Plato

Plato said, "Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something."

Perception is reality

There have been two times in my life where I felt beat up, picked on, and most definitely powerless. I'm a confident person. But these moments in my history were not reality. They was perceptions, feelings, fantasyland.

In one situation, every time I saw my tormentor, I could feel my heart beating faster. I had an uncontrollable urge to shake. I was nervous, scared, frustrated and most definitely angry. All these emotions combined put me in a weak state. The bully had power and he used it to his advantage.

The object of my emotional demise stood about 6 foot 4. He was a giant that towered over me each time we crossed paths. The day he lost his power over me, he stood about 5 foot 6. How was it that I saw him so much taller than me and now he was shorter? My brain tricked me twice. He is about an inch taller than me at 5 foot 10.

Is it possible that everything we see is not reality? It is our perception of things, hence we make it our reality. If this is true, then there's no such thing as reality. We all live in our own dream world.

Take your dominant hand. Open it up so all five fingers are outstretched and not touching. Focus on it for a couple of minutes. Don't move. Focus on it intensely. The hand no longer feels like it's part of you. If you really focus on it, the fingers start to blur and you start to sense energy between your fingers.

Sometimes it feels like I'm in the Matrix.

What others think

One of my biggest fears in life is what others think of me. It's been an ongoing struggle for years. I dress a certain way. I use the right language. I drive the right car. I own the right house. It's f'ing tiring. A person cannot keep postering so that others view them a certain way.

I bought a nice home. Immediately thereafter I had to go into damage control. What will people think when they see what I've bought? They'll think I'm rich. They'll think I have more money than I actually have. I didn't buy the house for everyone else. I bought it for me, my wife and the kids. I am a far cry away from the kid that shared a bedroom with his sister in a mini-home.

I could discuss into how cheap I got the property, but no one will hear me. I could tell you about all the problems with the house before I bought it, and no one will care. I could tell you about the perfect storm that was created for us to buy our dream home, and it won't matter.

Ultimately, I have tried to downplay the purchase. I'm not rich monetarily. I shouldn't care what anyone else thinks about me and my family. But I do. And it's this thinking that forces me to react the way that I do. It's this mentality that bothers me.

I've been unemployed for 6 months. Actually unemployed is an incorrect term. I'm out of the labour force because I don't qualify for employment insurance. Yet we strive. Bills are paid, purchases are made, and ultimately everyone is happy.

One of my friends was recently confronted by her peers about a self administered shortened workweek. She was obviously distressed about the reaction of others regarding her situation. I know where she's coming from. My wife has worked outside of the home 4 days per week for 6 years. She works enough at home to take care of us all to make up the other 3 days. I admire her courage and her tenacity.

I try really hard not to care what others think of me. It's too much energy focused in the wrong direction. The haters that don't understand don't matter.

My life is mine. No one cared about me as a child except my family. If you're trying to build yourself up, leave me alone, 'cause I'm not gonna listen anyways.

If you love me, you won't hurt me.

Raising kids

Who teaches us how to raise kids? Don't we take the best stuff we were taught from our parents and try to leave the crappy stuff behind, in hopes we are a bit better at it than the people who raised us? 

Some read books, take parenting courses, and go to self help seminars. Ultimately we try to raise our kids the best way we know how. Anyone who has more than one child will know that each is very different. The same strategies that worked on one will probably not work on the other.

I asked my parents how they graded themselves as parents. They said that all they wanted for us was to get an education, stay out of trouble, and to be happy. They were very proud of their children, which meant they felt they did a good job as parents. Who can argue with that?

I didn't have the perfect childhood. I wasn't the greatest son. But the skills my parents instilled in me have come through as an adult.

Now I'm the parent. There's always crisis management in my house, an inability to get along, an argument over a toy, the TV or the computer. Sometimes I feel our house is a jungle. Yet, I talk to other parents and it seems that every house is in chaos. We go out in public, we put on the brave face and hope our kids act more like angels than the devils they are at home.  

Funny enough, they usually behave exceptionally well in public. There were a couple of temper tantrums at Walmart that will remain with me forever. Walking out of a store in front of a couple of hundred people with one kid towed by the hand and the other screaming in a cart is an unforgettable memory.  Yet, we leave them with a babysitter or a grandparent for a few hours and we're always shocked to hear that they acted like angels while we were gone. There's always doubt that the babysitter may be lying to us. Do our children have dual personalities?

Kids know how to push the right buttons at the worst time. Yesterday, I watched a parent in a situation with her child at the gas station. The public demonstration was upsetting. The child obviously did something she wasn't supposed to. We've all been there. But the public berating of a 3 year old was too much. The mother screamed at her child for more than two minutes in front of all the patrons of the store. You could bust the tension with a needle.  I felt bad for the child as tears rolled down her face. She was too young to understand that she had been publicly humiliated by her own mother. Who am I to judge? We do the best we can with what we know.

Every day presents a new set of challenges in the child rearing department. One night my mom said, "I brought you into this world, and I can take you out of it". 

It's amazing more parents don't go crazy raising these monsters. The buggers can be the greatest source of joy and the best destructors of it within a few minutes. I think the key is to stay one step ahead of them. They think we're stupid. That's our competitive advantage...

A love affair

I was 13 years old. My mom was gone to bingo. My dad was watching TV and he asked me to get him a beer out of the fridge. Not feeling any pain, he asked me if I wanted one. I had never had a whole one to myself before. I've stolen a swig from my parents when they weren't watching. This was going to be different. A whole beer for myself. My dad was nudging me into manhood.

The first taste was terrible. It kinda stung and fizzled like pop. But it wasn't as sweet as pop. Manly as I felt, I went to the bathroom. Thought I was gonna be sick. Instead I pretended to be sick and poured the girl dressed in Labatt Blue down the bathroom sink.

It was three years before I met this fine lady again. She was dancing with five other girls. This time her dress said Moosehead Premium Dry. Me and a friend went on a double date with these six women. Again the taste was terrible. I had to plug my nose while I downed it. Even though I only kissed three girls, I felt great. It was a feeling never experienced before.

These dates went on for a few months. Thinking too much of a good thing doesn't exist, I cheating on my girls and went on a date with their cousin. She was a doctor. Her name was Peach Schnapps. That was just a shit show. First and last time I ever spent any time with that bitch. She had a friend that was just as nasty, Mo Whiskey. That woman got me in so much trouble, I refuse to even look her way when she stares at me.

So back to the dancing girls I went. After a while I didn't want to share my 6 girlfriends with my buddy. He had to get his own gals. With more experience, 6 girls couldn't keep up. I started flying closer to the sun, and asked the girls to bring 6 more friends. Again reaching a new milestone in my manhood, I could stand up to 12 menacing monsters, each one getting meaner as their other friends joined the party in my belly.

Nevertheless, as I got older there was less space in my fridge for them, so I left the girls a few years ago. They weren't good for me. I still like to dance, but I only mess around with military and royalty. One's a Captain. You probably know her, last name Morgan.

What is love?

In the critically acclaimed movie, Love Story, there is a line that states, "Love means never having to say you're sorry." Anyone who's been in a loving relationship knows that's a load of crap. It's exactly this type of line that gets the girl inside all of us to well up with tears and gets us emotionally on board with the sappy Hollywood train. The reality is that apologizing for a wrong doing demonstrates that you care enough for another person to ask for forgiveness.

One could change the line completely 180 degrees and say, "Love means always having to say you're sorry". That might be a bit closer to the truth. If you're not asking for forgiveness, you're either a saint or you don't care enough about the person you've hurt.

I like a different variation of the definition of love that was popularized by a hit song in the movie, "Night at the Roxbury". Haddaway's song "What is love?" makes me smile as I see the two main characters foolishly bop their heads to the beat of the technotronic bass.

Let's look of the lyrics to the chorus.

What is love
Baby, don't hurt me
Don't hurt me no more
What is love?
Baby, don't hurt me
Don't hurt me no more

Not very deep as is the case with most dance music. The definition of love is much closer to the truth than the sappy one previously mentioned.

If you love me, don't hurt me. If you do hurt me, I understand we all make mistakes. It's the ability to recover from those mistakes, apologizing, and moving forward that defines the love we have for one another.

Love isn't perfect. It's in the absence if it that we feel hurt. If you love someone, when they screw up, the ability to lash back does not solve the problem. It will make one person feel better in the short term. Ultimately it puts the relationship in trouble. A hurt cannot be fixed with an opposing hurt. Hurt only gets healed with love.

The ability to help someone heal from an emotional pain is the closest definition to love. Think about the last time you helped someone who was hurting. I'll bet you have love for them.

Professional sport or entertainment

There was a time when there was uncertainty to the fakeness of professional wrestling. There's nothing fake about a 300 pound man falling 10 feet on his back. That's skill. The fakeness I'm referring to are the staged outcomes. Somewhere in adolescence we realize that the storylines are not believable. That's where the magic ends and the entertainment begins.

The World Wrestling Federation, in using WWF as their short name, changed their name in the face of a lawsuit from the World Wildlife Fund, also WWF. Their new name became World Wrestling Entertainment, or WWE. In using the word entertainment, it was now clear that the matches were not sporting events. They were for show.

The show is spectacular. Athletic ability is unquestioned. It's like watching a movie. Like any good movie, you don't know how it will end. There will be ups and downs to the plotline. And you can suspend your belief for a couple of hours as you get entranced into the stories.

In the eighties, a friend told me he thought all professional sports should be considered entertainment. He suggested the games were pre-determined. The plotlines were established in advance so that fans would come back for more. This person surmised that professional sport served only entertainment purposes.

Is hockey, basketball, football and baseball like wrestling?

In the 1980's and 1990's, many called the Superbowl, the Superbore. With good reason, the average difference of score in those two decades was 18.6 and 18 pts respectively. In the following decade, the average point difference dropped to 10. Up until this year's event, the difference dropped even further to 6.

In the NBA, from 1970 to 2009, if you looked at any decade, the average number of games played in the finals ranged from 5.2 games to 5.8 games. The last four years has averaged 6.25 games.

The NHL is the most blatant. From 1970 to 1999, again looking at each decade, the average number of games played in the Stanley Cup Finals ranged from 4.9 games to 5.4 games. Then from 2000-2009, something changed. The finals averaged 6.33 games. The last four years, the NHL plays an average 6.25 games in the finals.

One could argue that parity in the leagues have made the differences between teams so small that there is only a slight difference between the best and the second best.

I watched a special on two of the most eccentric owners that used to own NHL franchises: Charles O. Finley of the California Golden Seals and Harold Ballard of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Finley forced his players to wear white skates. His team was brutal, but he saw the entertainment value in the franchise. Ballard notoriously fired his coach, then rehired him as his players threatened not to play. He asked the rehired coach to stand behind the bench with a paper bag over his head, until the end of the national anthem. Roger Nielson refused to follow along with Ballard's request. So to compromise, he waited in the tunnel and emerged in great fanfare.

These two characters demonstrate that there may have always been a bit of Vince McMahon in professional sports.

With NBA final games generating in excess of $20 million per game, the question today should be to what extent are the showmen influencing the games???