functional junkie I thought, maybe getting prepared for a long afternoon collecting shopping carts at Target. Can hardly blame him. He comes to the mid-day milquetoast suburbs of Vancouver to shoot up. Maybe he grew up nearby or in a similar environment -- he was comfortable here. At that time I had no real feelings one way or the other. But, if and when he gets to our age, he'll have his fifties to wonder what went wrong, who might be to blame, if the future is a place to hide from the past.

What you're describing are the thoughts anyone would have alone, in the isolation of tranquility. We spend adulthood striving for love, success and accomplishment and a bunch of other bullshit, only to realize that its a mirage. Someone, can't remember who, said thought is the enemy of action. You know, Hamlet Syndrome. In the same vain, then retrospect is the enemy of possibility. Maybe, that's part of what Neil was addressing?

In short, you'll find yourself in good company. So far, the only purpose my fifties has served is to tediously loop shoulda, woulda, coulda in my mind. Wait, maybe that's unfair to aging, perhaps that's just the forty days of rain speaking.



Marc

gorge runner wrote:What you're describing are the thoughts anyone would have alone, in the isolation of tranquility. We spend adulthood striving for love, success and accomplishment and a bunch of other bullshit, only to realize that its a mirage. Someone, can't remember who, said thought is the enemy of action. You know, Hamlet Syndrome. In the same vain, then retrospect is the enemy of possibility. Maybe, that's part of what Neil was addressing?

In short, you'll find yourself in good company. So far, the only purpose my fifties has served is to tediously loop shoulda, woulda, coulda in my mind. Wait, maybe that's unfair to aging, perhaps that's just the forty days of rain speaking.

Marc

I think when and if you reach your forties is when this starts happening. There is a lot I wish I had done differently, and I do have regrets. By now I should be a millionaire because I pursued my dreams and those dreams made myself and others I loved wealthy (Not a corporate bastard, but a responsible one). I should have traveled the world many times, I should have helped more people along the way and left no one behind.

However, we can change if we think we have led the life where we can do better. Or change, it can be done. We learn along the way and use it, or we don't and become insufferable idiots whom no one wants to be near, including our children.

Sylvester wrote:

gorge runner wrote:What you're describing are the thoughts anyone would have alone, in the isolation of tranquility. We spend adulthood striving for love, success and accomplishment and a bunch of other bullshit, only to realize that its a mirage. Someone, can't remember who, said thought is the enemy of action. You know, Hamlet Syndrome. In the same vain, then retrospect is the enemy of possibility. Maybe, that's part of what Neil was addressing?

In short, you'll find yourself in good company. So far, the only purpose my fifties has served is to tediously loop shoulda, woulda, coulda in my mind. Wait, maybe that's unfair to aging, perhaps that's just the forty days of rain speaking.

Marc

I think when and if you reach your forties is when this starts happening. There is a lot I wish I had done differently, and I do have regrets. By now I should be a millionaire because I pursued my dreams and those dreams made myself and others I loved wealthy (Not a corporate bastard, but a responsible one). I should have traveled the world many times, I should have helped more people along the way and left no one behind.

However, we can change if we think we have led the life where we can do better. Or change, it can be done. We learn along the way and use it, or we don't and become insufferable idiots whom no one wants to be near, including our children.

I have to agree with you two as I looked at myself in my early forties and said "time to change" and walked out of a bad marriage and started a new path. 16 years later its been mostly a grand adventure with untold riches in life experiences including getting married last year. After living/working aboard for a year I have a new perspective on "american" values and find the whole Dem/GOP clashes stupid and destructive. The only winners in this are the "rich" while everyone else is fighting over the crumbs...
I am back in Seattle for two months before heading back to my little tropical paradise of a country to start a new company/venture. Colin, I wish you were in this area so we could drink a beer or two while musing over life at the Lucky Lab. Well, the door is open if you dare to venture south really really far south.......and the beer is ice cold and the food is unreal as are the women. Next time I spend some time in the Amazon jungle I have to take some night sky pics as the stars at the equator are really beautiful and you don't need a flashlite to walk around its soo bright out on a clear night. Definitely gives me a new perspective when I see this, feeling small but part of some grand plan I don't understand but I am enjoying to hell out of the ride.

gorge runner wrote:

Amskeptic wrote:. I tripped past my one and only childhood, tripped past people I dearly wanted to love more fully, tripped past the great vitality and reflexes of young adulthood, slid through an incomplete education and tumbled down through my 30's and 40's in some blur of imbalanced effort to right myself and do right by others.

I watched a junkie kid shooting up in his car, he'll have his fifties to wonder what went wrong, who might be to blame, if the future is a place to hide from the past.

What you're describing are the thoughts anyone would have alone, in the isolation of tranquility. Someone, can't remember who, said thought is the enemy of action. You know, Hamlet Syndrome. In the same vein, then retrospect is the enemy of possibility. Maybe, that's part of what Neal was addressing?
Marc

I am less Hamlet and more Socrates, "the unexamined life is not worth living."
I do not know how that post managed to communicate self-pity to Neal, or imploded inaction to you.

A hale and hearty senior citizen who booms, "Me? I feel GREAT! It's because I invested 40% in stocks and 60% in bonds, and I EXERCISE!" might be the sort of Action Ken Doll who never questions or ponders that this whole audacious Universe-thing actually exists, but I guess I did when I actively actioned my ass to relinquish the rat race to get under the stars scarily free of security.

When I read your "retrospect is the enemy of possibility", I have to ask, what did you read? Did you read "wuddashuddacudda" regret? I wrote that I was surprised to find that there were nobody's shoes I'd rather step in with the detours accounted for, and possibly even because of those detours.

My only wouddacuddashudda regret is letting that gorgeous 69,000 mile Vanagon get away last winter.
ColinThinkingInAction

Amskeptic wrote:

gorge runner wrote:

Amskeptic wrote:. I tripped past my one and only childhood, tripped past people I dearly wanted to love more fully, tripped past the great vitality and reflexes of young adulthood, slid through an incomplete education and tumbled down through my 30's and 40's in some blur of imbalanced effort to right myself and do right by others.

I watched a junkie kid shooting up in his car, he'll have his fifties to wonder what went wrong, who might be to blame, if the future is a place to hide from the past.

What you're describing are the thoughts anyone would have alone, in the isolation of tranquility. Someone, can't remember who, said thought is the enemy of action. You know, Hamlet Syndrome. In the same vein, then retrospect is the enemy of possibility. Maybe, that's part of what Neal was addressing?
Marc

I am less Hamlet and more Socrates, "the unexamined life is not worth living."
I do not know how that post managed to communicate self-pity to Neal, or imploded inaction to you.

A hale and hearty senior citizen who booms, "Me? I feel GREAT! It's because I invested 40% in stocks and 60% in bonds, and I EXERCISE!" might be the sort of Action Ken Doll who never questions or ponders that this whole audacious Universe-thing actually exists, but I guess I did when I actively actioned my ass to relinquish the rat race to get under the stars scarily free of security.

When I read your "retrospect is the enemy of possibility", I have to ask, what did you read? Did you read "wuddashuddacudda" regret? I wrote that I was surprised to find that there were nobody's shoes I'd rather step in with the detours accounted for, and possibly even because of those detours.

My only wouddacuddashudda regret is letting that gorgeous 69,000 mile Vanagon get away last winter.
ColinThinkingInAction

The quote from your original post resonated with me -- that's all. Clearly retrospective in substance, but I wasn't implying that you wearing the cement shoes of over analysis. I have a well-worn pair of those shoes.


Marc

gorge runner wrote: I wasn't implying that you wearing the cement shoes of over analysis. I have a well-worn pair of those shoes.
Marc

I do not believe I believe that you are in your 50's. I guessed lower 40's. Ya pup.

My antidote to wuddacuddashudda in the big questions department is to actually seriously ask if I might like to go home as that person over there, yeah that one, you have to wear their socks too. . . and sleep with their mate.
What it does for me (YMMV) is to refocus that All Of It, all of the detours and successes and missed dreams and unexpected grace too, has made me more of a person today than any answered prayers ever could have. This is mysterious, but I am learning to go with it.
Colin

Amskeptic wrote:...all of the detours and successes and missed dreams and unexpected grace too, has made me more of a person today than any answered prayers ever could have. This is mysterious, but I am learning to go with it.
Colin

Those may be the answers to your prayers.