Here’s a secret I learned long ago. It’s a big one and it’ll propel you into a future of greatness…. STOP TAKING SOCIAL CUES FROM YOUR PEERS. Instead of taking social cues from people your age, take cues from people ten and twenty years older than you. Are you looking for a church that has a lot of people who are your age so you can hang out? That’s fine, but try looking for one where most of the people have families and perhaps a little grey hair. Why? Because the sooner you can relate to their priorities, the sooner you’ll be ready for the next stage of life. I’m in my late thirties but I’m more interested in hanging out with people who are retired. What’s it teaching me? It’s teaching me what matters later in life is friendships, family and love. In matters of faith, what matters to them is not theological debate, but closeness with Jesus and unity with believers.
Today I got to show Don around the ICU. I am feeling much better. Right now I’m the only dog being watched in intensive care. It turns out 90% of dogs who get salmon poisoning die within 14 days, and Don and the docs didn’t figure out the problem till day 13. I came pretty close. Yesterday Don held me in his arms and even said goodbye. We sat on the floor in a little room and I slobberd on him and it hurt to breathe. It was nice to have him there. There is so much noise in the hospital that I don’t feel safe, so when Don comes, I feel like I can sleep. To be honest, the doctors weren’t as worried as Don. They all knew I would pull through but all Don saw was thirteen days of decline. I don’t blame him for being upset. I’d be hurting if I knew he was going to die, too. I’d tell you I was afraid of dying, but I wasn’t. In my cage in the ICU, I can see all the critical patients that come in. Their cries are very scary. I do get scared at the thought [...]
So I’ve been in the hospital lately. I didn’t feel well so I stopped eating. I had a temperature. After a few days, Don brought me into the hospital. The doctors couldn’t find out what was wrong for another two days, but then found out I got poisoning from a fish. I ate something when I was playing in the water and it made bacteria explode in my belly. I had an IV and a cone and the whole bit. Don had to spoon feed me baby food and I hated it. Finally they put a tube down my throat to get me to eat. I should let Don tell you because he’s more dramatic about this stuff. Being sick hasn’t taught me anything, honestly. It hasn’t taught me anything other than I don’t like being sick. But I did learn something in the hospital. It all happened on Sunday, when our normal clinic was closed. We had to go to the ER at Dove Lewis. Sunday is their busy day, and we were sitting in the lobby with the other pet owners and sick pets. It was all the basic stuff, itchy skin or throwing up. Nothing to worry [...]
In movies, the bad guy has to display he is the bad guy through actions. It won’t do to have a subtitle come on the screen that says “this is the bad guy.” A cliche, yet effective methodology is to have the bad guy belittle somebody who is weaker, poorer of less fortunate. A bad guy will belittle a servant, a waiter, a spouse or child. The reason screenwriters write these scenes is because, eventually, the bad guy is going to get killed, and they can’t let anybody in the audience feel sorry for them when this happens. They have to establish how bad the bad guy really is. In real life, the bad guy doesn’t always get killed off, but that doesn’t change the fact we don’t like him. And ultimately, bad guys get what they deserve. They end up alone, or worse, surrounded and yet lonely. They may take advantage of people but the world doesn’t run on money or fame, it runs on love, and when you take advantage of people, you end up without love. The other problem with real life is it’s hard to tell whether or not you are the bad guy. We all [...]
I’d rather be hated than loved with conditions. I think most people would agree. At least when people hate you, they are being intellectually honest. I mean you know where they stand. But we’ve all shared a political view or a struggle and had people take a half step back, or worse, reveal they no longer want the best for us. When this happens I get a hollow feeling and I associate that hollow feeling with the person and their ideas. So that begs the question, do we actually love our friends without conditions? Are we the kind of friend we hope to have? Ultimately, loving people conditionally is an attempt to control them. We are wrongly thinking that if we can make people “pay” for their faults, or their opinions that don’t match ours, they will have a negative association with their faults or their supposedly wrong opinions. But that’s not the way it works. When we attach conditions to our love, what we are really doing is attaching a negative association with us! People don’t sit around saying, man, if I just didn’t have this fault or this opinion, that person would love me. What they actually think [...]
