LIFE MOMENTS FOR NORMAL MEN

Life moments come when you least expect them.

When things work out better than planned?

Life moment right there.

Things work out worse than planned? What do you call that?

Big life moments come from making it through high school.

It may not seem like much, but it is.

1.

Those years have a way of informing us further down the line. You did fine if you graduated without blaming some coach because you weren’t an all-American in your sport.

A life moment comes later when team parents tried to get a successful coach fired because their kid didn’t get the playing time his parents thought he deserved because he went to expensive sports camps.

2.

You got good enough grades to graduate and go to college, but the high school academic counselor acted like a recruiter for the Weyerhaeuser sawmill.

“We’ve had graduates who have earned enough working right after high school to buy a house, a truck, and boat by the time they are twenty. Go to college and you’ll be a junior by then. It’s something to think about.”

3.

If you graduate from high school without a police record then you achieved an elusive catch of life moments.

You didn’t steal a car, raid a chicken farm, stuff chickens into neighboring mailboxes, then swim for it when the police showed up.

High five, boys.

Learning About Life Moments

Once you get a few years in, time changes. It feels like a shift into overdrive.

As adults we go someplace new and want to take it all in at once. But it comes with a reminder that you don’t have to do everything on the first day.

Then the last day arrives and you’ve got a list of things you didn’t do.

But could have.

1.

Before you get old and start ‘remembering’ how much better things used to be, place value on education.

I wrote a post about people reveling in a past that was portrayed on a television show. They are not a bunch of morons, just red blooded Americans reminding themselves that the past is still present.

On a side note, they also believed the last presidential election was stolen, and Jan. 6 was staged.

If you’re new here, then you’ve read about gullible hicks following an ex-president like Yogi Bear following the scent of a pie placed on a window sill.

Education, boys, value that education. You don’t need spoon feeding.

2.

Growing up in my house, college was the carrot on the end of a stick.

My dad was the first in his family to earn a degree and get a white collar job instead of working in the woods like everyone else in his logging camp town.

He wanted his boys to go to college. They all graduated from the same college he graduated from. One left with an advanced degree. Win / Win.

I dropped out after a year and joined the Army where I continued to take college classes. Talk about valuing education, I did.

3.

I valued education even more when I married a woman who apparently loves carrots and sticks.

She reviewed my educational career and we agreed I needed to graduate before I ended up in class with my kids.

When it was the kids’ time for college she put on her academic counselor hat and gave better direction than the professionals.

Those were life moments for everyone.

Work The Change-up With Life Moments

When things aren’t working out and it feels like nothing will ever work out like you planned, take inventory.

You get up on a typical day with an aching knee, sore shoulder, a hammer toe, nail fungus, thin lips, and you’re supposed to celebrate?

As if being fat, in chronic pain, and drowning in hopelessness is cause to celebrate.

If that doesn’t make you want to move to Mayberry, North Carolina, what would?

But, I don’t think that’s where James Taylor had Carolina on his mind.

1.

Find a better life by changing your outlook.

Sounds easy? Tell that to the retired doctors who aged out of their practice.

These are people who saved lives and made a difference, who had to tell the good news, and the bad.

Their opinions were sought, opinions that changed lives.

Now? Not so much. And it’s a shame because folks that dedicated themselves to the hard work of understanding how to overcome disease don’t have a lot to fall back on.

They go from the corner office to a lawn chair and it doesn’t feel right.

From a somebody to a nobody is a hard change. But who’s a nobody?

Get out of that rut, boys.

2.

Life experience, like word of mouth advertising, is the gold standard.

If you haven’t made big mistakes, be patient. You will.

But dwelling on big mistakes is the biggest mistake of all.

No one likes being identified for their screw ups, but it’s an easy trap to fall into.

In a ‘woulda, shoulda, coulda,’ life review, acknowledge what you could have done better and move on. It’s not up to you to remind yourself why you feel like such a loser.

If it’s more than a feeling, and you are a loser, make a plan to up your self-esteem.

Start by doing something nice for someone, like letting a woman with only a cake cut in line at the grocery store, like letting someone into a lane during heavy traffic. Little things add up.

Together they counter the notion that nothing matters. Start small.

3.

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