FEARLESS LIVING, AND OTHER MYTHS

The key to Fearless Living?

Don’t live past a certain age.

But what’s that age?

The most fearless person I know is two years old, but they don’t know how fearless they are.

Who among is living fearlessly past two?

Who is not?

If you wait on someone to tell you what to be afraid of, you are not fearless.

Why not lean on experience, like your first hand experience.

You know better than to rest your hand on a hot stove, or to take things out of the oven without a pot holder or oven mitt.

Baby boomers with memories of drinking their first Pepsi wondered how anyone could drown in a pool of pop. Why? Because we could drink it up.

That’s fearless living. And also a little misguided.

Then we grew up and thought the same thing about beer.

Could we drown in a swimming pool full of beer? Yes, but we still test it at the Happy Hour Swim Center.

Fearless Travel?

I know someone who was on board a plane hijacked out of Portland.

Once they got up in the air, the hijacker made an announcement:

He was the new captain.

The plane landed in San Francisco, then flew back to Portland.

Were they scared? I’m frightened just hearing the story.

Imagine how the people felt waiting for them when they learned about the hijacking.

Here’s the strange thing: If it have been me I would avoid air travel. But not this one.

They jump on a plane at a moment’s notice, game to travel the world when it calls.

I blame Rick Steves. And give him credit.

Blame for making it all look so easy, and credit for adding value to ancient lands as if they don’t have enough.

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I got off a plane in Barcelona with enough jet lag to make me dazed and confused.

My travel companions were my wife and mother in law and I was the weak link?

They were troopers and I worked to keep up until I adjusted and snapped out of it.

And just in time.

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Before leaving I took the precaution of avoiding the language since it wasn’t the same Spanish spoken around Oregon.

I was wrong for doing that. How wrong?

The one time you want full command of any language is during a medical emergency.

We had an emergency. It all turned out well, but this post might assist you in a moment of need.

International travel requires money, time, and unreal confidence.

If you want to call yourself fearless, what to do?

Fearless Living Confidence

As a university history student I had the power of primary sources hounded into my brain.

Primary. Sources.

Instead of some halfwitted bullshit slung by smiling-for-the-camera jackasses, we were tasked to find reliable information.

We went to the library to find old books on the top shelves. Why not make it as hard as possible?

Sometimes they were on the lowest shelves, but never in the mid-section sweet spot.

We had to read these primary source authors, these chroniclers of important events.

The books are called monographs at Portland State and Princeton.

A monograph is a book on a single specialized topic, usually by one author in one volume, as opposed to a serial publication (like a magazine, journal, or yearbook). Monographs are more or less important (versus journals) for scholarly communication depending on the discipline.

We read compilations of the same event, an aggregation through the eyes of several writers, along with novels depicting the chronicled times.

Pretty standard procedure for a look behind the history curtain, and I recommend it.

If you consider yourself a fan of fearless living, why not learn about past eras and the fear people encountered?

You can do in the comfort of a library, a classroom, a barroom, your living room, instead of the cold, muddy, ditches of history.

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While you read boomerpdx, remember it consists of blog posts infused with the historical question of:

WHAT HAPPENED?

Once you get the bug to find out, you get an accompanying question about the things people used, which is:

WHAT IS IT?

Anyone who has seen an edition of Antique Roadshow on PBS knows the drill.

The experts tell us what it is, and more importantly, what it isn’t.

Some of the decisions are based on the materials a piece is made from.

For wooden objects, the breakdown begins with one question: hardwood or softwood.

Metal objects start with ferris or non-ferris. Keep a magnet handy for this.

Material identification helps locate the origins of a piece.

Take Stonehenge for example.

How the stones were moved to the Stonehenge site is a mystery that still hasn’t been solved.

We know some of the stones came from Wales – that’s a long way to transport stones that weigh more than 4 elephants each .

Some theories are that they were dragged on sleighs before being taken on rafts over water but this has never been proven.

Fearless living includes accepting knowledge you have no clue about instead of ranting on how ridiculous things sound.

Archaeologists think work started on Stone Henge around 5,000 years ago, in a period of history we call the late Neolithic Age.

It then took over 1,000 years to build, in four long stages! Archaeologists believe the final changes were made around 1,500BC, in the early Bronze Age.

Pretty far fetched? Sure, but that’s the science.

The rocks came from Wales where people used tools to to get the job done.

The discovery includes several hammerstones used for inserting and forcing in the wedges, which would, in return, cause for the large parts of the stone to detach from the rock. The wedges were made from sandstone, and 15 of them have been discovered during this particular excavation.

Fearless Living Or Not, Life Continues

Why do people go to such lengths to make brave discoveries?

I think it’s because they love surprises.

Big love.

Spelling love isn’t the same as humming a few bars of Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall, but it’s close.

You can’t spell love without education, and material objects are a big part.

Look at your surroundings and point to something you like.

You can’t like it without spelling love.

The carved wood transom above a front door?

The curved place where wall and ceiling usually meet at a right angle?

The waved glass in an old multi-pane window?

Instead of simple choices, or finding easy solutions, a builder chose to spell love with his materials.

Ask them about love and they’ll explain it another way. But it’s love.

No matter the words they use, when you hear them they’re spelling love.

The feelings we carry about our world needs to spell love; they need to show caring and kindness.

If you’re spelling love any other way, you’ll fail the test of life.

Since you’re not a failure, not a big ol’ loser, you’ll pass the test of life

After all, you’re reading my blog.

To make sure of your status, sign up for BoomerPdx in the sidebar.

Do that and I’ll leave a positive remark in your permanent record.

(That’s a history joke.)

Leave a comment to add to the historical record.