Family Finances... That Part of Family Life We Love to Hate

A family is more than just the sum of the relationships between it's members. A family is even more than a legally binding arrangement among the people who form that family. Like it or not, a family is also a business entity. Like any business, a family must be operated prudently and with careful attention to the financial aspects of the entity.

No one really enjoys this particular aspect of family life. Let's face it. Tending to the business side of the family is demanding work and isn't particularly a lot of fun. Someone in the family is going to have to mind the store, so to speak. Like any job we accept in life, we have to learn how to run our family's financial side. We have to learn how to set budgets, how to handle money and how to properly manage credit accounts. We have to learn how to recognized the avoidable pitfalls. There is a lot to learn and a lot to know, if we are going to successfully accomplish all of these things.

We have to be organized and disciplined in how we run the business. We have to make difficult choices and establish our priorities. And more often than not, the most difficult decisions are the decisions not to spend money on some things we would really like to buy or to do. For most families, we usually are not able to have immediate gratification for the things we want to have. Not only that, we have to focus on the present and also focus on what we will need to have in place in the future, both at the same time. And sometimes someone has to be the bad guy when it comes time to rein things in, when money starts to run short, because that is the point in time when everyone in the family is going to have to make some sacrifices. Making sacrifices with regard to material things is not something that we Americans do willingly.

Running the finances of a family is an important and critical job. It is not a particularly glamorous job, but someone in the family is going to have to do it, if a family is going to survive over the long haul.

At the End of the Day...

A Fictional Conversation...

Bernie Watson pushed himself very hard. He wanted to be the best, the top dog in whatever he endeavored to do. And some days, the things he tried to do worked out just as he expected them to. And, as very often happens in life, some days there were glitches, and his efforts fell short of his very high expectations, either by a lot or perhaps just a little. Bernie was not a person you wanted to be around when things did not proceed as planned. At times like that, Bernie could become a very difficult person.

Bernie was a twenty-something. He still believed that he was going to conquer the world of television production in a huge way and that by the age of thirty, he will have made his first million dollars. His birthday was approaching in a few days. He was already 26 years old and he wasn't even close to that first million. All his plans to make his mark at work were unravelling, as well. AlStarr Productions was buying out the company for which he worked. Everyone was edgy because the corporate cultures of the two companies could not have been more different. There was a strong possibility that only a few people in his department would stay on with the new company and the rest would be cut loose.

His anxiety grew with each passing day. The uncertainty of the situation was wearing him down and he had become increasing testy and irritable. Losing gracefully had never been never been an acceptable option for him.

Two days before his birthday, he got home late. He hadn't been able to concentrate on the current project that day. He had been very distracted and even the simplest task took twice as long as it usually took him to do. He had gotten everything on the agenda done, but it was seven o'clock before he walked into his apartment.

He set his briefcase down on the coffee table and hung up his jacket on the coat rack. He walked over the fridge and took out a bottle of white wine. He took a wine glass that was suspended from the rack in the kitchen and poured himself a glass of the Sauvignon Blanc and walked over to the couch. He sat down on the very expensive leather couch and slowly sipped the wine.

"Damn it!" he cursed. He was frustrated and angry and unhappy and upset, all at the same time. And things were so muddled in his head that he could not even begin to sort things out. In fact, he had not been able to think straight for a few days now.

"You have got to pull yourself together, man," he told himself.

He reached for the phone and dialed Paul's number. He and Paul had known each other since forever. They had roomed together at college and had competed with each other to see who could get the best marks, who could get into the most prestigious honor societies... and later who could be the bigger success in his chosen field.

Paul had become a teacher. Bernie had never understood that. What was the future in becoming a teacher. A guy graduates from college and then ends up working his butt off for peanuts. Bernie figured that Paul had lost his competitive edge and had settled for something less in life. Go figure that one out. That was not the Paul he had known for so many years.

Paul picked up his phone and recognized the phone number from caller ID. "Hey, big guy. How the hell are you?"

Bernie answered a little irritably, "I hate the fact that you are always so damn cheerful."

Paul paused. "Okay. What is going on Bernie?"

"Paul, I need to talk to you. Everything is falling apart. My company is being bought out and I don't know what this is going to mean for me." Bernie stopped for a moment to collect his thoughts. "Paul, I have worked my behind off to make all the right moves. I was in line for a major promotion... and now this. Right now, my brain is so fried that I can't even think straight."

"Are you going to be home for awhile, Bernie?"

"Yeah, I'll be here all night," Bernie answered.

"Okay, stay put and I'll be over as soon as I can change clothes. You have some wine there or do I need to bring a bottle with me?" asked Paul.

"I do have about half a bottle of white wine, so you had better pick up another on the way."

"Will do. See you in a few," said Paul, just before he ended the call.

About thirty minutes later, Paul arrived, carrying a long narrow brown bag. He went into the kitchen and stuck the bottle of wine into the fridge to chill.

He sat down on the couch. "Talk to me, Bernie."

Bernie filled him in on all the details of what was happening at work. Paul already knew that because of Bernie's competitive nature, Bernie would become easily irritated when his carefully constructed plans were not working out. This was a really dicey situation and he had no patience with what was unfolding in his life. This was not the way he had planned things to happen for himself.

Paul listened to him very quietly. Paul had changed over the last couple of years since he had received his Masters Degree in English Literature. He had discovered that there were more important goals in life than just "winning." He had been teaching at the high school level. Paul had discovered that it was just as important to make a difference in this world. So he had mellowed a bit and now saw life from a very different perspective.

"Bernie, how long have I known you? I have know you since we were in junior high. And you are the same guy now as you were then. To you, every plan you make is written in stone. And if you make plans, by G'd, that is the way things are going to play out. Right?" Paul asked him.

"Yeah. So?"

"You are almost 27 years old, guy. Since you started playing in the real world, what have you learned?" Paul asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Bernie... Just because you want things to play themselves out according to your plans, doesn't mean it will happen just that way. Maybe it will. Maybe it won't. And even when things do work out in your favor, you never get everything you wanted, do you? Right now, you have to look at your present situation and do a serious reality check. You have to add the proviso of 'All things being equal...' to anything you are thinking."

Bernie was frustrated and angry about the situation. Everything that Paul was saying seemed only to add oil to the fire inside of him. "This should not be happening to me. I made all the right moves. I worked my ass off. I worked smart. I aligned myself with the right people. Damn it! This should not be happening to me."

Paul countered, "Open your eyes, buddy. It did and it is happening to you right now. The question now is what are going to do about this? What choices are you going to make for yourself? And maybe you should be asking yourself what you really want from your life now. You have had an opportunity to play in the fast lane. Do you like it there? Is it fun?"

Bernie blew up. "Is it fun? IS IT FUN? Hell no, it isn't fun. It is like walking a tightrope everyday and trying not to fall off. I have to be at the top of my game every day... every day... every hour... every minute. One slip and your head is one the chopping block. But it is a rush. Just to be able to stay on my feet and to keep going when others are being shown the door... That is a rush." He seemed to have recovered his composure.

"Bernie, what are you trying to accomplish in your career? What is the most important thing you want to happen?"

"I want to be in top level management by the time I am thirty with a seven-figure income. I want to become one of the most influential guys in the entertainment game," Bernie answered without hesitation. He may have been uncertain about some things, but that was not one of those things. This he knew with a certainty.

"And that would make you a winner in your estimation? That would make you happy?"

"You got it."

Paul studied Bernie for a moment. "Do you like what you are doing? Are you happy with the way your life is going? When you get up in the morning, what motivates you to get your ass out of bed and get dressed and go to work? Because you like your job and the kind of work you do?"

Bernie asked sarcastically, "Okay teach, is this some kind of a test."

In a very serious tone, Paul answered, "It is indeed."

"Come on, Paul. Give me a break. That is all a lot psychobabble."

"Bernie, these are really important questions. You never understood why I went into teaching. While I was getting my masters degree, I began to change. I began to understand that there was more at stake in what I was going to be doing than just winning one promotion after another or making more and more money over time."

"Like what."

"Well for one thing, I was tired of having my stomach in knots, stressing out whether I was still number one. After awhile, being number one ceased to mean so much to me. I just wanted to do the best that I was capable of doing, under the circumstances," explained Paul.

"Now you are starting to think like a loser," chided Bernie.

"No, I am most certainly not." Paul continued, "After awhile, being numero uno ceased to be fun anymore. All it meant was that I constantly found myself looking over my shoulder, to see if there was someone out there trying to shoot me down. I did not want to live that way anymore. I wanted my life to be something better, something more fulfilling... something more than that."

"Listen, Paul. I don't think it is all that important that I need to like what I am doing. Or that I am inspired at work or that I am head over heels happy when I am doing my work. When there is this project in front of me, that is all that matters. And I am the guy who will push it through on time and on schedule and on budget. And any man or woman on my team had better be willing to do whatever it is going to take to make sure that happens. That is what I do. No one does it better. And no one gets paid more than I do. I rule, man. I rule.." This had all tumbled out of Bernie's mouth and he just stopped to catch his breath.

"Fine!" responded Paul. "You are the man! But are you doing this just to show everyone that you are the man... or because you actually believe you are accomplishing something worthwhile?"

"Irrelevant."

"Is it, Paul? At the end of the day, do you feel like you have accomplished something of importance?"

"That is not for me to decide, damn it. Give me a project and I can guarantee that it is going to get done right."

Paul looked incredulously at his friend. "Do you hear yourself? Your company assigned you the task of getting a block of crappy reality shows up and running last year. You did it in record time. Now that is really something to be proud of... yeah, just great. Bernie, when you graduated, you were going to change the world. Is making your company the reality show kings of television the way you are going to do that?"

"That is not fair. Those shows have been the top money makers for the company. It was just a business decision. Nothing more. Besides which, I am just giving the public what it wants. Don't blame me if the public is incredibly shallow. I do not set the standards."

Paul laughed. "I look at the kids in my class. I see such promise and potential. I try to get them to understand that they need to set the benchmark for their lives a lot higher than the lowest common denominator. And when I spark something in these kids, I know that something really amazing... something really important has happened. When I get them to believe in themselves and that they can do really good things with their lives, I feel like I have accomplished something. Yeah, I work long hours. But at the end of the day, I still like myself and at least I believe in what I am doing. Tell me, Paul, do really believe in what you are doing? Or are you satisfied to put out shlock, just so long as there are big bucks in your paycheck."

"Damn right. And that is so terrible, because...? Look at the people I run with. Look at where I live and the car I am driving... and the car you drive and where you live.." snapped Bernie. He let the challenge just sort of hang in the air.

Paul did not dignify the challenge with a defensive answer. In a very cool tone and very calmly Paul finally responded, "It is a good thing I am your friend, because if I weren't, I would just kick your butt right now. Life is not about the power you wield or the amount of money you make. I wouldn't give a damn if you made ten times what I am making, which you probably are. If all you are doing these days is squandering your life trying to prove to the world that are the Man... that you are this really important person and you are going to dazzle everyone with your car and your expensive apartment and your status... if that is the person you have become, then, as your friend, I am truly saddened." Paul fell silent for a moment.

"Bernie, I have a really good life. I have built rich relationships with my wife and my friends... with my colleagues. I enjoy my work and I really feel like I am somehow impacting people in an important way. I like my life. What kind of life do you have? You have only what you possess... power, money.... things... just things. and for the most part you are alone these days. You have never liked the people you work with. You have no significant other in your life. No girl is ever good enough for you and for a very long time now, you haven't been happy, even after your big successes at the studio."

"Shut up, Paul. You are so full of crap."

"You know what? I will take my life any day over yours." returned Paul. "Remember this. You called me tonight to help you work through this. If you already have all the answers, I might as well go home and leave you to figure things out."

There was a long silence. then Bernie turned around and in a subdued voice said, "Please Paul. Don't leave just yet." Another awkward pause. Then with a very pained expression on his face, Bernie continued, "I am very sorry if I have treated you badly tonight. Truthfully, I am not really happy with the way things have turned out. There are days I really don't like what I am doing. It is just that I don't know how to fix things in my life. I know what I have to do every day at work, but I don't really know anymore why I am doing it. It's like I am on autopilot or something and just sort of going through the motions, trying not to think too hard about it... Every day I put on a face so no one will know what I am thinking or feeling. You know, never let them see you sweat. And so long as my check keeps getting bigger and it clears the bank, that sort of dulls the pain I am feeling. " Bernie finished his speech and just stared off into evening in the city just beyond the large windows of his condo.

Bernie had known for a quite awhile that there was something in his life didn't feel right. He had not been willing to confront his gut feelings. Tonight, Paul had pushed him into finally admitting what he had been feeling for a very long time. He felt really emotionally drained now, but he also felt like a huge load had been taken off of his shoulders. He had finally admitted aloud what he had been unwilling to admit even to himself.

Bernie turned to look at Paul, with a deep sadness in his eyes. He had just rejected a lot of what he had valued for most of his life. Now, he found himself on very uncertain ground. "So what happens now? What am I supposed to do now, Paul?"

"Get some help, Bernie. Figure out what you want to do next. It is not going to be easy, but you are going to get through this. You will figure things out. But you are going to need some help, and that's okay. And I will be here for you, buddy. You need me, just call."

"What if I lose my job?"

"There are other jobs... other opportunities out there. And maybe you can't see it just just yet, but this situation at work, as bad as it looks right now, may be one of the best opportunities you will have to fix your life. Just don't freak out. Keep your cool and just take things one day at a time. Deal with things as they come. Bernie. This is all going to work itself out, one way or another. "

"You aren't bullshitting me, are you, Paul?"

"No, Bernie. I believe every word I am telling you."

Bernie extended his hand to Paul and they shook hands. "I owe you big-time, guy."

Paul said quietly, "You would have done the same thing for me." Paul looked at his watch. "Anyway, I have classes tomorrow. I am going to head out now. Just take things one day and a time and deal with whatever happens as it comes at you, okay?"

"Yeah, that's what I will do. Give my regards to Terri."

Paul grabbed his jacket and opened the front door. "Goodnight, Bernie." He closed the door behind him.

A couple of minutes later, Bernie watched Paul's car pull away from the building and drive off into the night. Probably for the first time in his life, he didn't have a clue where the future would eventually take him. But in time he would find out. Tomorrow was going to be a busy day and it was time to get some sleep. He locked the front door, turned out the lights in the living room and the kitchen. For the first time in a very long time, he was going to be able to get a good night's sleep. That, in itself, was a very good start in moving on.

A Man Out Walking His Dog

I have been playing around with what to do with the phrase, "A Man Out Walking His Dog," for some time now. Originally, I was going to write about the things I thought about and realized while I was out walking my Yorkie, Spike, late at night, when the world is still and I can hear myself think.

By necessity, I was up very early this morning to take Spike out. I got a different take on what the title of this posting may also mean. I have been really busy since I returned from Florida about mid December of 2006. A lot has been going on in my life.

With the company I worked for closing down, I have had to figure out what I will do next, to earn a living.

The Holiday Season has been full of shopping and more shopping... of gift-buying and gift-giving... of extending well wishes to our friends and family... of going to parties... of preparing myself for a new year, a new opportunity to get my life back on course or to make a mid-course correction in my life... a time of making things right with people I have wronged... a time when I can momentarily focus on the possibility of peace on Earth, goodwill to men [and women and children and maybe animals.]

And for me, this is a year of saying goodbye to my daughter, Heather, and her husband, Ben, who will leaving for London in a couple of days. They will be moving there for 3 years while they earn their Doctorates. Marilyn and I have been helping them as we can to pack up and move.
It is a time of a little sadness and also a time of great pride for us that they have come as far as they have and that they show great promise of doing even more with their lives.

And of course, while all these other things were going on, we still had the normal stuff to do. Marilyn had to go to work each week. Food had to be cooked and the dishes washed. The trash had to be taken out and the house cleaned. And, of course, I still had to take Spike out for his walks several times a day. Even during the holiday season, life goes on.

So being a man out walking his dog, also means that doing that is part of my routine and something Spike expects me to be doing. Spike has a lot of common sense and he would go out on his own, if I were to let him. But as things are, I have to be there with him. I love the little fellow and that is my responsibility. It is equally my responsibility to go to work and pay the bills and occasionally cook dinner and take out the trash.... I am sure that you see where I am going with this. Walking the dog is part of my routine and my reality. As a man out walking his dog, I am just a person who is just living his life, doing what needs to be done for that day. Necessary, if not terribly exciting stuff.

It is the routines I establish for myself that is at the heart of what I am talking about. Without a routine, my life can become unglued. My routine gives me a sense of context. I have a sense of where I am in any given day and in the course of the week. My routine defines me in my own mind. I have a surer sense of what role I play in my family and in my community. The truth is that most of the things on my calendar are pretty mundane activities, but no less important than the "Really Important" items.

I am a man out walking my dog. I am a man living my life, as productively as I can, from day to day, from week to week and from year to year. If I can continue to do that with a reasonable degree of success, until the day I leave the scene, that will work for me. For now, I am content to remain a man out walking his dog.

In a Situational World... A Sign from God

Sorting Things Out… Seeing Ourselves as We Are

When we are trying to bring some kind of order to our lives, we use all sorts of buzz words. We will sometimes say, “I am finding myself.” Other times we will be admonished to “clean up our act” or to “get our act together.” Armed with these wonderfully vague goals, we set out to accomplish them. It should be no surprise if sometimes we aren’t entirely successful.

Part of the problem is that we are not exactly sure what it means to find ourselves or to get our act together. To find ourselves, what exactly are looking to find? To get our act together, do we have any plan in mind or do we know enough about ourselves to even begin to accomplish the task at hand? And even if we do, do we have a full understanding of what want our life to look like, when we have actually gotten our act together? Starting out, we are not really sure what we are trying to do, so it is going to be very difficult for us to achieve success.

We are starting out with the answers to our problems when we are not entirely sure what the questions are that we should be asking ourselves.

First we need to ask ourselves, “What are the problems?” We should start out by getting a clear understanding of what problems we are facing and of what our current situation is. We must have a baseline to work from as we try to sort things out now. This step is going to take some time, because very seldom are the issues we face in life simple ones.

Then we need to ask the next question. “What are the things about my life that are not working?” It could be that we are very disorganized. We might be terrible at managing our time or money. We may have the problem that we lack self-discipline or self-esteem. The source of our problems may also be found in our relationships with other people. We may need to evaluate our priorities and make some changes in what we hold to be important. We possibly need to determine if we are paying a huge price for the things that we want for ourselves. Where indeed is our life just very messy and dysfunctional?

So far, all that we will have done is to do some deep soul-searching and figure out where we are in our lives. We are gathering the facts we will need to find a solution to our problems and wrest back control of our lives from the chaos and mess in which we now live. You must remember that this takes time. It probably took us a long to get to our present situation and it is going to take some time just to get all the facts we are going to need on the table. However if we will take the time necessary to do this, we will have a useful starting point from which we can begin to rebuild our lives into something that enables us to feel happier, more fulfilled and more productive

Confronting who we are and the mess we have made for ourselves may prove to be somewhat painful to do. But abject honest is what is demanded of us if we want to truly change the way things are for us. If we choose to remain in denial about the realities of our lives, we can’t move forward or grow as person. So it would seem we really don’t have much of a choice in this matter.

For now, the bottom line is that if we are thinking about improving the quality of our lives and fixing what is not working for us, we must first get a clear sense of where we are now in our lives and what parts of our lives are not working the way we want them to. The subject of what we would do from this point on is a discussion unto itself and I will leave that matter for another day.

11 Things You Will Not Learn At School

The following post was pulled from an email one of my associates shared with me. The comments by Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, seemed to me to be very appropriate and relevant regarding the life issues we are attempting to address in this blog. I would very much like to know your own reactions to his comments. H. Fireman

Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a high school about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school. He talked about how feel-good, politically correct teaching has created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and about how this approach to teaching fails to address very important realities in life, which sets these students up for failure in the real world.

Listed below are his Eleven Rules regarding the things these kids have not been taught:

Rule 1: Life is not fair – get used to it.

Rule 2: The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will not make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping hamburgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it is not your parent’s fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes… learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to anything in the real world.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is not real life. In real life, people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs. [Note from H.F.: And they have to pay the bill for the things they order before leaving.]

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you will end up working for one.

"A Leap of Faith, A Moment of Terror"

When I was a child, I knew that there were clear boundaries in my life: things I was not allowed to do and places I was not allowed to go. My Mom and Dad made sure I understood what places were safe and which ones presented a danger to me. So as I child, I learned to play things safe.

Inside my safety zone, I lived in a very neat, orderly, organized world. Everything had its place. I knew what to expect and I felt secure within these boundaries. I was given a model of how the world was supposed to be run and I was taught always to be prepared for whatever happened to me in my life. I suppose that is all well and good when one is a child.

This notion of always being prepared also implied that there is a "right" way to do things and an "incorrect" way as well. As a child, I just blindly accepted that the "rules of the game," as defined by my parent's world, were necessarily correct and true. I believed that I had to live within the boundaries those rules established for my thinking and my actions.

Later, during my teenage years, I was growing up in the tumultuous world of the 1960's. This was the decade that gave us man venturing into space, the Viet Nam War, the civil rights movement, Woodstock, student takeovers on college campuses and Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco. My generation challenged the sometimes stifling notions and conventions of the day. My generation openly declared its right to color outside the lines and to think outside the box. By the end of the 1960's, the comfortable and secure order of my world had been shattered and replaced by a chaotic world in which any idea or value could be openly questioned or tossed aside. Certainty, in any realm of thought, became a thing of the past and accelerating change in the way we understood the world became the norm. Our world has not been the same since.

Of course, during the seventies, many of the rebels and revolutionaries of my generation eventually settled down and became housewives, businessmen, college professors and stock brokers. The world seemed to be returning to some semblance of order and sanity. However, the reality was that our lives had been irrevocably changed. No one pretended any longer that if one played by the rules and did all the "right" things, everything would turn out okay for us. The essential inequality and unfairness of human society was laid bare for everyone to see.

It was now okay to openly acknowledge that the real world is not always a fair or predictable place. Everyone does not always play by the rules. Life is not always fair. Often the playing field is anything but level. Very seldom are all things equal. Most of all, our lives are inherently messy and that messiness just goes with the territory.

But we should not assume that the uncertainty that these realities bring to our lives is necessarily an entirely bad thing.

In a recent issue of REALSIMPLE, I came across a really lovely passage in an article by Molly O'Neill. The title of the article is Ready or Not. She talks about living a life ruled by the notion that one has to be prepared for everything that you do in life. At this point in her life, she has found the flaw in that argument and I wanted to share it with you.

Reality does not always dovetail nicely with theory. My... belief in... Being Prepared, I realized, neither guaranteed a particular outcome nor allowed room for chance, luck, spontaneity, or serendipity, the things that keep life interesting. Any push past the zone of the familiar requires a leap of faith, a moment of terror, a howling careening through unmapped territory. "Ready, or not, here I come!" my brothers and I would cry during our backyard games of hide-and-seek when we were young. It was the unknown that caused our hearts to race, the unpredictable that caused our shrieks of discovery to echo throughout our tidy, well-planned community.

By now, you have already figured out that there is always going to be a factor of uncertainty in many of the endeavors we set out to do in the course of our lives. We will have to abandon the safe assumptions that we held within our safety zones and sometimes we have to just wing it, taking sometimes huge risks with untested strategies, with no guarantees of a successful outcome. Sometimes life simply requires what Molly O'Neill called "... a leap of faith.."

In my own life, I have experienced that rush one feels when venturing into a new and uncharted territory. Let me tell you, it is an exhilerating feeling one does not easily forget. I don't go there often enough, but I truly savor the feeling I get when I find myself in those times and places.

At the age of 60, I have tried to make some sense of all this. I have learned from all my experiences that we are going to miss something very important if we choose to live lives which are just a little too orderly and scripted... if we never venture beyond the safe boundaries we contruct for our lives... if our lives aren't just a bit messy and uncomfortably unpredictable. We should want to change and grow as a person during our journey. We cannot do that if everything we think and do is laid out for us by someone else. Living that way may be safe, but it is hardly a satisfying way to live.

We should see our lives as marvelous adventures... a life-long journey during which we will never be sure of what is going to happen next. It is these very elements of the unknown and the unpredictable that keep things exciting and interesting for us until the day we make our exit, stage left.

Kindest Regards,

Howard Fireman
Houston Tx.