With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.
I enjoy paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.
January 10, 2008 - 2:05 a.m.
How did it get so late? I’ve once again wasted time.
I actually went out today and saw people. I went to the Knick game with Alan and Larry. Yes I had a weekend filled with people but I’ve been totally alone since then. As for the Knicks, they did what they do best. They lost. I had more fun working on a game show idea I had with Larry. His father actually tried to get some game shows produced with no success. It is very difficult. I wouldn’t even know where to start.
I had some culinary news. I made something new for dinner, Cajun blackened steak. I bought some very cheap steaks yesterday and cooked one of them today. First I dipped it in melted butter then covered the surface with blackening spices. I preheated my cast iron skillet for ten minutes and put the steak on it. It came out almost perfect and with very little effort. I’ll try the same thing with chicken breast.
I was talking to Carey on the phone today and our friend Ira came up. We used to see him every week before he moved to Florida. We kept in touch for a number of years but then lost contact. Today I Googled Ira and discovered that he had moved to Oklahoma. He’s a doctor and we remembered that was a state that he was licensed in. I then checked his records and saw that he went to the same medical school and did his residency in the same hospital so it was our friend. I then called the number at the hospital I found on the web. It was the wrong department but they forwarded me to his office. He was busy and couldn’t talk but the receptionist took my number. He said he’d call back but he didn’t. He might have been to busy to call till after I left for the game and didn’t want to leave a message on my machine. I think I’ll try again tomorrow.
My life was so different back in the day. I’ve known Ira since grade school but as a friend of friends. We got a little closer in intermediate school and a bit further apart in high school. Where we really became friends was college and we stayed friends for years thereafter. For years I would see Ira and Carey just about ever weekend and often several times during the week. If we had nothing else to do we’d play games, especially monopoly. If it was just Ira and me we’d play chess. He’d beat me pretty regularly. He had much better capacity for concentration. I’d always slip up at some point. Now I go months and months without sharing a meal with someone. In those days I’d eat out with Ira or Carey or both at least once a week. They both lived within walking distance of my house. I don’t have any friends like that any more. Carey still lives close but we just don’t get together like that.
I wanted to write something else about friendship. What was it? I remember, more thoughts about the cost of doing business with friends. A quick reminder the cost of doing business with a friend are the annoyances that you know you’ll be subjected to if you want to be friends with someone. We all have our cost of doing business. My theory has always been that you know that going in and you have to learn to accept the costs. If you can’t then stop being friends with the person because you aren’t going to change him and her.
What I’ve been thinking about recently is how much easier it is to accept the costs from some people than from others and that it doesn’t really have to do with what the costs are but about the rest of your relationship. I have two friends that have very similar costs yet one of them I hardly remember five minutes after the annoyance and the other I really have to work on dealing with. Why? Because one of the people shows me much more affection than the other. I am more confident that the costs really aren’t a reflection on how he or she feels about me. I’m not as sure with the other friend.
Another factor is how controllable the costs are by the other person. I’ll start with an extreme case. If I had a blind friends that really would cause me to put a lot more energy into the friendship as I’d have to do all the driving and I wouldn’t be able to share many things I enjoy with the person and there would be many times I’d have to take his blindness into account. Yet I would never think of that as a cost of doing business at all as the person clearly couldn’t help it.
The thing is the same thing can be said for many psychological/emotional conditions. I do have friends with those and my reaction is so often to just let things go by that would bug me coming from someone else.
Sometimes it is the person’s history that leads me to be more accepting. As Sabatini said, “To understand all is to forgive all.”
One of the costs I have the most trouble dealing with is people not accepting my costs even when I accept there. There are some hot button issues for me that I have trouble dealing with. If they come up I am likely to overreact. I do my best but it isn’t always good enough. As you might have picked up I am insecure about how people feel about me. One scenario that has occurred to many times is that somebody does something to make me feel insecure and I react to it and their response is to get angry at me which of course makes me feel more insecure. What makes it worse is that often the same people will get insecure with me and my reaction is to reassure them that I do care. It is a cost of doing business that I understand all to well so I am not in general bothered by it.
OK that looks like I have written enough. I’ll end with another round of What’s on my CD changer?. Actually before I do that I’ll mention that Lipbone left a box that his CDS came in, in my house. It is of course perfect for storing CDS in so it helped in my never ending quest to get my collection under control. The huge stack of CDS is off the cover of my turntable now. OK now for the CDs:
- The Little Willies – The Little Willies
- Carla Bruni – Quelqu’un m’a Dit
- Arlon Bennett – Summer’s Voice ( I didn’t know Amy Speace did harmony vocals on it)
- Anthony Da Costa – Concert bootleg his father Dennis gave me
- Robbie Fulks – Let's Kill Saturday Night
The International Jewish Banking Conspiracy - October 07, 2008
On the Road to Westchester County - October 06, 2008
Inside the Madison Square Studio - October 05, 2008
I'm a Bosniac and I'm debating like I've never debated before - October 03, 2008
Islands in the Stream of Consciousness - October 02, 2008
Email me: GordonLew at gmail
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Horvendile January 10, 2008
