The Reboot Perspective

 I'm recovering from a bout with the flu, but I wanted to impart a new insight I had this morning: Don't be so quick to pass judgment: If you gauge how well someone climbs a tree as to whether they are a success or not, a fish would lose every time. If you pick the apple off the tree before it's ready, it won't taste good. Realize all of us are flawed and still growing, still maturing and if you judge us too soon based on some arbitrary standard, you might be judging with the wrong criteria.

 When my daughter Luci was perhaps four years old, there was this cartoon that she loved to watch called "Dexter's Laboratory".  Dexter was like a mad genius who did experiments in a secret lab under their house.  He had a sister named Dee Dee who was older and curious.  She would go into Dexter's Lab and ask the problematic question for Dexter, "What does this button do?" and before Dexter could say "No, Dee Dee, No!" chaos would ensue. I can remember looking at Luci at that tender age and thought to myself, I have my own little Dee Dee.  She's curious, imaginative and above all, fearless. So today, I want to talk about why folks are so afraid to explore the world we live in.  This is not our natural state.  Granted, a healthy dosage of self preservation is good so that we don't do something dumb and get ourselves maimed or even worse killed.  However, most of us have done some really dumb things when we were young and we mostly survived t...

 I'll let you in on a little secret:  I'm a nerd. I love storytelling whether it is fantasy or science fiction.  I enjoy immersing myself in a great story and escaping reality.  I love stories with dragons, aliens, spaceships, wizards, and even a good haunting or two. Rarely though do we look at ourselves and think of our lives as a story. We have a beginning, a middle, and an ending.  We start off naive and look at the world through rose-colored glasses, then we learn heartache and tragedy that we are challenged to conquer, but instead of us facing one great villain like Voldemort from Harry Potter, we face the conquest of a thousand faceless villains that slowly steal away our optimism and our joy. Whether that villain is an idiotic boss who doesn't treat us with respect or a nosy relative who wants to know if you scheduled your appointment with a proctologist already. We tend not to view ourselves as heroic because we get caught up in the mundane.  The g...

The late Stephen Hawkins proclaimed in his 2010 bestselling novel "The Grand Design" that "Philosphy is dead." Looking at our modern society in the last 14 years since, many would agree. And that's why I've started this blog because in my 51 years of life in this world, I have discovered a fundamental truth:  "The Happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts."  This was a statement made by Marcus Aurelius more than 1800 years ago in his personal journal that is now published today as "Meditations". Marcus Aurelius was the most powerful man in the world back then.  He was the Emperor of Rome and he was considered one of the Five Good Emporers to rule over the Roman Empire. This blog post isn't about giving you a history lesson, but it's important to understand that the most powerful man with one of the best reputations in history was a practioner of philosophy and his legacy lives on today for those of us who want...