Category: The Far Side

I have always been frustrated with the restrictive climate and the negativity of government jobs where I spent most of my career. I loved my work as a scientist in Public Health because of its aura of exploration, discovery and opportunity to make a difference in the lives of citizens seeking answers and solutions to living a long and healthy life.

So often there were things that needed fixing and alarming trends that needed changing. Too often the prevailing politics prevented imperative actions, and the inevitable cutbacks in funding, personnel, instrumentation and real estate tied our hands.

I had so much to say, possibilities to offer, but no one was listening because I was just one of many voices down in the ranks consigned to the shadows.

It is hard to change the world under those circumstances, but I never stopped trying. I entered retirement with expectations that I could finally let the dogs run.  I quickly became disillusioned by the reality of age discrimination and the ridiculous explanation that the reason you did not get hired or were not approved for a project was because you were “over-qualified.”

It was not lost to me that seasoned workers, recently retired or close to retiring, owned decades of life experience, business acumen and a network of contacts. I knew they were not ready to spend another 20 years curled up on the couch in front of the TV. Their wounds from years of following instructions from bosses who didn’t appreciate their insights and ignored their contributions have not yet healed.

So many unrealized passions shuttered and possibilities for improving society in some meaningful way abandoned along the career path.

When I allowed myself to think about what I wanted and stopped trying to clone myself as the image of the hiring managers’ ideal candidate, I discovered something about myself.

I possess an unconventional streak blended with a trace of insanity. I am someone that imagines how ordinary things could become extraordinary and I recognize that since life is filled with natural, beneficial risk, sometimes it is necessary and good to take a risk.

That to me is the description of a free soul, aka, an entrepreneur.

To me, an entrepreneur is an innovative individual that can create something new or different that impacts the world and even changes people’s lives. Pragmatically, it is someone that utilizes his mind, passions, assets and personal strengths not only to make life more fulfilling but to show others that they too can follow their visions and accomplish amazing things they had only dreamed.

A recent, uplifting tendency is that society is beginning to recognize that seasoned, senior entrepreneurs come already equipped with business and life experience, deep networks and a fundamental, core determination to work, create and shine well past the hypothetical retirement age.

While the rate of new businesses being started by entrepreneurs between 20 and 34 has actually been falling in recent years, the number of businesses created by older entrepreneurs between the ages of 55 and 64 is rising considerably.

These gutsy souls were not hampered by the age barrier or stifled by glass ceilings because they became their own boss and took charge of their own future. If you are wondering whether you would be a happy entrepreneur, here are some characteristics that might help.

Perhaps you never quite fit into the corporate culture, but you believe you have something important and meaningful to add that you can’t seem to let go. You may not excel in the traditional nine to five environs and long for flexibility even if it means working long and crazy hours to accomplish your goals. You want input into shaping the life you dream of living. You aren’t ready to stop asking questions. If you are a life-long learner that savors every ounce of knowledge you can unearth without ever feeling satiated, you could be an entrepreneur.

Choosing to enter the online workforce, is courageous. I know because I have decided to take the first steps to start an online business.  Leaping out of the deep furrows I have carved for myself is daunting. My challenge is to reinvent my life without ignoring my responsibilities and making ends meet.

I am frightened that I might fail and awed by the possibility that I will succeed.

If you want to follow my journey, please visit my Face Book Fan Page, Become an Entrepreneur.

Once you visualize something astounding, there is no holding you back.

I know you are out there and are probably looking for me too.

We need to get together soon because time is running out and we are in danger of losing every thing that matters to us.

What we once believed to be sacred and enduring is dissolving in the mist of uncertainty. Our leaders extol the safety of walking the plank and plunging into the embrace of warm, gentle waves that float you across calm waters where crocodiles are banned and carefully deposit you on sandy beaches of deception.

We should have known that there was a catch, but we were distracted by the alluring rhetoric of the snake oil salesmen and the false promises of authority. The flashes of gold we glimpsed blinded us and we mistakenly thought we could earn a fair share if we worked faithfully with loyalty and integrity.

Now we know that the promises of a better world are false. A lie that cleverly and arrogantly warps, twists and distorts our confidence in the veracity of the Constitution, patriotism and the conviction that as a nation we stand shoulder to shoulder against those who want to destroy the American way of life. Entangling these beliefs in political, legal and social untruths prevented us from clearly seeing what was going on.

The cruel joke is that these rights and the ability to live our lives in peace and freedom were always the targets that needed to be destroyed to complete the takeover. As we relaxed on the seductive shores of falsehoods and deception our rights, our privacy, our ability to speak out against injustice, our influence on our representatives and our ability to choose how and where we live were siphoned from us.

I know that I am not alone when I grieve for what we have lost as proud, resilient and brave people. And I believe that like me, you cry out for a hero to stop the carnage and regain what was taken away. And like you I wail that there is no one that will help us.

In The Progress Paradox, journalist Gregg Easterbrook suggests that a major reason that Americans are not happier, despite their increasing fortunes, is “collapse anxiety”: the fear that civilization may implode and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

My heart tells me to step up and do something. Still, I can’t do it alone. Can we do it together? Can we come together and discuss our fears and anguish over the unwanted future we foresee? Is it feasible that we can come together as one voice and make a difference? I believe we can make it so. Fear shrinks when we are connected.

To be or do anything significant, we must access the power of optimism. It is a life force that can take your dreams from yearning to reality and a prudent way to deal with risks to our way of life. Optimists focus on what is needed when faced with what is. Some threats are simply figments of social pessimism but some are real. Even so, we should look on them as problems that need solutions not as pending apocalypses.

Optimism is a strategy for making the future brighter. If you believe that the future can be better, you are likely to step up and take responsibility for making it so. All it takes is the belief that you can do it.

First of all, we must find each other and listen with open heart, mind and spirit. I hope you will add your voice and help us find a way.  

Are you in?

“Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.” ―Martin Luther

She floated precariously close to the edge of the cliff. Her toes curled over the rim as if they were holding the ridge aloft like a craggy black curtain. I approached her cautiously, fearing that my presence might startle her and tip her into the chasm. She stared straight ahead, her eyes a mixture of wonder, confusion and something I could only describe as longing.

She seemed to sense my presence as I tiptoed closer and a sad smile curled the side of her lips.

“Are you okay?” I asked rather lamely because I did not know what I would do if she decided to uncurl her toes and step forward.

I thought of the movies and TV shows that I had seen where the hero or heroine made a courageous leap that rescued the damsel in distress from a hideous fall. I recalled also that sometimes a desperate lunge morphed into an unplanned push that wrenched gasps and screams of despair and horror from the audience.

I waited.

She tilted her head slightly over her right shoulder and I saw how serene she appeared. Disturbingly, she looked familiar and with a jolt I felt we knew each other.

“Do I know you?” I asked. “what is your name?”

“I am Love,” she breathed.

Instantly, I recalled Love. It had been a long time since I had been in love’s presence, but the comfort, security and strength that she radiated wrapped around me like a warm blanket.

“Where have you been,” I blurted as if in accusation.

“I have been in a battle,” she sighed.

I stepped closer and could now feel her weariness, see the pallor of sorrow on her cheeks and the glint of betrayal hiding in the depths of emerald eyes.

She continued, “Anger, meanness, apathy, selfishness and lies have avowed war. They have mocked me with their callousness and trampled my soul.

They have unashamedly masqueraded as truth, compassion, empathy and even morality. And though I thought no one could be deceived by this treachery, they have insinuated a culture of blame into our world.”

For what seemed like forever I let her words tumble around in my head, jolting and careening into each other as I tried to steer them into the tidy niches that categorized my world. They no longer fit. I could not match the things going on in the world today with my version of Love.

I slumped to the ground as I accepted the reality that we had indeed lost our souls. We had abandoned our brothers and sisters to the self-serving whims of politics, commercialism, racism, pleasure and greed. We smothered our guilt with ludicrous, even laughable justifications as we avoided anyone or any place that threatened to call our bluff or expose our iniquities.

“You mean that we got so busy chasing the American dream that we neglected the things that are most important,” I concluded.

She nodded, “We bought the lie that we were exempt from hardships.”

 “When did this happen?” I spoke into the breeze as if it could billow into a wind and poll the universe.

“It began slowly but seems to have accelerated over the last few decades,” Love answered.

“How? Complacency?” I seemed unable to mumble more than disjointed words.

“We suffered from an overwhelming numbness as events too terrible to comprehend occurred again and again like last season’s reruns.

We seemed to get used to school shootings, crimes and murder in our neighborhood, slaughter of innocent children, drug use, suicides, demeaning treatment of blacks and women -just to name a few. The media exposed and sensationalized even the smallest incident in excessive detail if they thought it would increase their ratings. We were no longer shocked at what we saw on TV.”

 “What were we to do?” I whined. “stepping up or trying to intervene could put you or your family in jeopardy”

“Often, yes. Closing your ears, eyes and your mouth has become a means of survival. But it has also closed us off.  Indeed, the rhetoric and words from many who claim to be leaders and heads of state are more dangerous than the actions of terrorists.

We’re too busy to care or speak up for our values because it takes too much energy and it’s too risky. It is easier to blame others or complain.

We protest that public education is broken, but do nothing about it. We deny that our family and our homes are also broken because then we would have to fix them. In general, we avoid responsibility and spend a great deal of time looking for a convenient scapegoat.

We don’t talk, laugh, play or share our lives in ways we once knew. How can we care about or love others if we refuse to get to know or attempt to understand their pain?” she finished.

I felt an urgent question welling up in my heart but I could not yet put it into words.

“Is there something else wrong?” I ventured.

“We have lost something very dear to us,” she said regretfully “and we must find it before we are lost forever.

Several ideas filtered through my thoughts before I asked, “What have we lost?”

“God,” she answered, “We abandoned God like an aging Uncle we dropped off at a nursing home, but never intended to visit unless compelled to do so. We banished God from our schools, our institutions, our homes and perhaps even from our churches.”

I nodded sagely, evoking the Supreme Court decisions in 1962 and 1963.

Love continued, “God has become an old-fashioned notion. We replaced Him with technology, glitzy gadgets with lots of buttons that do remarkable things and are themselves replaced by shinier gadgets almost overnight. All done without any consideration for the consequences. We fell in love with man’s ingenuity, ignored God’s teaching and are morally much worse off.”

The wind was picking up and I slipped my arms into my jacket and buttoned it closed. I glanced at Love. Like the mountain she did not yield to the wind no matter how strongly it blew. I was suddenly lonely and longed to bring back Love’s smile.

Instead I felt the weight of her sorrow. Her shoulders slumped under the burden of aggression, violence, hatred and indifference. What was happening to us? We seemed in danger of losing our identity, ignoring our history, lowering our expectations. We worshipped affluence, evolving into a population of entitled entertainment junkies.

Unexpectedly, I felt uncertainty split my thoughts and send them flying. Was I feeling fear or was I afraid of feeling? My greatest fear was that I would feel something terrible, yet I realized fear had no power to demolish bad feelings, only prolong them. Why then did I let it hold me hostage? My confusion began to dissipate.

We are not truly alive without feelings.

Of course I knew Love.

I remembered feeling Love as I held a baby in my arms, with the hug of a little boy, through the secrets shared with siblings and the kiss of a lover. I recalled how love injected joy and happiness into my days and comforted me on cold and scary nights. Love showed up when I encountered a soul mate on an adventure or when I was lost and alone and unsure of my next step. I fell in love with music and dancing and the amazing beauty of art and sculptures. Love touched me through the majesty of the land with its trees, flowers, birds and wild life. I felt Love when a lonely dog licked my hand or a cat crawled into my lap.

I laughed out loud. I loved chocolate and snowballs, apple pies and ice cream. Love was as abundant as the stars in heaven.

I rushed to the brink of the cliff and gathered Love in my arms, pulling her on to the green grass.

“Let’s do something,” I begged, “before it is too late.”

“What do you suggest,” Love asked.

“Something radical,” I insisted.

“I know,” she said, her cheeks flushing a warm rose color and her eyes sparking to life, “let’s be fearlessly optimistic.”

I was overwhelmed by the simplicity of the solution. Optimism moves forward and accelerates progress while pessimism keeps life at a standstill. It is hard to be cruel and cynical in the face of Love’s courage. Love is enduring and fills the soul with joy, confidence and good will until they overflow and touch the soul of a neighbor or a stranger.

Still I was wary, “Will it work?”

Love stooped down and picked up a handful of small stones chipped from the mountain and placed them in her pocket. I cocked my head quizzically.

“We begin to move this mountain by carrying away the smallest stones,” she said, “and if we drop a stone we get up and do it again.”

I felt the truth in her response. At one time or other we are all broken by the world but afterward as observed by Ernest Hemingway, some are strong at the broken places. It would happen that way.

Love is never wrong.

Pessimism kills the instinct that urges men to struggle against poverty, ignorance and crime, and dries up all the fountains of joy in the world.
– Helen Keller

Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world…would do this, it would change the earth. ~ William Faulkner

Equity, justice and parity no longer appear to be considerations for assigning blame. Today’s criteria seem to include the depth of corporate pockets, the degree of melodrama that can be sucked out of anything, related or not to the truth, and the agenda of opportunists.

This is a major concern in today’s culture. Disinformation has evolved into false information and blatant deception from our leaders down to the guy slumped before the TV in his living room. The media that I once thought of as caretakers of the truth, has sold out to sensationalism, high ratings and who knows what else. 

It is past time for us to recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights because we are bound together by our destinies. Freedom that only inquires what’s in it for me without concern for others, devoid of love, charity, duty, loyalty or patriotism is undeserving of our instituting ideals and those who gave their lives in its defense.

The saddest outcome is that people accept what they hear or read without investigating its validity. Nowadays, serial lies appear to be a foolproof way of influence. The result is chaos, suspicion and cynicism. I never thought I would ever describe our country in those terms.

I rebuff the cultural relativism belief that moral decisions depend upon time and place and that rightness or wrongness derives only from the customs of individual Societies. The rightness or wrongness of any act is not dependent upon how many people support it.

So, what do we do when our country, our superiors, our friends tells us to do something we recognize as wrong? To whom do we turn to lead us toward truth?

Can we depend on global societies to find the resolve, purpose and moral destiny to honor transcendent truth before it is too late? A start is to call things by their true name rather than twist and degrade names with euphemisms, superficial or meaningless talk; truth is labeled expediency, goodness becomes being nice, character is confused with personality and fear masks as respect.

It is pivotal to acknowledge that authentic freedom is not the power to do whatever we please. Freedom is the liberation to be what we were meant to be, God’s intention for us. We are too often propagandized with appeals to our pride and avarice, veiled as wisdom and specialized endorsements from experts. For example, we are persuaded that abortion is a matter of freedom of choice.

Currently, social virtues include increased sales, higher consumerism, more wins and over the top possessions. The virtuous man is he who freely practices mass consumption. This is also applicable to those politicians catering to the quirks and caprices of constituents who worship their own cravings and compulsions, rather than the natural law of truth and honor.

Unfortunately, God is often honored in words but insulted in practice because many people worship from ulterior motives while the desires of their hearts are far from God. It is rare to hear open repudiation of God as we hypocritically call upon His name in political conferences, business conventions and before meals. And then we ignore his Commandments, refute His justice and deny His truth because, not to, is politically unpopular, financially unprofitable or personally embarrassing.

Perhaps it is not that God has abandoned us but that we have abandoned God.

I pray daily for the restoration of truth, trust and sanity.

The hands of the clock have begun to whirl around like a pinwheel in a hurricane. I try closing my eyes whenever I pass a timepiece but the ticking seems to get louder and louder until I imagine dogs howling in protest. I tossed one malevolent time piece in the trash and it stopped. But when I righted it, the battery fell back in place and the second hand’s gleeful rock around the cloud reached warp speed.

It hasn’t always been this way. The time span from Thanksgiving to Christmas used to approach Infinity. Now, especially since the outrageous advancement of the start of Christmas season to mid-June, it appears to be a quarterly event. So, being a scientist, I determined to contemplate time and uncover the root cause of this unprecedented acceleration that defies the laws of physics, sanity and Einstein.

Einstein in his famous 1905 paper On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies defines time. I read it. You should read it too then call me and tell me what it means.

Most people see time as linear. The past is “behind us,” and the future “ahead of us.” The Biblical view of time focuses on the cycle of events happening within a year and the relationship these events have with God’s eternal plan. In Biblical time life should not be overly concerned with our time on this earth, but with our minds outside of time in the heavens.

Time is an enigma. It can seem as slow as the formation of a stalagmite or as fleeting as a snowflake and still be the same minute shared by two people. Time is the great healer of souls, spirits and hearts.

It is as the measure of our life that it has the most power.

It is an oxymoron that as time speeds up, we slow down. I am not at all enthralled by the effect of time on the body and mind. With time, muscles decay and loose skin flaps like a wrinkled handkerchief when you lift an arm. Time blends glistening raven strands with grey and white threads that seem to appear from nowhere. Time can curve a spine, stoop shoulders, stiffen knees and kink fingers into bony geometric shapes. Time is very giving. It gives us pot bellies, hair sprouts in awkward places, free skin tags and distinct noises, vocalizations, grunts and wheezes that we never planned to utter.

The trouble with time is it prohibits back-ups, forcing us to move forever forward. We might be able to get an occasional do-over but it isn’t the same as a reboot. We worry and wonder if we used time wisely or wasted it. Did we take it and use or share it, or did we run out of it? How much time do we have left and what will we do with it? I admonish you not to wait until it is too late to learn the value of time.

Looking back in time, I am confounded by the many crossroads, forked trails and steep paths that materialized while I was not paying attention or concentrating on the ground beneath my feet. I recall standing at crossroads and choosing a lane that led me to the shiny package and beckoning strobe light rather than one lined by people in need or tools of labor. I regret those choices.

When it comes to forks in the road, I am known for taking the one least traveled. Those have often led me on exciting adventures, new outlooks and challenges as well as plunges from high cliffs and encounters with alien beings. Happily, I always found the secret path back to the main road.

I struggled on those steep, upward winding paths where progression was slow and calculated and the average pace was to take one step forward into growth and slide back two into safety. The most rewarding culminated in a step up to the peak where all you could so was spin dizzily, wildly in awe at what you could now do and see. Indomitable will finds a way.

Time is change. It defies the natural human instinct to play it safe and plant deep roots in our comfort zone where the soil is easily depleted and we cannot grow. Growth implies moving forward, leveraging our time. Take it from Rocky Balboa, “it’s about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward.”

Take a time-out to build and savor relationships that linger in your thoughts and dreams, offering comfort and sustenance. From time to time, saturate your days with passion and meaning and fill your world with the best that you have to give. Give your love, and in time you’ll have even more of it.

Stop checking sundials in the shade. The real voyage of discovery goes beyond seeking a new panorama but in finding new eyes to see it as it is.

I have observed that spirituality and religious sentiment tend to develop and deepen as we grow older. This might be a case of CYA.

Nevertheless, we seem to feel a need to lean on something larger, stronger and more abiding than human beings. If our faith is already strong, we look to God for light, hope and peace and feel the purity of His truth. Others, abandoned by worldly goods, distractions and reality, realize that a puzzle piece is missing from the box, keeping them from finishing the picture they are assembling. They search to fill that elusive empty space clinging to the hope that it is something so absolute, unadulterated and eternal that it makes up for everything else.

In time they will find it.

Time becomes mysterious when we think about past, present, and future. We remember what happened yesterday but we can’t remember tomorrow. Everyone is born young and then grows old. We can choose what to do next in our lives, but we can’t undo things that have already happened in the past. The past can be archived but the future is nameless. Why is that?

J.M.E. McTaggart, in his 1908 paper, The Unreality of Time argued that time is unreal because descriptions of it are necessarily either contradictory, circular or insufficient. McTaggart pointed out that we see the present moment we are living through as the only present time. But, all other moments, past and future, also either were or will be the present time at some point or other. So how do we reconcile this contradiction? McTaggart’s detailed analysis led to the tensed and tenseless theories of the passage of time.

The tenseless theory of time requires elimination of all talk of past, present and future in favor of a tenseless ordering of events using only phrases like “earlier than” or “later than”. For example, “we will win the game” can be adequately expressed as, “we do win the game at time t, where time t happens after the time of this utterance”. I suggest that if one of McTaggart’s followers shows up at your kid’s baseball game, abandon the stadium.

Time is a teacher that provides a lesson in everything. Today there is something that everyone considers to be impossible. And one day, someone will find a way to do it. Every failure is a stepping stone to success and a trial of your faith and inner strength. March forward hero! ~ Swami Sivananda

Clearly life flows on in time in spite of us, imbedding scars on some and kisses on others. Eventually each of us runs out of time. The passing of time is inescapable.

I beg you not to die with your music still in you. Too many people are still getting ready to live, believing they are not good enough or the time is not right. The time is now.

Recently I have discovered that the aging process in our society cuts-off the very elderly and infirm from the experiences of continuity and renewal that make the end of life meaningful. Our society does not provide well for the aged, psychologically or economically. Too many wonderful people are dying bereft of love. My heart is broken for them.

At this time, I will close with a scattering of phrases known to all of us that underscore the ubiquity of time. I challenge you to come up with others and submit them to this site. Let’s see who comes up with the timeliest phrase.

Borrowed time;About time;In the right place at the right time;From time to time;Prime time;Time will tell;The first time;Closing time;Once upon a time;Time flies;Time zone;Third time is a charm;Time off;Buy time;No time;Every time;By the time;Before your time;Lost time;Out of time;Time’s up