Andy and I both laughed out loud at this comic. I enjoyed it not only for its own sake, but because it reminded me of a bit of doggerel in the Wall Street Journal about 35 to 40 years ago:
I wish I could retain
By some Herculean feat,
As much of what I read
As I do of what I eat.
Needless to say, those lines made a big impression on me if I still remember them after all this time. Have you retained something you read long ago? Why do you think it made such an impression on you?
February 5, 2015
A number of them. Almost all of them have appeared in some post or the other in my blog. Examples: 1. “Maturity is acting with courage tempered with concern.” 2. “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” 3. “This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”
How about writing a post about #2 and how it relates to the idea you sometime express that we have no free will? When do you believe one and when do you believe the other? It might be fun to explore.
Oh, this is probably going to get me into trouble, but when I was nine or ten, our Sunday school verse was “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags . . . ” (Isaiah 64:6). In my particular Christian denomination, we were taught that meant that unless you believed in just the “right” way, it didn’t matter what good you did in the world. All that good was compared to filthy rags. You’d just spread filth around. You could devote your life to helping others and it didn’t matter. You were going to hell, and you’d probably helped send others to hell, too, by misleading them. I remember walking home from church that day, troubled. I knew that something was wrong: either the interpretation I had been taught or my understanding of it or . . . something. When we got home, I discussed it with my mother, but she upheld the interpretation that had been taught in the class.
I was as far from the rebellious type of child as it was possible to be. I am by nature a person who likes rules and guidelines and abiding by them. I tend to be respectful of others’ views. But my soul, heart and mind told me that it was not right to condemn people, for example, who worshiped differently than I did just because they’d perhaps been born in a different country than I was but who went about doing good works. It wasn’t right to condemn someone who didn’t believe at all but who did more to help other people than I was doing.
Those were the words that sent me into a different direction than I might otherwise have gone, one where I questioned what I was told more than I would have been tempted to do. And then the Civil Rights era was upon us in full swing and I had even more reason to question was I was being told in my “white flight” neighborhood.
I went through a similar thing about the same age. Why would I have the chance to go to heaven and most of my friends wouldn’t just because they belonged to another religion? Also my religion focused a lot on how sinful we were, and it believed in Adam and Eve. It wasn’t concerned about how small we humans were compared to the size of the universe. It seemed insane to me that we were so wrapped up in ourselves.
You might like At Home in the Universe. I wrote it seven years ago, and it’s time for me to ponder the matter again.
Thank you for speaking up!
LOLOL.
ask me if i relate.
what? what was that?
relate to what?
i guess you get the picture.
Yes, LOL! 😀
I retain nothing.
OK, a few things maybe, but I need something to jog it loose in my brain.
Like lyrics.
I can never remember them…
nope, can’t recall a word.
But if you played Carole King’s album “Tapestry”
I’d be singing every word.
I still remember some cigarette commercials from my youth. And I’ve read that a lot of other people do too. “Winston tastes good like a cigarette should,” and “LSMFT, Lucky Strike means fine tobacco.” Interesting because remembering them makes me happy, even though I hate cigarette smoke.
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/video/2014/oct/07/kangaroos-boxing-match-australia-street-video
Great video. Thanks! Those tails do come in handy.
You’re right. I did follow the link to your post on your own childhood experience. I did identify with that post. As to my essential something? Yes, I believe we all have that. Have I found “it”? Is it even an individual “it” or a universal one? I’m just trying as hard as I can to follow the path toward what tugs me forward. I can feel myself get off kilter when I stray, which I do, of course.
That’s the way it works for me, too. When I was young a lot of things I read said we were supposed to visualize our path, what we wanted to do. It didn’t work for me, but it made me realize that, like you, I could feel when I was on the right path, going in the right direction, and when I wasn’t. That was plenty good enough!
Thanks so much for commenting.