Paul Merrill
It’s always good to get perspective.
Last week, we went to Colorado’s Great Sand Dunes National Park. It’s a dramatic place – huge sand dunes are spread at the base of a larger chain of mountain peaks.
Thankfully, the weather was perfect. The wind was not blowing very much. The temperature was cool – our bare feet did not burn.
It’s always good to remember just how small we are in the scope of things.
(That’s Heather in the middle. Jay, Ben and Rachel are in the distance.)
I love Urban Outfitters. My sister introduced me to the store when she lived in Chicago. They have a collection of eclectic clothes and weird stuff that I occasionally spend money on.
So this book on their shelves caught my eye. My wife Heather spent the better part of six months dealing with this very issue at her parents’ house. They were pretty much too old to deal with getting rid of a house full of stuff before they moved into a much smaller home, so that joy fell to Heather. I helped some, but she did the vast majority of filling the shelves at the local charity shop.
My dad was a huge collector. After he died, it took my mom more than six years to clear out all the stuff that he collected, before she was able to move into a 1-bedroom apartment. (She didn’t want to buy a condo, as she felt like it would be a burden on her kids to have to sell the place!)
So I guess my only point is that if you don’t buy that junky thing that catches your eye, your kids won’t have to give it away later.
Footnotes:
1. Special thanks to my friend James Taylor (not the musician), who inspired this post.
2. Here are some related posts I wrote: Not going to buy it, Let it go, Recapturing that lost childhood and That collector gene.
3. I did not buy the book. And I was amused to see that as of this writing, it was selling for just $1.48, used. Apparently several people decided they didn’t want their kids to have to give it away, much later.
Hey readers, I wanted to say that I love you.
Thanks for faithfully coming back and reading my stuff.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
I used to have dry skin all winter long. It’s dry in Colorado and combined with the cold, my skin becomes really dry.
Soap makes a huge difference. As soon as the temperature dips down to freezing outside, I switch to fancy soap.
This is not a commercial. I won’t tell you what kind of soap to use (like I did before), because several kinds will work fine. Just experiment. Spend a lot more than you do on your current standard soap.
Your skin will say thank you!
Sadly, my hands still get dry. Lotion fixes this, but then it takes several minutes for the greasiness to die down.
When I was young, an observant teacher identified me as a kid who should take a vocabulary test for students with bigger than average vocabularies.
To this day, hundreds of years later, I remember one wrong answer. The word was “chaos.” In my head, I read it as: “chay-ohss.” Not: “kay-oss.” One of the choices was “a Mexican blanket.” I picked that definition. Spanish was not part of my world yet, so “chay-ohss” sounded like a Mexican blanket.
Photo courtesy of Gwilmore on Flikr.
Friends fall into a spectrum. Some people we just love – and others – well, not so much.
Of course you know that. But sometimes there is guilt involved. If someone falls into the not so much end of the spectrum, we often feel guilty – that we should like them more.
Relax.
Just let people fall naturally where they fit into your spectrum. But give yourself freedom to realize that your feelings toward them may change over time. Or not.
When you put money into a retirement fund, do you check if that fund supports the tobacco industry?
If you buy baby formula, do you check if that company markets their formula aggressively to new mothers in developing countries – at the expense of their children’s health?
It’s hard to be pure in this world. Most decisions end up being the best of the mix we can find. Or we may not examine all the factors that go into a decision.
I’m often too lazy to examine my decisions. And sometimes I know the potential downsides to a decision, but I make it anyway.
My friend Tim Gier, a vegan, makes most of his decisions with a very focused approach. I admire that.
What’s a decision you made that you later regretted?
We all need help obeying the law.
If you look carefully at the bottom left corner of this photo, you’ll see a “Bus lane cameras” sign, reminding drivers that if they drive in the bus lane, a camera will take a photograph of their license plate (or “registration tag,” as it’s called in London, where I took this pic). Then the government will send a large fine to the driver for breaking the law.
This little system allows buses to move much faster than if the bus lanes were clogged with cars who shouldn’t be there.
Similarly, in my state, red light cameras are at almost every intersection. It’s the same deal – if I run a red light, I will get a huge fine. It amounts to a tax to help cash-starved local governments – but it also keeps me from running a red light.
What enforcement system in your world keeps you on the straight and narrow?
You know that men are different from women. I know that too.
I’ve been married to Heather for more than 20 years. I love her and am always amazed that after all these years, we are still discovering new things about each other.
She started a new contract job recently at a large company that has a fairly formal corporate culture. She has to “dress up” to go to work. Some mornings involve a clothing crisis before the right outfit is found.
Now this is partly a personality thing, but it takes me about 5 seconds to choose what I’ll wear to an event or a work situation. Heather deliberates till she finds the perfect outfit. Since she has really good taste, she scores. (I don’t always score, but she often will warn me of impending mistakes.)
So I came up with an idea to save her time in the morning. What if I took photos of each of her outfit combinations and she could just flip through the set of photos to choose the outfit for a particular day?
No. She didn’t like that idea. Why? “You just wouldn’t understand.” (True.)
