We are the product of our choices

MY PHILOSOPHY IS

We are the product of our choices

So, suddenly I'm a philosopher?

Philosopher: (somebody who seeks to understand and explain the principles of existence and reality: a thinker who deeply and seriously considers human affairs and life in general: somebody who calmly and rationally reacts to events, especially adversity).

Loosely applying these definitions, I could qualify as somewhat of a philosopher. But then, so could most writers because, what most of us do is write about human affairs and life in general. I cannot say we all do it calmly though. I, for one, tend to get fired-up at times and spin off into La La Land. I am but the rough slab of bark stripped from a saw log. I lack the finesse required to smooth out boards for making fine furniture etc. I have searched all my life and I fail to understand some people and their ways.

My statement

We are the product of our choices in life. Now, is that not a good philosophical statement? Of course, it is not mine. I stole it from someone else. I pondered it for a long time and firmly believe it. What I cannot believe is, people freely make choices that that sends them down the wrong road. Then they turn and blame someone else for their folly.

We all face many choices each day from the time we wake up until we flop on our bed for another session of dreamtime. So why should we blame our mean old boss for singling us out and firing us for coming in late. It was our choice to stay up watching a late movie. It was our choice to click the alarm off and fall back to sleep. However, we cuss the TV for tempting us, and we have forty eleven excuses for not making it to work on time. Then, we belittle our employer for sending our sorry butts a packing. We simply fail to fess up to our ill begotten choices.

This putting the blame on someone else is something we learn in early childhood. We are quick to point the finger-of-blame at someone else or even something else, i.e., our sibling or our favorite toy. I believe it is the unusual parent, who teaches their child to take responsibility for his/her actions for bad choices.

Some personal examples

One of my earliest remembrances is when I was around five. My mother and sister had planned a trip to the grocery store and I was excited because Mum said I could go with them. I guess I grew impatient waiting, so I wandered off into the neighborhood, something I recall doing quite often. I returned to find them gone. I probably threw a fit, cried, jumped up and down, and beat my head against the wall. I know I was very disappointed. When they came home, I sobbed and demanded to know. "Why didn't you take me?"

"Because you weren't here when we left, so I thought you didn't want to go," Mum said. Now I ponder, was my mother giving me a lesson on responsibility or was she just being mean?

Most of our choices are just that, i.e., they are our choices freely made. No one stands beside us wielding a whip and forcing us to make a choice. Well, maybe in some cases some of us feel as though there is. Mostly, we are the ones making the choices, weather right or wrong it is up to us. What we choose will eventually determine what or where we end up at the end of the day, week, month, year, or life. We alone, make the choice, sometimes even when made against a warning.

At about that same time, Mum warned me about standing too close to a stray dog she had just thrown some scraps. As I stood by watching the peaceful looking stray, I decided to help it with its meal. When I reached down to pick up a piece to feet it, the stray nailed me. I still carry a scare on my wrist to remind me of my ill begotten choice. Some choices have immediate results. Others take a lifetime for us to realize our folly. I, for one, have stacked up a long list of regrets. I hate regrets. However, good bad or indifferent, I accept full responsibility. They have carried me down a long and weary road of which I hope is nearing the end.

Having our cake and eating it

These days, we can choose to have a healthy breakfast at home or we can choose to stop at one of the dozens of fast food joints strategically placed along our route to work. You know the ones that advertize to our children promising them fun and frolic if they only convince their parents they will be good if they have one of those slop burghers and half-gallon liquid flavored drinks laced with highly refined poison, i.e., SUGAR, for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It is so easy on us busy parents. What harm is a little fat and sugar? We make the choice.

We gladly select this form of feeding mainly to keep their yapping, whining mouths shut. It is an easier and cheaper way for busy parents to feed their little brats as well as themselves. These fast food chains have convinced us that their fatty slop-burgers laced with GM, (genetically modified) meat are healthy meals. Besides a good meal, our little butter balls get a play toy, as well as a place to play to work off all that fat they just ingested. This play period comes nowhere close to working off the fat-laced double burger, large fries, and jumbo drink. Our plump kid would have to work out for a week to rid his chunky body of half the calories in that meal. We made the choice.

The consequences

Later, WE complain about the high cost of medical care. What made our children's teeth so rotted? How did our little butter balls end up with diabetes? It must be those damn fast food slop houses. Let us sue the rascals. They have deep pockets. They need to pay.

We deny it was our choice to feed on this garbage and expose it to our sweet vulnerable babies. We demand compensation. You worldwide food chains fooled us and forced us to make a wrong choice. Pay up. You lied when you said your meals were healthy. I didn't know they were laced with GM. I didn't know they came from floor scraps drenched in bleach. Give me money to burry my kid, lots and lots of money.

When will we ever learn?

It is quite evident we have not learned yet. These slop joints continue to thrive and they continue to lure us into their dens of death. Like zombies, we line up to feed on their tainted meat we have become addicted to. They will continue as long as we choose to patronize their establishments and as long as we allow them to continue buying off our representatives in Washington. We made the choice, now we suffer the consequences.

Who is to blame?

Do we have the right to complain, blame it on someone or something else? Should we sue the food chains because we made the decision to eat their garbage instead of a wholesome meal at home? Some have done it. People will not fess up to their ill begotten choices. We still have not learned how to stop pointing our guilt-ridden fingers.

We have only ourselves to blame. Our early choices in life made us into what we have become. Without realizing it, I learned this early in life. Maybe that is because I have always been a loner. Loners learn early on how to make choices that mainly benefit themselves. Well now, you say that is selfish. Maybe so, however, I look upon it, in many cases, as self-preservation. That rather changes the picture, does it not?

However, you put it, it is our choice, right, wrong, or indifferent, we freely made the choice. We may have based it on wrongful information or thinking, or jumping to conclusions, they were decisions we freely made. This is good that we are free to choose. Now if only we would accept our responsibility and take our whipping without screaming the devil made me do it.

Decades later, we cannot lay the blame on someone else. We need to suck it in and face the truth, or find a hole and crawl into it. I found my hole, but I seldom feel comfortable there. I have made my cot, now I wallow in it, for the end cometh. I feel safe in the knowledge there is no hereafter and I don't have to worry about crossing paths with those I have wronged in my life. I have regrets aplenty, but things, that happened a lifetime ago, have done their damage and not all the regrets in the world could undo it.

Thanks and have a pleasant day. Have a grand New Year.

Ray

A WEIRD CHRISTMAS DAY

A WEIRD CHRISTMAS DAY

New feeder

I'm a bird watcher and photographer, which consumes a large portion of my days. The day before Christmas, I decided to put up a new feeder for the birds, one the squirrels couldn't get to. Squirrels Just don't like sharing, not even with each other let alone with those flighty birds. I don't know why I hadn't thought of it a long time ago. Of course the answer to that is, the old noggin just doesn't work like it used to.

Anyway, I placed the new feeder in front of my computer room window where I previously had two feeders, which hung on plant hangers I confiscated from my wife. This time I hung the new one from the edge of the roof gutter.

Feeding station in backyard

It worked beautifully. Within minutes birds, mostly sparrows, flocked to the new feeder and the squirrels querulously searched for a way to gain access to it and I set up my camera. I had to make one adjustment, i.e., the feeder swayed too much to take good pictures.

I had to anchor it down somehow. I found a string and went to attach the feeder to the side of the window. While in the process, an unsuspecting bird flew in. Its wing brushed against my cheek before it realized I wasn't part of the feeder.

The string, you see in the picture below, worked and I covered the window from inside concealing all but the camera lenses and began taking pictures. I was as delighted as a pig in slop and obtained many great pictures. Birds flocked in, mostly Sparrows, as though they hadn't eaten in days. I got some good shots of flighty Tufted Titmice, on the left and Black Capped Chickadees, on the right, that come in, grab some seeds, and take off again. I'm too slow on the trigger to get good shots of them. I took these two just after putting up the new feeder.

 I was surprised and disappointed on Christmas day when no birds showed up. More surprising, no squirrels came around.

Oak tree bush

The stillness of the quiet felt weird, and. the only birds I saw that day were the pair of mocking birds, that for the past several years, have lived in my oak tree I keep trimmed into a round bush. The pair usually comes out in the mornings and sits for long periods atop the bush as they survey the neighborhood before taking off on their daily excursion. They have built four nests in that small tree/bush.

Pair of Machingbirds

I only saw the female when she came out and took off. That is the female on top. I can distinguish the male by the larger patches of white on his wings. I often catch his beautiful songs when I wander outside wearing my hearing aids, which I usually only wear when watching TV.

This is my backyard feeding station, which is an unusual shot, because most always, there is a squirrel sitting and munching seeds, or chasing birds or each other away from the feeding station, while a half dozen more are positioning for whose next to feed. The ornery devils cannot stand having company while they eat. I guess the table is too small for more than one squirrel at a time.

The next day, I told my wife about the missing animals. She said, "It's probably because of the storm we had."

"What storm?"

"It came in after you went to bed. The animals probably sensed the storm is coming."

"I guess that's what it was then. I thought it may have been all those tingle bells and hoof beets from the night before."

If you like birds, have a look at this video, on Birds of Paradise. Check out the longer version on that site. It's amazing.

CHILDREN KILLING CHILDREN

So, another incident of a child killing and maiming class mates. Everyone is UP IN ARMS about it, and blaming it on everything from God to the National Rifle Association (NRA). Why do we always get so upset about these events? Check these statistics.

According to the Center for Disease Control, in 2011 there were 15,953(44 a day) murders in the United States and 11,101 (30 a day) were caused by firearms. Suicides and unintentional shootings account for another 20,000 (55 a day)deaths by guns each year

Yes, of course, it is a tragic event; however, compared to the above figures it looks a little insignificant. The mere fact that it took place in a few minutes is what opens our eyes. We get angry and want to blame it on everyone from God down to us lowly atheist. If only God had not been chased out of the schoolroom, if only those damn nonbelievers would quit crying about their rights being trampled upon. We are too quick to point our fingers.

We could also blame parents for allowing their little pets to play all those innocent video games like Mortal Kombat. It's a short distance from the reality killing field of a game to the actual killing fields of school. Our little scamps are more adapt a mowing down every figure in front of them than they are at figuring out what's on the blackboard. And, I would venture to say, they spend more time playing reality games than they spend in school and studying. Yet, this too, is not to blame.

So, what or who is to blame? My vote goes for the gun. We need to get rid of them, all of them. Guns are for killing. It is that simple. To stop the killing, we  need to get rid of the guns. I don't give a damn what you say "I only use them for target shooting." Why? You do not learn how to drive if you are never going to drive a vehicle. Why not collect pictures of them? Collecting pictures is fun I have thousands and thousands of them.

"I need a gun to hunt with." Get a bow buddy, and show a little sportsmanship. Give the poor defenseless animals a fighting chance. Besides we already torment, torture, and mistreat billions of animas  each year intended for our dinner plate, not to mention the pollution that saturates our air with rising gassed created by these pore creatures. Think of all the ground that would be available for growing food for our selves, instead of using it for fattening up our dinner stakes. We do not need meat in our diet. If we were ment to eat meat like all other carnivores, we would have evolved with much larger canine teeth. Or, like flies, we would have developed a way to puke on our meal to dissolve it and suck it up through a straw. Besides, we now have the technology to grow meat in the lab.

Guns are for war

We have much more efficient ways of suppressing crowds of people. We have the A-bomb. Now, if only we could keep it out of the hands of other countries or militant groups. We also have nonlethal weapons that we could perfect to disable large groups of combatants long enough to put them into chains. Why do we need guns when we can conduct our fighting from thousands of miles away?

Why not put the blame where it belongs, i.e., the National Rifle Association (NRA) big laugh. It is too big, too powerful, and too rich. Like everything else in this crazy world, the big, the powerful, and the rich controls the small, the insignificant, and the poor.

What is the cure?

Here is my suggestion, although, as above, it is a little ridiculous. We could set up medal detectors at the entrances of all schools, ex-ray everyone, make them take off their shoes, and pat them down just like at the airports. It would create more jobs for our National Security Agency, as if we do not have enough them already. Shhh, let's not mention that. It just might happen.

Check out this video from Bill Moyers. It is the most heartfelt one I came across. Here is another one on how an atheist can cope with Christmas.

Hope you all have pleasant holidays. Thanks. Ray