A view of life and commercial real estate from Newark and Licking County, Ohio
........America is getting the President we deserve.
You can read the essay yourself if you wish. I will tell you that the following sentence made me stop and say, "What?":
When approximately half of adults in the U.S. lack literary proficiency, is it any surprise we elect leaders who speak in soundbites rather than solutions?
In 2025 almost half (actually, if you follow the link the number used is 54%) of the adults in the United States "lack literary proficiency"? Can that possibly be true?
Toby. Approach, Sir Andrew. Not to be abed after midnight is to be up betimes; and "Deliculo surgere," thou know'st.*
Andrew. Nay, by my troth, I know not, but I know to be up late is to be up late,
Toby. A false conclusion; I hate it as an unfilled can. To be up after midnight, and to go to bed then, is early; so that to go to bed after midnight is to go to bed betimes. Does not our lives consist of the four elements?
Andrew. Faith, so they say; but I think it rather consists of eating and drinking.
Toby. Th' art a scholar! Let us therefore eat and drink. Marian I say, a stoup of wine!
-William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Act II, Scene III
*Ed. Note: Those of Shakespeare's time would have recognized Diluculo surgere saluberrimum est as "it is most beautiful to rise early.
Parents, teachers, coaches, and guidance counselors bombarded me with the same question: "What are you going to do with your life?" I didn't even want to think about that when I was fourteen. My teachers called me a daydreamer. They would write comments on my report card like, "He seems to live in a fantasy world and prefers that to paying serious attention to serious subject matters that will prepare him for life."
The life they were so hell-bent on preparing me for bored the living shit out of me. It seemed way too serious. I saw more meaning in the mysteries of the ocean and the planets than in theology or religion. I was too busy figuring out ways to skip school, go diving, and get laid. My heroes were not presidents, they were pirates. Emerging from adolescence with a healthy "lack of respect for the proper authorities," and a head full of romanticism and hero worship, I was able to come up with an answer.
Q. What are you going to do with your life?
A. Live a pretty interesting one.
-Jimmy Buffett, A Pirate Looks at Fifty
..............................when you don't know what you want.
Everyone remembers the children’s story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. You know, this porridge is too hot, this one is too cold, this one is just right.
Well, pain kinda works in the same way. Too much pain will lead to trauma and helplessness. Too little pain will lead to entitlement and selfishness.
But just the right amount of pain and struggle: that’s what allows us to feel a sense of accomplishment and meaning in our lives, which then builds up our sense of autonomy and self-worth—the bedrock of a mentally healthy and happy person.
So, how do you define the Goldilocks Zone of Pain? How do you know how much pain is “just right?”
-Mark Manson, from here
. . . we have 10,000 baby boomers retiring every day from now until the end of this decade.
-from this Ben Carlson post, in which he offers answers to six significant questions about the economy
To the dumb question "Why me?" the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: Why not?
-Christopher Hitchens, from this Vanity Fair essay
To the extent that a man is untrue to the law of his being and does not rise to personality, he has failed to realize his life's meaning. Fortunately, in her kindness and patience, Nature never puts the fatal question as to the meaning of their lives into the mouths of most people. And where no one asks, no one need answer.
-Carl Gustav Jung, from his essay "The Development of Personality"
. . . the only questions on anybody’s mind now are “What is the Market Up To?” and “Why?”
Don’t look to Television for your answers: This morning, the chyron read “Ukraine, Fed Hikes, Uncertainty drive stock rout” when markets were down 3%; after the losses were recovered, the chyron read “Stocks close higher in wild day.”
TV chyrons know everything and nothing…
-Barry Ritholtz, from this post
In this universe we are given two gifts: the ability to love, and the ability to ask questions. Which are, at the same time, the fires that warm us and the fires that scorch us.
-Mary Oliver, from her essay on Poe in Upstream
What the hell? Kelly frowned in frustration at the traffic because he didn't know the answer, but then there were a lot of questions to which he hadn't known the answers in the last six months. He told his mind to be quiet and watched the traffic, even though it kept up its inquiries in a nagging sort of background noise. One's mind, after all, rarely obeys its own commands.
-Tom Clancy, Without Remorse
Awaken our sense of wonder, I say to my fellow nerd-communicators. Ignite the spark of curiosity and give it some fuel, using the time-honoured methods of storytelling, character, suspense and humour. But let's not rely on the journalists and the scientists and the other communicators of complex ideas. We have to be responsible for our own sense of curiosity. As the saying goes, 'only boring people get bored'. The world is so much more interesting if we take an active interest in it.
'The cure for boredom is curiosity,' goes the old saying. 'There is no cure for curiosity.' Just so: once we start to peer beneath the surface of things, become aware of the gaps in our knowledge, and treat each question as the path to a better question, we find that curiosity is habit-forming.
-Tim Harford, How to Make the World Add Up: Ten Rules for Thinking Differently About Numbers
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart
and to try to love the questions themselves
like locked rooms and like books that are written
in a very foreign tongue.
Do not now seek the answers,
which cannot be given you
because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is, to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it,
live along some distant day
into the answer.
........................................................................question.
.............100 more questions that don't get asked.
..................................is this a surprise to you?
..............you are likely to get some really good answers.
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