Missing a Football Game a Blessing:
Note: ( Above Musing follows this note)
Note: ( Above Musing follows this note)
Author Notes about this Blog
This blog was set up originally simply as a file deposit for musings which I sent out to friends. Somehow a lot of people managed to find the URL, and that is ok. Since the blogs were not originally meant for general distribution most have not been carefully edited. I may go back now and do the proper editing. I have recently published a book titled: The Meaning of Life. Anyone interested can find it listed in Amazon.com under the author name Reid S. James. There is a description of the content along with the listing. It was published in late October 2013. Any income from the book will be donated to various 501 category charities. Given the nature of the book, to do otherwise would be hypocritical. Given the original intent of this URL I have never provided an opportunity for any response to these musings. I think I will leave it that way as I don't have the time for a lot of responding to comments by others. These musings are written as food for thought, and do not purport to be anything other than what the blog implies: personal musings. Were I to personally know many of you who visit this URL I sense we would have a lot of engaging conversations. There are too many now for that to be practical.
Missing a Football Game a Blessing:
There are reasons why professional football is the most watched sport in the US.
Some of them would include: the game is about the right pace for most people; the game is about the right complexity for most people; the game depends on a host of varied physical talents; the game contains so many unpredictable possibilities that it keeps spectators on the edge of their seat the entire game. It is a game most amendable to instant replay when we so often think, "wait a minute, exactly what just happened here?".
There are also a growing number of reasons why football should not be so addictive to any of us: the number and seriousness of injuries is probably already past an ethical justification. It may be riveting to witness so many bodies lying wounded on the ground during a game, but the ethics involved is getting pretty tough to justify for spectator amusement; there is a growing inability to predict winners of any given game. Talent and coaching are still important but are increasingly offset by computer manipulations of the game, by endless possible happenings during a game which are hardly preventable by good coaching or player playing----fumbles will happen but when in the game makes a hell of a lot of difference---as is the same with missed tackles, dropped balls, errant passes, offsides, personal fouls, weather factors, and so on, until the best of experts who win a pool of picking winners will win with a percentage in the low 60's; the sport itself is controlled by a handful of very wealthy persons as a personal monopoly with no regulation, no limitations, and no responsibility to the fans, the taxpayers, or the cities in which they play; the salary and contract situation is an unfair farce; and so on.
Today I missed a playoff game because I attended a workshop which I signed up to go to some time ago. When I returned, I watched the highlights of the game and then a lightbulb went on in my mind. By missing the football game I had a better and more satisfying day. I did not spend 3-4 hours on the edge of my seat, emotionally acting like the game really meant something to MY life. Of course it doesn't---Whoever wins or loses has no bearing on my personal life at all. I didn't even miss all the craziness of a football game since I watched the highlights, and read some sport commentaries about the game. Instead I spent hours learning something about an aspect of life that does impact on my life. I cannot spend time arguing or reliving some game with others. After all, I did not really see the game.
For me a day not spent with time in nature or wandering about an interesting neighborhood, or reading, or writing, or pondering about life, or cooking, or eating good food, watching an interesting movie or documentary, engaging is interesting conversation of a meaningful nature, or listening to my favorite music, or the absence of stress---including arguments over inane matters, prejudices---or struggles over power, titles, money, popularity, out maneuvering others, looking over my shoulder, etc. is day worth having lived. Of course there is a time and place for all of that and there is also a point when enough is enough.
Addiction to anything is a mistake whether it be watching football, gambling, eating, sex, power, titles, control, work, recreational drugs, shopping, material gain, inherited religious obsessions, computer games, computer chat rooms, emails, twittering, texting, TV, exercising, and so on. To achieve some contentment in our lives, requires a firm understanding of when enough is enough. Too much of most anything can ruin our lives.
I ask myself, in the case of watching too many football games, and caring too much about each one I watch---"just what do I gain from it?" What is there, when the day is over, that I have gained from it? If we ever come across some radio talk show or some TV sport commentators debating football, the most striking aspect of it all is the absolute emotional commitment to opinions that have so little bearing on anything important or consequential. In general, whenever we are so certain about matters upon which no certainty can be found, we are wasting our emotions. If we could get just one tenth as excited about the less fortunate in our immediate environment, or on our own planet, so much more good would be achieved that had some real meaning. When I see an orphan getting medicine which will cure him/her from a curable disease it seems something worth cheering about has occurred. And if we read books by those volunteers who do this under the most trying situations imaginable, well---there is an activity notable and worth financially supporting. It cost roughly $38 to pay for the vaccines children need to prevent curable diseases. Imagine how many children's lives could be saved by the cost of one season football ticket? Or one less trip hither and thither to gawk at buildings and people.
Others put all this more eloquently:
"I have learned to look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing often-times
The still sad music of humanity." William Wordsworth (British Poet)
"The world is too much with us, late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours." Willaim Wordsworth (British Poet)
"The more a man lays stress on false possessions, and the less sensitivity he has for what is essential, the less satisfying is his life." Carl Gustav Jung (Swiss psychologist, psychiatrist)
"The greatest wealth is to live content with little, for there is never want where the mind is satisfied." Lucretius (Roman Poet)
"Look at one of your industrious fellows for a moment. He sows hurry and reaps indigestion; he puts a vast deal of activity out to interest, and receives a large measure of nervous derangement in return....I do not care how much or how well he works, this fellow is an evil feature in other people's lives. They would be happier if he were dead...He poisons life at the well-head." Robert Louis Stevenson (British essayist, novelist, poet).
"Wealth, after all, is a relative thing, since he that has little, and wants less, is richer than he that has much, and wants more." C. C. Colton (English Cleric and Writer)
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." Henry David Thoreau. (American author, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, surveyor, historian, transcendentalist)
"Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to the garage makes you a car. Laurence J. Peter." (Educator, author of Peter Principle)
"Incompetence is vanity and PR and people who talk about 'massaging' or positioning' or 'spin control'. It's a society that celebrates style over substance, image over reality, credentials over experience; a society that embraces the credo of the Philadelphia sheriff John Green---'Fake it till you make it'; a society devoted to consuming and acquiring, to self-fulfillment and self-indulgence, a society infatuated with money, power, sex, and drugs; a narcissistic, solipsistic, materialistic society saturated with advertising, dominated by entertainment, and living only for the here and now." Art Carey (American editor and author)
"In our complex, modern world....large private fortunes can easily be extracted by clever folks through imaginative zero sum or negative-sum games. You may become engineers, physicians, or product entrepreneurs who earn your income as a reward for contributing to the welfare and prosperity of society as a whole....On the other hand, you may join the ever-growing corps of income redistributors---tax experts, legal experts, regulatory experts, financial wizards, lobbyists, legislators, and so on---who use so much of their time and intellect not to create net social value added, but merely to redistribute toward themselves and their clients claims to the useful production of others." Uwe E. Reinhardt (Princeton Economist)
"The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat." Unknown
"I am richer than E. H. Harriman, I have all the money I want and he hasn't." John Muir (American Naturalist)
"I have to live with myself, and so
I want to be fit for myself to know;
I want to be able as days go by,
Always to look myself straight in the eye." Edgar A. Guest (English born American poet)
"Youth is a period of building up in habits, and hopes, and faiths---not an hour but is trembling with destinies; not a moment, once passed, of which the appointed work can ever be done again, or the neglected blows struck on the cold iron.....by all means sometimes be alone; salute thyself; see what they soul doth wear; dare to look in they chest, and tumble up and down what thou findest there...for the principles now implanted in thy bosom will grow, and one day reach maturity; and in that maturity thou wilt find they heaven or they hell." Unknown
"We dwell in times of great perplexity and are beset by far-reaching problems of social, industrial, and political import..... We shall not greatly err if upon every occasion we consult the genius of Abraham Lincoln. We shall not falter nor swerve from the path of national righteousness if we live by the moral genius of the great American commoner....Men and measures must not claim him for their own. He remains the standard by which to measure men....Lincoln has become for us the test of human worth, and we honor men in the measure in which they approach the absolute standard of Abraham Lincoln. Other men may resemble and approach him; he remains the standard whereby all other men are measured and appraised...." Stephen S. Wise. ( A President of World Jewish Congress)
"But though the world roars and rages about us, we must secure our peace of mind, a quiet place of tranquility and of order and of purpose within our own selves. For it is doubt and uncertainty of purpose and confusion of values which unnerves men. Peace of mind comes to men only when having faced all the issues clearly and without flinching, they have made their decision and are resolved.....'You came into a great heritage made by the insight and the sweat and the blood of inspired and devoted and courageous men; thoughtlessly and in utmost self indulgence you have all but squandered this inheritance. Now only by the heroic virtues which made this inheritance can you restore it again.' It is written, 'You took the good things for granted. Now you must earn them again'. It is written, 'For every right that you cherish, you have a duty which you must fulfill. For every hope that you entertain, you have a task that you must perform. For every good that you wish to preserve, you will have to sacrifice your comfort and your ease. There is nothing for nothing any longer'......So here we are today. We are where we are because whenever we had a choice to make, we have chosen the alternative that required the least effort at the moment. There is organized mechanized evil loose in the world. But what has made possible its victories is the lazy, self-indulgent materialism, the amiable, lackadaisical, footless, confused complacency of the free nations of the world. They have dissipated, like wastrels and drunkards, the inheritance of freedom and order that came to them from hardworking, thrifty, faithful, believing and brave men. The disaster in the midst of which we are living is a disaster in the character of men. It is a catastrophe of the soul, of a whole generation which had forgotten, had lost, and had renounced the imperative and indispensable virtues of laborious, heroic, and honorable men." Walter Lippman. (American reporter, political commentator)
"We have built rockets and spaceships and shuttles; we have harnessed the atom, we have dazzled a generation with a display of our technological skills. But we still spend millions of dollars on aspirin and psychiatrists and tissues to wipe away the tears of anguish and uncertainty that result from our confusion and our emptiness....The closed circle of pure materialism is clear to us now---aspirations become wants, wants become needs, and self-gratification becomes a bottomless pit. All around us we have seen success in this world's terms become ultimate and desperate failures. Teenager and college students, raised in affluent surroundings and given all the material comforts our society can offer, commit suicide. Entertainer and sports figures achieve fame and wealth but find the world empty and dull without the solace of stimulation of drugs. Men and women rise to the top of their professions after years of struggling. But despite their apparent success, they are driven nearly mad by a frantic search for diversions, new mates, games, new experiences---anything to fill the diminishing interval between their existence and eternity---the way to serve yourself is to serve others; and that Aristotle was right, before them, when he said the only way to assure yourself happiness is to learn to give happiness." Mario Cuomo. (U.S. Governor)
"A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient." Unknown
"The rich have a passion for bargains as lively as it is pointless." Francoise Sagan (French playwright and novelist)
"He does not possess wealth; it possesses him." Benjamin Franklin (American author, printer, politician, scientist)
