Can You Hear Destiny Calling You?

You’ll never mistake 230 some odd pounds of man slamming into you at full speed for anything other than what is.

A significant collision of bone and muscle against your body and whatever clothing you might have chosen to wear that day.

Nor will you need Einstein or Neil deGrasse Tyson’s help to understand the physics behind why the 100 pounds or more difference in size means you lost that particular matchup.

That is because you never saw him coming and weren’t prepared for what happened, but even if you had been simple physics explains why you were sent ass-over-teakettle into a crowd of people and still managed to hit the wall.

If They Were Easy Choices Anyone Could Make Them

Your fearless writer wrote a post last April about The Art of Making Hard Choices that he sometimes thinks about.

That is, when he isn’t referring to himself in the third person or sitting at the keyboard banging out a quick post because he doesn’t want to have to deal with the kind of nonsense that makes what’s left of his hair fall out in large clumps.

Maybe if he didn’t have a bit of a cold he would feel differently. Maybe if he felt like he was functioning at top capacity he would charge into the situation and handle it.

Hell, it is not really a question. I hate having things linger around and hang over me so I tend to just go deal with them.

Better to find resolution and move on than to wonder what if.

Well, that is how I handle most things. There are one or two that didn’t work out that way, sometimes because I couldn’t make them work that way and sometimes because I was nervous about making the wrong choice.

A while back my teenager and I had a conversation about some school situations he was dealing with and I advised him not to do anything unless he was face-to-face.

When he asked me why I told him it was easier to read people in person and to recognize whether they were being honest with him.

“Dad, people can and do lie to our faces.”

“Yeah, they do but if you know them it is easier to figure out what is happening when you can see their eyes than when you can’t.”

That led to the usual dance about how written communication can be challenging because humor and sarcasm don’t always translate and the benefit of facial cues.

And then the gender issue came up and we spent more time talking about how sometimes there is a significant differences between how men and women communicate.

One of these days he and I’ll really dig into that and we’ll have the whole “men are from Mars, women are from Venus” discussion in a whole different way.

Did I mention one of my oldest friends told me she advised her boys not to start dating until they are at least 17 or in college so they could avoid female drama?

I asked her why and she told me that girls play with boys and that women play with men but that she thought there would be less of it if the girls were older and more mature.

When I pressed her on it she told me that she and several of her girlfriends who also had boys were in agreement.

Does that mean it is accurate or just their experience? Hell, maybe yes and maybe no.

I am a guy, I don’t claim to understand how women think, well maybe a little…

What is The Best Advice?

The thing about having a kid in high school is that our conversations about what you want to be when you grow up are far different than before.

They are more structured and detailed and in some ways more agonizing for me than before.

That is because I wrestle with what advice I should give him. Do I tell him that he has lots of time to figure out what it is he wants to do and let him find his way?

Do I tell him that he has lots of time to figure out what it is he wants to do and let him find his way?

Or do I give him a gentle nudge towards a career/profession that is likely to always be needed, probably won’t be outsourced and might offer decent pay?

I don’t believe there is a right or wrong answer because in some ways it just doesn’t matter.

If I told him to find something in the medical field and talked about how people will always get sick and need help he might say yes and enter it.

Could be a doctor, a nurse or physical therapist and it could be that he decides he hates it and goes off to find something else.

If I give him less direct guidance and sort of suggest he find his own way he might take forever to finish college, drift through multiple jobs or do any number of other similar things.

Or maybe he’ll be somewhere in the middle.

The point is he has his own mind and will eventually build his own life. All I can do is try and provide some guidance and support, everything else will come from him.

Can You Hear Destiny Calling You?

I spent a few minutes trying to decide what quote(s) if any I should use for this post.  Feeling a bit slow because this cold is trying to kick my ass so I picked the Gladwell figuring it made sense and fits with how I do things.

But then I came across another and decided I had to include it.

“Trust your heart if the seas catch fire, live by love though the stars walk backward.”
― E.E. Cummings

That is me too.

That is how I do it.

I don’t know if I can hear destiny calling me. Sometimes I am certain and sometimes I am just not.

It is like when I put my ear against a seashell and listen for the roar of the ocean. Do I hear it because I expect to or because it is really there?

Well, I figure that good old destiny is smart enough to push opportunities in front of my face so that I can decide if I choose to chase or ignore them.

I have seen and experienced enough to know that I can’t explain everything but am rooted enough in science to not accept everything.

See you later, life calls.