Month: August 2018

When I was a child, one of my mother’s hard and fast rules was,’ no books at the dinner table’.  As my brothers and I were all voracious readers, that was a hard rule to follow and we would often be found trying to sneak a peek at the book hidden on our lap under the table.

While I occasionally still enjoy the guilty pleasure of reading a book while I dine alone, my other guilty pleasure now and that of millions of other Americans is reading my smartphone while eating.

Come on, now.  Admit it! You have found yourself glancing at your phone once or twice while dining out, haven’t you?

We were in IKEA the other day and glancing around I noticed that except for one couple, everyone else was on the phone.  Not talking, but reading, or perhaps playing on-line games. Everyone! Not that IKEA is the most stimulating of surroundings, but what about the company they were keeping.  Were they not more interesting than the iPhone? I can excuse the one woman who was dining alone, but not the rest who were so caught up in their device that they were missing the moment.

For that is what the majority of the human species is doing at the present time, missing the moment.  We are so caught up in our electronics, we are forgetting how to live. Continue reading “Reading at the Table”

How easy it is for us to ask others to do something that is difficult if not impossible for us to do ourselves. I’m in the process of trying to clear out some of the accumulated clutter of the past nineteen years. Prior to moving to Emporia, we moved at least every three or four years if not more often. Anyone who has ever moved knows how easy it is to throw away or sell things when you are facing the overwhelming task of packing; out it goes, into the trash, into a box to deliver to “Goodwill” or into the front yard for a garage sale. Suddenly, the pain of giving up is not nearly as painful as that of having to pack and move everything.

But, oh how difficult it is to sort things out when there is no pressing emergency. What to throw away and what to keep? The decision is easier in the business world than it is in our personal lives. One can access the AICPA’s (American Institute of Certified Public Accountants) 21-page document which describes the prescribed process and requirements for record retention in American business today. When I was working, I had one rule for throwing out any business documents which did not fit the legal requirement. I asked myself one question, if I needed this in the future, would I know where to find it? If not, out it went. You would be surprised how many documents fit that criteria.

That is only talking about business documents which are very factual and come with no emotional attachment. It is even more difficult to determine what records and mementos to keep for our personal lives. Not only do we have governmental and legal requirements to deal with, but we have memories which are much more difficult to put a price on. Continue reading “Clearing Out Clutter”

Sometimes the slightest thing in the news, something you just glance at and go on your way, an unobtrusive fact that has absolutely no effect on your own personal life will stick it in your mind and you will muddle it around until it takes on a life of its own. Such was the case with something I noticed this week. Continue reading “No Smoking”