FUN FIRST!

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SEPTEMBER, 2009

•  The only life God gave you to live is your own.  If you've got a lot of ideas about what other people should be doing with their lives, you're probably not doing enough with your own.
•  Sleep is dangerous.  After age 40, the most likely time for sustaining an injury is in your sleep.  I have not conducted any studies on this but am convinced it is true.  I awoke around 3 this morning with a lot of pain in my left thumb.  All I did was go to sleep and wake a few hours later in pain.  What happened? An extended period of hitchiking in my dreams perhaps?  Or maybe, I failed to pay a dreamworld loan shark who then sent "Rocky" to break my thumb.  I have no idea.  It doesn't really matter. I now have a sore thumb and just have to figure out how to make it better.  Sometimes you can't prevent something bad from happening.  I'm not going to give up sleeping.  All you can do is deal with what comes.  It might be nice if careful planning assured everything would always go smoothly, but it doesn't.  And, anyway, we might find that certainty takes all the fun out of living.   
•  "If Fun is First, what's second?"  This question was posed to me by a reader.  "Fun First!" is simply applying "Eat Dessert First" to the rest of your life.  Fun First! means looking for fun before looking for work.  Chances are work will track you down all on its own but fun may not be that persistent.  It's not letting the best parts of life get pushed off till after everything else.  Let's face it, if you make yourself choke down every last vegetable of "have to's" before you enjoy your "love to's", the cake's going to get moldy before you ever take a bite.  Start with what you love.  Eat between meals.  It won't spoil your appetite for meeting your obligations.  It'll give you the energy to conquer them.  What's second?  Whatever you want.  If you're having Fun First!, you'll be ready to conquer anything.
•  I went to a concert last night.  A little girl (3 or 4 yrs old) was dancing to the music.  By herself.  Having a wonderful time.  My friend Julie (in her 20s) pointed her out and said "I wish I was 3 so I could dance too.  If I did it now, I'm the drunk girl."  Sad but true.  Everyone thinks a 3yr old dancing at a concert is cute but a 23yr old doing the same thing "must be drunk."  Why?  Who invented the "sober people don't dance in public" social convention anyway?  Somewhere in our history somebody decided it was a good idea to suppress an awful lot of harmless fun.  If we find out who they were, I say, we burn them in effigy.  Boy, they wouldn't like that.  We'd be having way too much fun. 
•  "How about a roll and butter?"  In our family, this question has absolutely nothing to do with dinner.  It comes from the "Sunday Morning Fight."  When my kids were little, we had the "Sunday Morning Fight."  We would wrestle around in great hysterics until I was too beat up to continue.  During the fight, I'd grab one of them and ask: "How about a roll and butter?"  I'd then roll over backwards with the victim, pop up, and head butt them (gently, of course, I didn't want to hurt myself!!)  This was greeted with even more hysterics.  How about you?  Got any strange family traditions that make you laugh just thinking about them?  If not, it's never too late to institute some.  I highly recommend the "Sunday Morning Fight."
•  Are you burdened by your past?  It's easy, but unproductive, to see it as a burden.  Better to view it as an education.  You've learned some things that work and some things that don't.  Both are good to know.  Take the lessons learned and move on.
•  One of my mottos is "never let school interfere with your education."  The world is full of things to learn.  Only some of them can be found in school.  School is a tool in your education.  It's not your education.   
•  "It has been estimated that we each have upwards of 50,000 thoughts per day.  How many of yours are negative?" (Tony Alessandra)  Good question, Tony.  We can harbor negative thoughts about ourselves and others.  Neither is helpful.  Adopt a "life is good" outlook.  Work on seeing the good that's going on in your life.  It's a skill you can develop.  It will transform you.
•  I was at the Brewers-Cardinals game in Milwaukee yesterday.  Late in the game, a Brewer fan sitting behind me screamed "You stink Pujols!"  Considering he said this as Albert Pujols was returning to the Cardinal dugout after hitting his second home run of the game, and that Pujols currently leads the league in home runs and is second in RBI and batting average, you've got to say the fan has a serious misunderstanding of the meaning of "you stink."  He probably meant to say "I hate the fact you are so good and don't play for my team."  Saying something bad about someone who is excelling doesn't diminish them in the least but it does make you sound like an idiot. 
•  Your calling, according to Gary North, is "the most important thing you can do in which you would be most difficult to replace."  Give it some thought.  What's your calling according to this definition? 
•  My daughter awakes in the morning, disconnects her cellphone from its charger, gets up and feeds the cats.  One of the cats has observed this routine and taken to pushing her cellphone around in the wee hours of the morning in order to disconnect it [which sometimes results in the cellphone falling from the top bunk onto the head of my other daughter on the lower bunk].  Poor kitty has made a "cause and effect" mistake.  Disconnecting the cellphone does not cause kitty to be fed.  We make the same kind of mistakes.  "If I had more money, I'd be happy."  "If I had a husband, I'd be happy."  "If the Cubs won the World Series, I'd be happy."  Happiness is much more likely to result from deciding to be happy,being grateful, and caring about other people.  Don't be pushing on cellphones or waiting on the Cubs. 
•  As my friend re-entered her office, everyone stopped talking.  "Were you talking about me?," she asked.  "Yes" a co-worker replied. "Why?," my friend asked.  "Because you weren't here."  Got to give the guy points for honesty anyway.  Isn't it amazing how easy it is to see the error of other people's ways and straighten out their lives when they're not around to interfere?  Next time you're in a group that's starting to do this say "Hey, lets record this conversation and give the recording to Charlie so he can benefit from all our wisdom on how he can improve himself."  
•  A family was preparing their son for going to kindergarten.  They spent a couple weeks emphasizing how much fun he was going to have at kindergarten: stories, toys, coloring, etc.  The first day arrived.  He happily went in and was very cheery when they picked him up afterward.  "Did you have fun?" "Yes, it was great just like you said.  We played games, read a story, colored pictures.  It was cool!"  "Well, that's wonderful.  You must be looking forward to going back tomorrow."  "What!  I have to go back tomorrow?!!," he said, bursting into tears.  Besides accurately describing my own feelings about going to school, this story illustrates the importance of remembering that just because you know what you're talking about doesn't mean anybody else does.  They never thought to tell him school is a mandatory minimum 13-yr sentence.  Failing to put yourself in the other person's shoes when you're trying to persuade them to do something can lead to some very unpleasant experiences when they do it and get a result they didn't expect even if you did and figured it was obvious. 
•  "Listen to the desires of your children.  Encourage them and then give them the autonomy to make their own decisions." (Denis Waitley)  As parents, we tend to forget that our kids reach a point where they can actually cross the street by themselves.  We start out in protection mode and never get out of it.  We over-control.  No matter how wonderful you may be, there's only supposed to be one of you in the world.  Don't try to make your kids into another you or live according to your plan.
•  Live your redemption.  Focusing on avoiding sin is like living your life with the sole purpose of avoiding being hit by a truck.  While it's important not to be hit by a truck and while being hit by a truck could surely be fatal, you won't have much of a life if that's all you think about.  You won't enter the street, even to get a toddler out of it or to tell your neighbors their house is on fire, because trucks lurk in the street.  Living redeemed means living in power.  It's entering the street with confidence because we know God is sending us and accompanies us.  Don't be afraid but remember you still have to look both ways.
•  When I was younger, and wanting to be a politician, one of the things I looked forward to was the prospect of being mocked in political cartoons.  How would the cartoonists draw me?  How funny would I look?  Could a caricature be any funnier than the real thing?  I didn't become a politician but I did become a father.  My children can outdo any mere political cartoonist.  I've been mocked in drawings, movies, and face-to-face.  The wonder of YouTube makes my mockings available to the world.  I achieved all this without ever getting my name on a ballot.  I just had to be myself.  Being yourself can usually get you what you want with only some subtle refinements to your character.  Of course, if being lampooned is what your looking for, you can guarantee success if you just pick up some kids along the way.
•  It seems like just the other day I wrote about it being the midpoint of summer.  Now summer is down to its last few hours.  They say time flies when you're having fun.  I say time flies no matter what (except in my high school geometry class where I know time actually stood still) so you may as well decide to have fun.  It's like the plunging phases of a roller coaster ride.  It's fast. Whether its exhilarting or terrifying is up to you.  You're strapped in for the ride.  You may as well decide to enjoy it.
•  Ave Maria University is built in what used to be a swamp.  It's a beautiful campus.  It looks nothing like a swamp.  Still, in the evening sometimes it has a swampy smell in the air and the mosquitoes definitely think it's still their swamp.  That's the way it is with transformations.  They aren't always complete.  Some unfavorable aspect of your prior self might keep hanging around even if you're mostly transformed.  Don't sweat it.  It may be annoying but it's probably not fatal.  Take heart in how much of you actually has changed. 
•  One year ago, at about this time of the morning, I learned my father was dead.  It wasn't a surprise.  Time has passed quickly since then.  Life goes on without him.  Though, in a sense, he's still around.  The guy looking back at me in the mirror every morning looks a lot like him.  The guy in the mirror lives his life on the same fundamental principles as my dad.  He appreciates and is annoyed by the same sorts of things.  People, especially our children, are formed by their interactions with us.  In this sense, we all are going to live on in this world as well as the next.  What I got from my dad isn't perfect but it's way more good than bad.  Thanks Pop.  Hope my kids can say the same.