Control

I know how to control a machine, but how do we control ourselves? How do we bridle back our actions and emotions? Throttle down? Control our anger? Invoke self-discipline? Govern ourselves properly? Stay on the straight and narrow? Meditate and pray? Diet and exercise? Not cross the line? Not ask for a phone number?

Good questions, but ones with no apparent answer... if we read the paper or examine ourselves for flaws and urges.

A lot has been said lately on this subject with the recent demise of Cosmo’s publisher, and comparisons to Playboy. Both of these magazines are the antithesis of self-control, with their prime axioms being seduction philosophy and lack of inhibition. Sex sells, but it also brought plenty of drama and misery in this battle of the sexes, and produced plenty of casualties.

I still get temptation... like yesterday... but put me down for diet and exercise and hold the drama.

Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, amen.

- © 2012 by Willy

Aging is Healthier

First, I've stated earlier that us old farts have an advantage: We live simpler lives... with no kids, spouse, mother-in-law, school, mortgage, drama or worries. This gives us more time, flexibility and focus. Thus we are happier, enjoy ourselves and train more... a clear advantage over youth.

Two: Harvard researchers have stated that optimistic people... people with a better mood, a better sense of well-being... tend to have healthier blood pressure, cholesterol and weight than pessimists, and less heart disease. When you're happier, you take better care of yourself.

Three: Author and celebrity Doctor Mehmet Oz says that there are no limits on what the human body can do except what we put on them. We don't think as quickly but are more clever. It's not just wisdom but how much we want to win. The secret is wanting it more. We become happiest at our fifth and sixth decades because it all comes together, it begins to make sense, of what life's about. Oz's prescription: Do daily rigorous activity, eat real food, and give your heart a reason to keep beating… a desire.

It IS really all in the attitude... happiness, acceptance and satisfaction leading to a desire to live.

- © 2012 by Willy

Sing Song

"Love me tender, love me sweet, never let me go..."

I've been hearing that refrain all day, perhaps due to my noticing of tomorrow's play of the 1956 Elvis movie on the tube. I whistled it continuously during my long Thanksgiving day before-dinner hike today.

When I was a kid... before Elvis... my mother sang a fairly similar lullaby. I felt very cuddled in hearing it. In turn, I hummed this Elvis tune to my kids to relax them at bedtime. Not only that, but I still self-medicate to this ditty. Lullabies are meant to function just so, and work amazingly well.

I'm in the midst of some turmoil: A nutty young punk threatened to beat me up and has evoked memories of early school bullies. I've been sleeping with a shotgun, and Elvis calms me down.

Or perhaps I was hearing God's lullaby.

Prayers can be the darnest things... whistling a lullaby!

More conventional: "For exercise to calm the body and prayer to calm the mind, I am truly thankful, amen."

It's best to accept the situation, prepare for a possible eventuality, and go through channels... calmly.


- non-Elvis text © 2011 by Willy

Outplay Them

"Excuse me... do you have the time?" said one of the two young men in front of the mall's record store this morning.

Translated it means "Hold on there until my buddy blindsides you. And, by the way, do you wear a Rolex?"

I said "No" forcefully and kept a fast pace. He wanted to know when the store opens. I said a second "No." He walked after me in frustration as I kept him in my peripheral vision, but finally stopped.

The next step would have been to press the button on my switchblade.

This was early on a Sunday morning, while walking the mall due to inclement weather. I carry my handgun at night but seldom go out then, and haven't been in a bar in a decade or two. I haven't had an incident like this in years and years. I live in Podunk and we have little crime.

I'm 60 years old and so many pounds have transferred from my chest to my gut that it seems I've gotten to the point that I no longer repel punks. I remember the good old days when some road rage idiot would get out of his car, I got out of mine and he stopped cold, mumbling while he got back in.

The truth is that I can no longer fistfight nor run away, so my options are down to being more aware, reducing opportunities for incidence, and increasing the counter-lethality to match.


If you can't outrun them, outplay them.

But if I cannot evade, outplay or outthink them, I will shoot.




- text © 2009 by Willy

Worry vs Courage

"The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear. It is the storm within that endangers him, not the storm without." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

It's amazing what we can do when we try... both in body as well as in mind. But it is in the mind that we fight our battles, and it is the mind that pushes the bodies. Whereas worry and fear keeps us awake at night, faith, belief, courage and valor reformat us to generate the energy needed to make it possible.

Ghost from the past have reappeared, both physically and in remembered words, but I no longer listen to that negative self-talk that cluttered my head from old criticism. I chose to replace it with my message... that I can do just about anything. I will not be scared off by the ghosts nor by the poison they have spread, but will hold my head high in spite of it and laugh at them. I'm still fighting my demons but my goal is to refuse to acknowledge that they are lurking about. I think about how much stronger the struggle made me, not how much it hurt. I turned that page. I have set my goals, I do right, and do not fear. I believe in myself.

Get out of my way, ghosts.

- © 2009 by Willy