Wise Guy
For Goodness Sake
Literally! For goodness’ sake, here are some juicy rich plums - plucked from the tree of “Rock your Best Life EVER”:
Your true wealth is not what you have, but what you ARE. (IRS, copy that.) (on second thought if they can tax what I am I’m sunk cuz I’m soooo much – and the tax rate goes up the more soooo much you have – so don’t forward this to the IRS or they’ll want their pound of flesh. Or in my case, more than a pound if we’re going for percentages – but I’m not sayin more.)
You can’t preach with words, only actions. ! (Tell that to the minister on Sunday, then take him to your garage that needs cleaning - or the deck that needs staining- or the kids that need sitting so you can take off for a mental break.) (Then he’ll start talking about people starving in or fleeing persecution in _, and the garage will suddenly look real organized just the way it is.) (Um, maybe.)
We need to build a better man before we build a better society. Note we said man, not woman. How many wars are started by maniacal women in power. How many mass shooters are women. (So sorry but that had to be included.) How many deadbeat parents are women. (OK, but a lot less than men.) How many tyrannical corrupt nation-impoverishing dictators are women (who didn’t rise to power througIOnh their husband or father, that is.) How many catfights in Walmart are committed by women. (OK so 4 out of 5 is still good.) Next:
There is no better exercise for the heart than reaching down and lifting somebody else up. 1) There’s evidence that valves and ventricles are less vulnerable to variations in vital vascular vigor when valor, veneration, and virtue are victorious over the varying vexations of vituperative vitriol, vicious vengeance, and vile vulgarities.) 2) Being beneficent helps the human heart heal, in complimentary causality - by both physical and psychic pathways. Bolstering your brother lightens your load (and your cardiac stress and insurance premiums, but not your lifespan - and apparently not this word mess either, so – done.) ! Adios alliteration.
The measure of your character is what you do when you know nobody else is looking. (The real “strong, silent type”.) There are several ways to consider people who stop in front of a long red light on a totally deserted Wyoming country road at 2:00 AM, and stay stopped til it turns green. Just like there are several ways to consider people who walk back 5 miles barefoot in the snow to return the 25 cents they got overpaid, or clean up the yucky gunk in the gas station restroom (that they didn’t put there). Or buy the ugly fruit because they’re only going to cut it up for cobbler anyway so why not save the pretty stuff for somebody who’s doing a crucial foodie photoshoot for their photography final so they can ace an A and get that scholarship to the Sorbonne (OK so maybe the Sorbonne doesn’t do photography but the sort of person who would altruistically buy those bruised Granny Smiths deserves to go to France anyway before it all gets too –“ un-go-to-able” - til they make a decent transatlantic hydrogen powered blimp that hopefully serves more than those 2 oz bags of pretzels cuz it’s going to be a lot longer flight and people will get hungry. And if there’s an analogy between character and hungry blimp rides I really don’t want to know it.)
Anyway, don’t you want to be a GOOD PERSON? Because they’re the indispensible colored pixels in that big “Prosperous Safe Free Country” picture for everyone - including those who are unable to pixelate. Keep that thought buckled up while you wait at red lights tonight (unless you’re an ambulance driver). Even though I will never know. But the universe will…. The universe knows all _ where goeth the unpopular pears, those tangles of tossed TP, the lonely intersection interludes; those prettily popping pixel peeps; the bare blue feet in snow _