SEARCHING FOR MEANING. IT MEANS SOMETHING?

 

What is more important than Searching For Meaning.

How many times have you heard, “It probably doesn’t mean as much to you as it does me?”

If you care about dogs, you see the top image and feel for Fido.

The couple with the dog have enough feelings for each other, just not their best friend.

It probably doesn’t mean that much to them.

How often have you heard that?

How many times was it true?

For example:

You’re driving with someone from the south and hear the opening riff from Sweet Home Alabama.

And they’re from Alabama.

Whether they love it or hate it, it’s their anthem.

Scream “FREE BIRD” if you feel the urge, and you will. Call it enTHUsiasm.

It’s allowed in any car playing Lynyrd Skynyrd as long as there’s no alcohol or firearms present. And you know how to spell Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Their songs play at the most inopportune times.

Say you are dancing, you know, cutting a rug at a place called The Jug and Sweet Home opens up. Just keep dancing with an eye on the door three steps away.

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Watch the Daytona 500 with your mechanic.

If he starts convulsing when the cars head into the last turn, it’s not an emergency and it’s not contagious.

The guy holding his breath knows what it takes to get a car ready for the freeway and the odds of a car breaking down on race day.

Don’t crowd him or he might go NASCAR on your ass and start punching things.

You don’t want to fight a racer, a racer wannabe, or even Danica Patrick. She’ll stomp you if she has cause.

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Watch a youth soccer game featuring your neighbor’s kid and you are golden.

If you’re sitting in a camp chair on the sidelines with the other fans and one of them starts getting loud, don’t remind them ‘it’s only a game.’

Their noise means they’re Searching For Meaning.

You don’t know if their kid just woke from a coma last week and this is their first game, if the kid is a special Manchurian Candidate of Soccer, or somewhere in between.

The reason they yell/cheer for their kindergartener is because they know time is short.

Whether they come from a family of non-athletes who believe sweating is not be a bodily function to put on public display, or they are spousal kidnappers with a separation plan, let it ride.

Let ’em make all the noise they want. Make that part of searching for meaning.

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If you’re watching The King’s Speech with someone from England the same age as Queen Elizabeth, don’t ask a lot of questions about tea or World War Two.

They have a far-away look in their eyes because they remember the times, the voices.

The interiors and social customs filmed in The King’s Speech show civilization at its finest.

You’ll see the moral fortitude of a people who ruled the world from the opposite end of Hitler’s spitting pep rallies.

King George VI (Colin Firth) sees film of a Hitler speech in German. One of his daughters’ asks, “What is that man saying?”

Colin Firth (King George VI) says, “I don’t know, but he’s saying it quite well.”

What he meant was, “That’s the verbal competition to face and I’ve got a speech impediment? Oh my God.”

If you watch The King’s Speech with a loved one from England the same age as Queen Elizabeth, she heard Hitler speeches over the radio when they were new.

They are as frightening today.

According to my polling sample of one, Churchill was better looking than the movie actor, but sounds about the same.

By the film’s end, the English leader Chamberlain met the Nazis where they lied to his face, and all of England, with a vow of peace in their lifetime.

He seems a background character not worthy of scorn.

Besides, it’s the new king’s duty to break the bad news.

His father, the old king, died. His brother, the first in line, quit the family business for his love of Wallis Simpson of Baltimore.

Telling a nation they are about to plunge into the bloody trenches of world war for the second time in twenty years takes rare composure, the sort Kings seem to be born with.

“I have a dream,” still echoes across the land.

So does, “I did it myyyyyyy waaaaaayyy.”

The Kings may be gone, but Long Live the Queen. While we’re at it, long live the ravens at The Tower of London and the monkeys in Gibralter.

Long Live England. It probably doesn’t mean as much in America as it does in England.

Both are still searching for meaning.