by Donovan Baldwin
http://nodiet4me.com
I am 65 now, and, on Sundays, I take my 92-year-old mother, who no longer drives, to church. Normally, I dress well, as one should when going to church with his mother, no matter what his age, but today I have chores elsewhere afterwards and will not have an opportunity to change, so I made some concessions.
One concession was the shoes.
The ones I was going to wear this morning looked a little bad. They were supposed to be black, but had acquired a patina of age and disuse, plus a smattering of some unidentified white liquid from some previous task.
So, I got out the little shoeshine kit.
That was the first memory.
The first thing I saw was my father's "black" shoe brush. He died back in '81, but I still have all his shoeshine stuff. I knew it was his "black" brush because the label said so!
It was probablhy sometime back in the early 60's when my mom gave my dad the Dymo LableMaker for Christmas. He proceeded to go around the house labeling things. Until my mother moved out of the house in 1983 after his death two years earlier, one kitchen cabinet still had a label which told the world, with a proud red, though fading, label, that it was, indeed, a "KITCHEN CABINET".
Not all his labeling was done as a joke, however. Two things I still have are his two shoe brushes labeled "BLACK" and "BROWN" so he wouldn't accidently pick up the wrong one and ruin his shine.
However, that wasn't the extent of my memories. As I thought of the home where I grew up at the corner of Cary's Lane and Bayshore Drive in Warrington, Florida, and my normally staid and stolid father's sometimes whimsical humor, I smelled the shoe polish itself.
The smell, the spreading of the polish, and the buffing of the shoes triggered a kaleidescope of memories of an unknown number of shoes and boots shined during my 21 years in the military. Attached to those memories were places I have been, sights I have seen, and people I have known over the last 44 years.
In seconds, I traveled to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, to Monterey, California, to San Angelo, Texas, and from there to Bad Aibling, Germany. I crossed the ocean four times, went back to California and Germany again, and eventually returned home.
I saw the faces and heard the voices of Kevin, Bill, Frank, Olga, Wanda, Danka, Alex and a myriad of others whose paths had crossed mine on the way to wherever they are now. I remembered snow and sunshine, orchards and deserts, oceans, lakes, rivers, streams, and roads...lots of roads.
So much had happened in my life.
It only took a few minutes, and the memories began to fade as I finished shining my shoes and sealed polish, brush, and dauber back in the plastic case and put it back in the closet.
It had been a pleasant trip, a sad trip, and more interesting than anything I have seen on TV for years.
Later, when I took my mother to Mass, I thought of all the Masses I had attended and served as an Altar Boy at St. Thomas More in Warrington..and the funerals.
Time to change the channel, I guess, but who needs TV if you have shoe polish and some memories?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Donovan Baldwin is a freelance writer currently living with his wife, dog, and memories near Dallas, Texas. He is a University of West Florida alumnus (BA Accounting 1973), and is retired from the military after 21 years of service. He has been an accountant for the Florida State Department of Education, a Fiscal Consultant, a Business Manager, and has held various other positions, including being a trainer for a major national company. He offers a line of do it yourself legal software which can be seen at http://legalhelp.xtramoney4me.net.
Originally published on SearchWarp.com for Donovan Baldwin Sunday, July 04, 2010
Article Source: A Simple Act Breeds a Sea of Memories
Monday, December 13, 2010
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Decisions
The "bad" thing about most decisions is that we will often not know if they were a "good" decision or not until some time after the effects of the decision have been fully felt.
In fact, we may never reach the end of those effects.
While not every decision is earth-shattering, some can have a lifetime of repercussions, and taking the time to determine what we truly desire to achieve can be of paramount importance.
For example, if you had asked me back in the 60's, 70's, 80's, and even the 90's what I wanted out of life, somewhere in there would have been "a lot of money".
However, when I finally got around to examing my true desires, wants, and needs, I discovered, that I didn't really want the money. What I wanted was what I perceived money to be capable of getting for me.
I wanted the freedom to live my days as I wished. I wanted the liberty to do what I wanted to do, and not have to go to some job which held little interest for me and function as told by someone who I had little or no respect for, but whom I had to please in order to get the few things I could get with whatever was earned by my subservience.
As an accountant, I was trained to view profit and/or loss as a factor of revenue and expense. If you wanted to increase profit, for example, you could either increase revenue or decrease expense.
For some reason, that lesson took a while to be understood as it related to happiness, freedom, and the joy of living.
Many people, as I once did, take the attitude that you need to get more in order to be happy, successful, or "rich".
However, if being happy, successful, or rich is examined deeply, you begin to realize that these things do not depend on a quantified amount of how much of something that you have. They depend on having enough of what you need to get what you want.
This is where decisions can come in.
If you decide that you must "have it all", or as much of "it" as possible, you run a good chance of being disappointed and living a lifetime of regret for the decisions you have made which have not delivered your heart's desire.
However, if you realize that you can be happy, successful, or rich with less because you use whatever you have more wisely and make decisions which allow you to live in a manner of your own choosing, you will enjoy life much more fully and fulfillingly than the richest millionaire who depends on the amount of money available to him to provide cheap imitations of the rich reality you truly possess.
================
Making decisions
In fact, we may never reach the end of those effects.
While not every decision is earth-shattering, some can have a lifetime of repercussions, and taking the time to determine what we truly desire to achieve can be of paramount importance.
For example, if you had asked me back in the 60's, 70's, 80's, and even the 90's what I wanted out of life, somewhere in there would have been "a lot of money".
However, when I finally got around to examing my true desires, wants, and needs, I discovered, that I didn't really want the money. What I wanted was what I perceived money to be capable of getting for me.
I wanted the freedom to live my days as I wished. I wanted the liberty to do what I wanted to do, and not have to go to some job which held little interest for me and function as told by someone who I had little or no respect for, but whom I had to please in order to get the few things I could get with whatever was earned by my subservience.
As an accountant, I was trained to view profit and/or loss as a factor of revenue and expense. If you wanted to increase profit, for example, you could either increase revenue or decrease expense.
For some reason, that lesson took a while to be understood as it related to happiness, freedom, and the joy of living.
Many people, as I once did, take the attitude that you need to get more in order to be happy, successful, or "rich".
However, if being happy, successful, or rich is examined deeply, you begin to realize that these things do not depend on a quantified amount of how much of something that you have. They depend on having enough of what you need to get what you want.
This is where decisions can come in.
If you decide that you must "have it all", or as much of "it" as possible, you run a good chance of being disappointed and living a lifetime of regret for the decisions you have made which have not delivered your heart's desire.
However, if you realize that you can be happy, successful, or rich with less because you use whatever you have more wisely and make decisions which allow you to live in a manner of your own choosing, you will enjoy life much more fully and fulfillingly than the richest millionaire who depends on the amount of money available to him to provide cheap imitations of the rich reality you truly possess.
================
Making decisions
Monday, December 6, 2010
The Walls of Life
Anytime you start to place philosophical boundaries on something, you become a target.
In this article, for example, I going to discuss what I call the three walls of life. It is within these walls that we live our lives, and the very existence of these walls influence our decisions.
Some people will say that they see four, five, six, or twenty-five walls. some will say that they see only two. Some will say that while maybe there are three, they believe that I have named them wrongly and should have called them....
Well, maybe they will be right, or maybe they will simply be seeing things a little differently than I do.
As my friend, Al, use to say, "It's all good!"
At least in this case.
After all, it is just a discussion, and I am just presenting my viewpoint. I hope I am right. I like to think I am right.
I have been wrong before, however, and will be again. Maybe this is one of those times!
Anyway, as I see, there are these three things which have been erected around us and which influence our decisions and progressions...and regressions.
Either we turn away, try to climb them, attempt to push them away, gather them to our bosom, or carom off them. The surround us and by their existence define ours.
They are:
1. Who we are
2. What we have to work with
3. Mortality
We are man or we are woman. We are old, or we are young. We are brave, or we are cowards. We are educated, or we are ignorant. We are believers or we are infidels. There are many such factors which help decide who we are.
One word often used to describe at least part of this is "paradigm".
A paradigm could be defined as our view of the world.
The first time I heard of the word, "paradigm", the speaker told the following joke to illustrate its definition.
One Autumn day, a cab driver from the city, tired of all the furor and uproar of his daily existence, decided, on his day off, to take a ride in the country.
As he was enjoying his peaceful jaunt on the back roads amid the woods full of trees with leaves of red and gold, he approached a curve.
Suddenly, a car came around the curve apparently out of control and headed for his car. At the last moment, the other driver regained control and passed by, barely missing the cab driver's vehicle. As she passed, the female driver stuck her hand out the window and yelled, "Pig!"
The cab driver, trained by hours in city traffic, immediately stuck his hand out his window and, giving the universal gesture which means "you are number one" yelled back, "Cow!"
With that resolved, and his peaceful day in tatters, the cab driver rounded the curve and ran into a 600 lb. pig.
The cab driver was a man who assumed, based on his knowledge of life. the manner in which he lived, and his own experiences, that someone narrowly missing him and yelling, "Pig!", could only be a total idiot who needed to be put in his or her place. The cabbie had no paradigm which allowed him, a city feller and a stranger in the country, to imagine that he was actually being warned of imminent danger by someone who cared about his safety.
I often hear people say, "It is what it is." He was who he was, and that established a boundary.
Sometimes, in spite of being a certain person with a certain point of view, training, education, mental ability, or some other attribute allows us to modify or even transcend the basic "who" we find ourselves to be. Sometimes, the skill is actually physical, as in the case of an athlete whose life would be bounded by ignorance, or some other limiting factor, but who is able to escape because of something that genetics, hard work, or plain luck, has placed at their disposal.
It works the other way as well. Perhaps the person has the seeds of greatness in some field of endeavor but they are never allowed to come to fruition because some skill, art, or aptitude leads the person along another path.
However, sometimes, greatness intervenes and attribute combines with ability to create something wonderful and fine which gives the human race a luster it often fails to achieve.
Unfortunately, who the person is and what they have to work with, no matter how they lie in relation to each other, will eventually touch mortality. That cold side of the triumvirate which molds the destiny of mankind will cause the good, the bad, the indifferent to suffer the same fate...cessation of existence.
Unless, something within the triangle is passed on to another.
That is the one way to escape and evade the walls of life which bind and confine us. Sometimes it happens by chance. In that case, we, or a portion of who we are, becomes a building block of the future. Sometimes, we choose to pass on something within the walls of that triangle. Sometimes we choose to pass on something great and good, sometimes small yet fine.
What would you choose?
I guess it depends on who you are, what you have to work with, and when mortality ends the game.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Donovan Baldwin is a 65-year-old accountant, amateur bodybuilder, freelance writer, certified optician, and Internet marketer currently living in the Atlanta, Gerogia area. A University Of West Florida alumnus (1973) with a BA in accounting, he has been a member of Mensa and has been a Program Accountant for the Florida State Department of Education, the Business Manager of a community mental health center, and a multi-county Fiscal Consultant for an educational field office. He has also been a trainer for a major international corporation, and has managed various small businesses, including his own. After retiring from the U. S. Army in 1995, with 21 years of service, he became interested in Internet marketing and developed various online businesses. He has been writing poetry, articles, and essays for over 40 years, and now frequently publishes original articles on his own websites and for use by other webmasters. He has posted a series of articles on The Law of Attraction , and other self-improvement issues at xtramoney4me.net/internetmarketing/reviews
/law_of_attraction_articles.
In this article, for example, I going to discuss what I call the three walls of life. It is within these walls that we live our lives, and the very existence of these walls influence our decisions.
Some people will say that they see four, five, six, or twenty-five walls. some will say that they see only two. Some will say that while maybe there are three, they believe that I have named them wrongly and should have called them....
Well, maybe they will be right, or maybe they will simply be seeing things a little differently than I do.
As my friend, Al, use to say, "It's all good!"
At least in this case.
After all, it is just a discussion, and I am just presenting my viewpoint. I hope I am right. I like to think I am right.
I have been wrong before, however, and will be again. Maybe this is one of those times!
Anyway, as I see, there are these three things which have been erected around us and which influence our decisions and progressions...and regressions.
Either we turn away, try to climb them, attempt to push them away, gather them to our bosom, or carom off them. The surround us and by their existence define ours.
They are:
1. Who we are
2. What we have to work with
3. Mortality
We are man or we are woman. We are old, or we are young. We are brave, or we are cowards. We are educated, or we are ignorant. We are believers or we are infidels. There are many such factors which help decide who we are.
One word often used to describe at least part of this is "paradigm".
A paradigm could be defined as our view of the world.
The first time I heard of the word, "paradigm", the speaker told the following joke to illustrate its definition.
One Autumn day, a cab driver from the city, tired of all the furor and uproar of his daily existence, decided, on his day off, to take a ride in the country.
As he was enjoying his peaceful jaunt on the back roads amid the woods full of trees with leaves of red and gold, he approached a curve.
Suddenly, a car came around the curve apparently out of control and headed for his car. At the last moment, the other driver regained control and passed by, barely missing the cab driver's vehicle. As she passed, the female driver stuck her hand out the window and yelled, "Pig!"
The cab driver, trained by hours in city traffic, immediately stuck his hand out his window and, giving the universal gesture which means "you are number one" yelled back, "Cow!"
With that resolved, and his peaceful day in tatters, the cab driver rounded the curve and ran into a 600 lb. pig.
The cab driver was a man who assumed, based on his knowledge of life. the manner in which he lived, and his own experiences, that someone narrowly missing him and yelling, "Pig!", could only be a total idiot who needed to be put in his or her place. The cabbie had no paradigm which allowed him, a city feller and a stranger in the country, to imagine that he was actually being warned of imminent danger by someone who cared about his safety.
I often hear people say, "It is what it is." He was who he was, and that established a boundary.
Sometimes, in spite of being a certain person with a certain point of view, training, education, mental ability, or some other attribute allows us to modify or even transcend the basic "who" we find ourselves to be. Sometimes, the skill is actually physical, as in the case of an athlete whose life would be bounded by ignorance, or some other limiting factor, but who is able to escape because of something that genetics, hard work, or plain luck, has placed at their disposal.
It works the other way as well. Perhaps the person has the seeds of greatness in some field of endeavor but they are never allowed to come to fruition because some skill, art, or aptitude leads the person along another path.
However, sometimes, greatness intervenes and attribute combines with ability to create something wonderful and fine which gives the human race a luster it often fails to achieve.
Unfortunately, who the person is and what they have to work with, no matter how they lie in relation to each other, will eventually touch mortality. That cold side of the triumvirate which molds the destiny of mankind will cause the good, the bad, the indifferent to suffer the same fate...cessation of existence.
Unless, something within the triangle is passed on to another.
That is the one way to escape and evade the walls of life which bind and confine us. Sometimes it happens by chance. In that case, we, or a portion of who we are, becomes a building block of the future. Sometimes, we choose to pass on something within the walls of that triangle. Sometimes we choose to pass on something great and good, sometimes small yet fine.
What would you choose?
I guess it depends on who you are, what you have to work with, and when mortality ends the game.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Donovan Baldwin is a 65-year-old accountant, amateur bodybuilder, freelance writer, certified optician, and Internet marketer currently living in the Atlanta, Gerogia area. A University Of West Florida alumnus (1973) with a BA in accounting, he has been a member of Mensa and has been a Program Accountant for the Florida State Department of Education, the Business Manager of a community mental health center, and a multi-county Fiscal Consultant for an educational field office. He has also been a trainer for a major international corporation, and has managed various small businesses, including his own. After retiring from the U. S. Army in 1995, with 21 years of service, he became interested in Internet marketing and developed various online businesses. He has been writing poetry, articles, and essays for over 40 years, and now frequently publishes original articles on his own websites and for use by other webmasters. He has posted a series of articles on The Law of Attraction , and other self-improvement issues at xtramoney4me.net/internetmarketing/reviews
/law_of_attraction_articles.
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