In talking to a friend recently, it was noticed that the word "I" is the number one pronoun used in everyday conversation. It dominates most conversations. The friend admitted that his usage of the word was so extensive that others noticed it. He had been critically informed that he always wanted to be the centre of attention.
Can a person with a healthy ego go an entire day without using an ego driven pronoun like "I"?
Egomania is a serious disease in our society. With sugar addiction, it may be the next big thing that needs to be cured. Everyone has ego. How is it kept in check?
Awareness of the ego is the first step to recovery.
In Roy William's book, "Pendulum", he writes about society going through great changes every forty year cycle. The pendulum goes from a "we" society to a "me" society. In 2003, there were echos of the "we" society emerging. It's basic principle is that we will transition from a selfish society to a selfless society.
The greed of the 1980's is no longer acceptable. Neutron Jack Welch isn't praised as much for his management style anymore. He was considered the epitome of management during his time at General Electric. Part of Jack's strategy was to fire the bottom 33% of his staff every year. His reasoning was the fear tactic drove employees to new performance heights and created great wealth for stockholders. General Electric stock rose 600% during Welch's tenure at General Electric. Costco's grew 1200%. Forget about shareholder value for a minute, which between the two have a stronger brand?
It's no longer enough to just take care of oneself and one's family. There is a need to take care of others like most have never seen before. Companies like Costco treat their employees and subsequently their customers very well. The average wage across Costco employees is $23 per hour, while at Walmart, it's $13. Ever have to return something at Costco? It's one of the best return policies in the industry.
In this world of egomania, those who help others get what they want will ultimately achieve great success.
At five years old, my parents main form of musical entertainment was a large chest record player. The thing was huge. It was about 4 feet long and about 2 feet wide. It held all of their LP's and 8 tracks. I recall that vinyl sounded different. I'm no expert in the field like my friend BL, but I have to admit there is something nostalgic and authentic about it. It's not supposed to be perfect. Nothing is... Yet, in an industry that promotes plastic posers, it makes sense that perfect digitized recordings are required.
In their LP collection, my parents had a Kenny Rogers 45. Singles as they were called in my youth, was the release of one popular song with a lesser known song on the opposite side. I would play that song everyday. I can't remember the song on the reverse, but the single is forever engrained in my brain. "The Gambler" was my favourite song. There was something about it that was addictive. I guess it spoke to me. I would play it and sing the words as I pretended to be Kenny. Kenny Rogers wasn't the type of role model that you would tell your friends about. He wasn't cool. He wasn't a rock 'n roller. He didn't have the star power of the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. But I liked him.
Ever sing karaoke? I refused to be drunk enough to sing karaoke through my university daze. It was when I got into the workforce, that my colleagues forced me on stage. I can't carry a tune. I know that much about myself. I don't know the words to many songs, so I did what any scared shitless new employee would do. I chose the song I had practiced 1000 times. I knew the idiosyncrasies in every line. I knew the background voices. The pauses were as normal as breathing. Despite the fear of making a fool of myself in public, I publicly became Kenny Rogers for 3 minutes and 38 seconds.
Although it's been years since I sung the words to "The Gambler", I heard it yesterday and thought about some of the messages at the heart of the song.
The song starts off with the philosophical line,
"On a warm summer's evenin', on a train bound for nowhere"
Then further into the song:
"If you're gonna play the game, boy, ya gotta learn to play it right.
You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.
You never count your money when you're sittin' at the table.
There'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done.
Now Ev'ry gambler knows that the secret to survivin'
Is knowin' what to throw away and knowing what to keep.
'Cause ev'ry hand's a winner and ev'ry hand's a loser,
And the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep."
After 36 years, it just hit me the song has nothing to do with cards and every thing to do with life. Life is the ultimate gamble. Despite the hand you're dealt, anyone can win by choosing how to play the hand.
You can win, or you can lose: your choice. But if you don't think about where you're going, you'll stay on the train bound for nowhere.
It took me 36 years to realize that this song explained the secrets to life. I've been working hard at finding the answers and this song, that's been with me for more than 3 decades, was telling me how to win the game of life.
Another thing this epiphany has taught me: The answers to all our problems are right in front of our faces. We don't see them because we are not ready to receive them.
My favourite song as a child has become my favourite song again. Thanks goes to my parents for introducing me to the great philosopher, Kenny Rogers.
Over the past two blogs, I shared insights about our personal experiences without the luxury of electricity. For two days, we survived in less than normal conditions.
Compared to those less fortunate, it wasn't that hard. It was an inconvenience at best. The power came back while we were gone to the liquor store. I guess I should have hit the liquor store earlier.
It was a nice feeling to be back to normalcy again. Yet, there was a fleeing image of a wonderful two days together. So much so, we turned off all of the lights and played hide and seek one last time before bedtime. We left the beds together one more night and let the kids fall asleep playing flashlight tag in the dark. Admittedly, we had a lot of fun.
Enjoying a soothing beverage, we discussed what we lost over the past two days.
It wasn't heat - the fireplace kept us warm.
It wasn't food.
It wasn't money. No damage to our house or loss of income due to the outage.
It wasn't even time, because we spent it together.
So what did we lose over two days? We lost our comfort. It wasn't as comfortable as we're used to. Things were different. We had to adjust. Getting uncomfortable in life is where growth happens.
You can choose to be upset about it or accept it. We chose to accept it. We thrived and grew as a family.
Based on these family changing events, my wife plans to force us to disconnect every Saturday night and have family night. Not sure she's thinking clearly right now. Too many distractions to get everyone to agree to family time.
To support her, I promised to do my part by flipping the main power switch. That'll get rid of the distractions.
We all slept in the same room last night. I awoke this morning to a driveway full of snow. Although I swore my snow blowing days were over for this winter, I've had to eat my words. My 4x4 would struggle with three feet of snow at the end of the driveway. I cleaned it out nice and wide. Maybe the last I need to do that this winter.
The propane fireplace throws enough heat to keep us warm. My son runs around the house without a shirt on. Each time we order him to put a shirt on, he complains of being too hot.
Bottled water is coming in handy. Thanks DB for your survival tips last summer. With 90 litres of water, we will not dehydrate.
Today, my Boy Scout days came back to me. I pulled out the propane stove which was used for camping once upon a time. Set up a makeshift kitchen in the garage. There's more ventilation to protect us from carbon monoxide poisoning. Boiled some tea. Then we had hamburgers for lunch. The fridge is warming up so we took all the dairy, and protein and put it in a cooler outside. It's only 1 degree outside but it's still colder than in my fridge. Checked the freezer. Everything is holding temp.
New problem is that we've drained the holding tank for our toilets. It's getting kind of gross in there. Aline filled up the buckets with snow last night, only to have an inch of water this morning. not enough for one flush. I warned her but she wanted to try. There's been a bit of a thaw this afternoon. Water started rolling off the roof. Perfect water for our toilets. I have four buckets collecting water as I write this blog. I initially suggested using the buckets for our dirty business. I was outvoted three to one.
The kids played together again this morning, but they are getting agitated. The first big fight happened a few minutes ago. Poor kids probably have cabin fever. We gotta get out and go for a drive.
We have numerous offers to stay with loved ones. For now we're comfortable. I'm really regretting Sunday. I had a lazy day and didn't shower. For a guy who usually showers every day, this three day binge is borderline disgusting. We are told that people are going to the local community centre as a refuge.
Got home from supper to find our driveway full of hard packed icy snow. And I thought this morning was my last run. Couldn't plow through it so we had to park the car on the side of the road.
Power company says no power until tomorrow night. There's power at the school. It looks like school might be on tomorrow. A friend recharged our phones. As an added bonus, we found a place to have a shower. We are all clean again.
The damn dog decided that peeing in our bed was a better decision than going outside.
We awoke to darkness. No clock, no bathroom light and most importantly no heat on this icy, chilly morning.
I walked slowly down the stairs, making sure my foot landed securely on the next step. 5:30 in the morning. What could I do? No electronics to distract me. It's too dark to read. I still have my cell phone. With a single connection to the outside world, I can verify the school situation. Can't surf too long, the battery is only half charged. Next, I need to find out how long this outage will last. On the power company's website, it states the power could be off until noon. Piece of cake, I think to myself.
I doze off to sleep on the couch waiting for daylight to emerge. My daughter wakes me up. She comes downstairs to verify if there's school. Excited for 14 seconds, she jumps for the computer. This is her first true encounter with being powerless. She then tries to turn the TV on. Finally she reaches for the iPad. It's got 17% battery left, but no wifi connection. I tell her to save the battery life for later. She responds, "no worries, I'll go get the charger". Poor little girl hasn't figured out yet that life is dominated by electricity.
My son wakes up. When he wakes up, everybody wakes up. The loud little boy that he is doesn't yet understand the value of a whisper.
With the whole family now awake, I turn on the propane fireplace. Without the benefits of the blower, it will throws limited heat. Some heat is better than none.
What happened next was marvellous. My kids played together. We all sat around the fireplace and talked. No distractions... We played two board games. My kids volunteered to go outside and played together. On any other day, we couldn't pay them to do that. We even got the Nerf guns out and ran around the house shooting each other.
Finally, we got out of the house at 2pm. My phone needed to be recharged so we went for a drive, got a needed dose of caffeine.
At 4pm, the power company updated their website. We could be powerless for another day. No big deal, especially when today was so much fun.
Tonight we're all gonna sleep together. For once, the kids are looking forward to bedtime. In the absence of power, today was indeed an electric day.
Dogs, cats, foxes, rabbits, turkeys, chickens, pigs, Star and Morgan.
The answer to the question what animals did I help raise when I was a child. We always had cats around. They kept away the mice. I think we always had dogs because dad liked to hunt ducks. Dogs made his job easier getting the ducks out of the water.
Turkeys, chickens, rabbits, foxes and pigs were food. We didn't eat foxes. Their fur made us money that ultimately was exchanged for food.
Star was a fox pup. Her mother was extremely nervous. Nervous fox mothers eat their babies. It was our first fox litter. The day Star was born, she had four siblings. Each day, dad would check on them, their numbers depleting like the snow on a springtime day. The final day he looked, there was only one baby silver fox left. Star would not survive another night with her mother. Dad had a tough decision: take the baby fox away from her mom or let her die at the mouth of her mother. The worst that could happen is the baby fox would die. There wasn't much of a choice.
He removed Star from the kennel. What he did next was genius. We had a cat that had a litter of kittens. He put Star on the mother cat to see if she would feed the fox. In less than a day, the mother cat naturally accepted an adoption. Our cat saved Star's life. The fox grew much faster than her adoptive brothers and sisters so after a month we found alternative sources of food. Being raised in the house, Star acted more like a dog than a fox. I'll never forget her.
Then there was Morgan. At work one day, dad was informed about a mother raccoon that had been hit by a car. Her young babies were hiding in the grass on the side of the road. Too afraid of life, too small to survive on their own, my dad brought one of the babies home to raise. Always a fan of rum, he named the female raccoon after his favourite brand: Captain Morgan. Again, as a baby, she was raised domestically as part of the family. Wildness wasn't part of her psyche. She only knew what she knew. Morgan was family. I remember having Morgan on my shoulders, just like a cat. She wasn't just tame. She was cuddly.
Wild animals will have instincts of the wild is what I was taught in school. Rest assured Star and Morgan were not wild animals. They were part of our family. How many people do you know who had a pet fox, and raccoon?
Ever heard of pet crows? My grandfather raised two pet crows. I remember feeding Fred and Barney by hand.
I was talking to a smart guy yesterday. He said there were four parts to the human psyche: mind, spirit, body and emotional fitness. I argued the fourth part was the connection to nature.
Without the connection to nature, we have nothing. I will always be thankful to my dad and my grampie who showed me how easily domesticated wild animals can be.
With these stories of wild animals, my hopes are wild assholes can be tamed as easily.
Death is something we don't like to talk about, something we don't like to think about when it applies to us or to those close to us. Yet when it applies to someone we don't really know, death is discussed like the weather.
It's shameful. Someone's mother died. Someone's sister died. They are in pain and we discuss in a "matter of fact" way to get caught up on the community news. We don't do it to hurt anyone. We communicate to make sure we are informed.
Last week, I read a story emerging on Facebook about a man who took his life by jumping off a highway bridge. The interaction between the trolls on Facebook sickened me. It wasn't the first time I have witnessed this type of online dialogue. I go to this specific group because the information is usually helpful when it comes to traffic jams and road closures. The interaction on this day described in great detail the stuff that no one needs to hear or picture. Has our society sunken so low?
I found out today that I knew the gentleman. He was my doctor, my specialist. In a field dominated by egos, in which I have felt like a number for a very long time, he made me feel human. He was one of the good ones. Even though he was extremely busy, I never felt rushed when I had him in the room.
I didn't know him on a personal level, so I can't comment on his pain. So I won't. I don't understand it. I won't profess to understand it. Here's what I will share.
There have been times in my life when I didn't feel worthy of living. No need to worry mom, I will never have the courage to harm myself on purpose.
My friend Craig explained courage to commit suicide this way to me. Most people fear death. To act despite that fear is the very definition of courage. We generally associate courage with positive, heroic actions. Craig's right. Although a negative event, suicide is still a courageous act. We treat suicide cases like victims: victims of pain, victims of the inability to escape it, victims of mental health problems.
Obviously a prevented suicide is always a better option. But if the ultimate has been committed, there's nothing we can do to bring it back.
The ancient Samurai would thrust themselves upon their own swords in order to die with honour than to die at the hands of their enemy. Death only hurts the living. My doctor refused to let his enemy kill him. He killed himself first. He's a Samurai in my books.
For the people I have offended, I don't like the thought of suicide. I don't condone suicide. I'm saying that if we lose someone to it, we need to remember their positive qualities that stayed with them right to very last minute of their life. That's all.
