Golden Age My Ass

 Things that people told me as I was growing up included the idea that these would be my "golden years."  They said I would be able to travel, hike, and overall enjoy what I worked for over my lifetime...

Y'all are liars!  

"Golden Years!" Golden for whom? My doctors? Wait... the medical profession in general?  

Truth be known - it is all about the Benjamins...  

What they forgot is that they were only middle-aged when they were spouting that BS, and they really didn't know the truth either.  

So... Little piece of advice:

    You will get old.  Take care of your body and your mind while you are younger.  Everything you do to it now - well, babies, it comes back to you...in SPADES!  So, that extra workout really isn't necessary.  Do a fine job on the needed workout and the rest will take care of itself.  You also won't damage your joints, tear muscles and/or do other unnecessary crap that will come back to haunt you.  Remember, every injury you have will come back - repeatedly.  

That is not to say you don't work out!  OH NO!  Keep that body healthy (NOT SKINNY), don't carry more weight than a few pounds over whatever the "normal" is for you, but don't kill yourself trying to be skinny.

DON'T DIET!  Yeah, skinny is not all that it's made out to be.  Just keep your body healthy!  Skinny tends to start eating bone, hair, and skin... note fat ladies tend to be pretty even when they are old...really skinny ones tend to be severe and very wrinkled - well, not all of them!  Sorry, my fat lady tendencies are coming through. Just remember - you have to eat only as long as your tummy needs you to - and it prefers things without chemicals or extreme processing, and it totally hates things that are not really edible to start with.  In other words, when you can feel your dinner sitting in your belly, you are either over the limit or just under it, so stop eating.  If you have that crazy "feed me" going on, you need to eat.  Don't overdo it.  

WOW!  Sorry folks... didn't mean to get on the soapbox.  Truth - getting old is painful and exhausting.  But it doesn't mean we are stupid or worthless!  Take care of yourself, and you will live to find out!

Be well - L

The Lens You See Through...Consider This...

 One thing that humans are truly myopic about... their internal drives and ideas.   Hmmm... let me be clearer.  Everyone in the world has a personal lens, varied and, usually, very different from that of the person standing right next to them... but some things can't be denied.

For instance...

Back in the 1950s - 1980s, women were objectified and treated as second-class, chattel, brood mares, babysitters, housekeepers, and sexual puppets.  

Before that time, the world was very different.

This shows that from the early 1950s until the 1980s, we were in a transition.  Our men were out of WW2, starting/finishing in Korea, and starting/finishing in Vietnam.  Many were traumatized, could not find work, and took/used drugs...a part of history that repeated itself while we were involved in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The women who returned from these wars are barely noted in the books.

The overwhelmingly ignorant practice of racism and institutional racism continued.  Not just on an individual level, but on a level that reached into the prisons, hospitals, housing, and every industry on the planet.  However, it had begun to change and become something different.

The 1990s and the advent of the internet and the electronic media changed things even faster.  The fact that a person could, provided they had access, reach out and see what was being shared with the world in an instant was not lost on the younger generations.  They drank it in like rich wine.  But did not see the pitfalls and often found themselves in a hole that they didn't know how to get out of... it got bigger.

In the 2000s to the 2010s, the internet, cell phones, and electronic media as a whole became all-encompassing and started to force out, and in the end did force out, the use of paper.  It also forced out the individual's ability to use cognitive discretion and logical thought processes to make true connections to the greater knowledge.

By 2010, and the beginning of the crash of our Nation, parents, adults (that would be all of us- me included), had failed to see what this use of "instant" would create.  Total and complete lack of real human connection... according to some.  Selfish and self-centered focal points... according to some.  Many people watch and cringe.

This led to the Orange Oompa Lump, in the 2016 election, leading to his 2017 swearing in.  He was and is the most dangerous of all the issues and viewpoints there are.  Because of his age and the fact that a lot of things are lost in history or rather, in this case, hidden in bullshit, a pedophile who abuses women and was not then and is not now sane and capable of leading a nation as the president is sitting in the Whitehouse (that he defaced and will never last long enough to see completed). 

Like I said, point of view...   

2020.  Covid.  A disease that simply did not exist in that form (genetic makeup) before this time is released (by nature or humans - no one really knows).  Millions die, and our world changes even faster.

So, you can see where the transitions come closer and closer together...but how does that change the lens you see the world through?  I have to say it - It doesn't.  How you see the world is how you see the world.  If you have chosen to shorten your ability to pay attention beyond a few minutes at a time, there is nothing I can do to wake you up and shake your connections back into place.  Nothing.  

You are the one who has to see that it is okay to not believe what others believe.  You have to decide that the 19-second to 2-minute clip you watched is not the whole story and that there is more to the world than cute bunnies, babies, and kitties.  That you are not STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) but STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics).  You are the one who will have to decide if the way you present to the world is "kind" or "productive" or "rude" or "entitled"... 

For me, I will do what I feel is right.  What I swore to do when I joined the military and what my fathers and the proud people that I learned the most from... Will you?