OFG XX

[editor's note: The OFG is my alter ego, The Old Fat Guy. He is witty, deep-thinking, clear in as few words as he can manage, sometimes a bit grumpy, and in need of a hamburger. Usually, his posts will be collections of his thoughts briefly expressed on a dozen or so seemingly random topics. They will seem to be random due to their randomness. We now return you to the OFG...]

Negativity

I have a really negative feeling about it.

Opportunity

This is a word with a wealth and breadth of meaning we can all embrace. Falling down is an opportunity to get up. A fat pitch over the plate is an opportunity to go deep. Suffering some seeming catastrophe is an opportunity to see life through different eyes. All, as different as they seem, are opportunities.

Learning

I tie this directly to living fully. If you aren't learning, you are stagnating. Stagnate long enough, and they pull life-support systems.

Safety

While there are many things people do and many stances they take in the pursuit of safety, it would make all of our lives less complicated if we all accepted the truth: safety is an illusion. All that stuff you do? It's just action needed to allow your ego to relax. It has nothing at all to do with safety, in reality. If you must be safe, try another line of work. Living is a race between our passions and our death. It's not safe, and never will be.

Truth

There are as many flavors of truth as there are ice cream. Let's settle on this: your truth and my truth may not match up perfectly, yet there will be enough elements in common that we can find agreement. Let's agree.

Doing

For many years, I had a poster on my office wall which pictured several hippos with their mouths wide open, the text on the poster being, "When all is said and done, there is a lot more said than done." While I don't know what happened to the poster, I still hold to the belief that doing is the measure, not talking about doing.

Quality

It's a big deal, these days, to be concerned about quality when working in any industry which creates products for consumers. Strangely, the quality movement is sometimes overridden by the bean counters who insist on cutting the production cost of the item by three cents--usually, by eliminating something not noticed by most--thereby pissing off several hundred thousand people who suffer from the change, but making the numbers for the quarter. Oh...and accelerating the demise of the company as it alienates more and more customers, even as it makes its numbers.

Vanity

Oh, please. You are old or ugly or fat or suffering from low self-esteem. Address the issue rather than preen in the mirror. In most cases, it is self-acceptance you will find you lack.

Passive aggression

If you are mad at me, be courageous enough to tell me. Those of you who choose, instead, to offer resistance while claiming to be on board--well, let's just say I hold you at the same level of esteem as I do rodents and cockroaches.

Back to the future

If one lives long enough, one gets the chance to see the fashion and taste in music one enjoyed decades before come back to popularity. It is odd, though, to see the same mistakes repeated even as the history is revisited.

Facts

There are two kinds of facts: the ones we believe, and the ones we know are lies.