6600 Block of Japonica Street
Once upon a time, I had to travel a little further out of my old neighborhood to start picking up some of the lessons discussed in this column. And in our brief life human terms, that was a very long time ago.
- You know you’re getting older when someone you knew slightly years ago comes up at a chance meeting and asks (by your full name): “Didn’t you used to be Bill McCurdy?”
- A lot more serious is the same situation described above, but this time, the question is being asked by a spouse, sibling, or parent.
- You know you’re getting older when all those beautiful stranger girls who once ignored you back in the 1960s when you held the door open for them in public places, now stop to smile and hold the door open for you under the same mutual time arrival circumstances.
- Also, you are getting older when some of the “been there, done that” places on your list of cancelled destination spots are there as a result of painful past experience.
- No “been there, done that” experience with people, places, or perspectives is bound to cancel all our return trips to disaster by itself, but we’ve got a good chance at transcendent survival if we are able to get, hold, grow, and not forget the lessons of past painful trips to the same dead ends.
- Honest maturity begins to settle into our lives when we start to realize that happiness is more about what we can bring to life by choice than it is about what he can take from life by the compulsive striving for power and control.
- Everything we experience in life is a potential lesson – and everyone we meet is a potential teacher.
- The more we refuse the lessons of personal experience, the more we guarantee our return to the same painful experiences until we either get the lessons or die from our refusal of the lessons they each offer.
- Crime does not pay, but neither does emotional stupidity.
- We cannot enjoy life unless we are willing to risk being who we are. Without drugs. Or booze. Or anything else we think we can’t live without.
- When Shakespeare wrote the phrase, “To Thine own Self Be True”, the great bard had never heard of television, drugs, big business, or American politics, but he did know a thing or two about theatrical diversions, ales, feasts, and the power hunger of monarchs. And back then too, the future of people was pretty much determined culturally about what they supposedly were born to be. That ancient limitation still didn’t stop people from being drawn to the compulsive pursuit of escape from depression through alcohol and other compulsive relief possibilities. The 21st Century Medical and Drug Provision Industry could have cleaned up back in Stratford too.
- Please forgive me for dancing into a subject area that is so much larger in the lives of us all than a 12-point website column by this humble writer. I started to erase this whole track a few minutes ago, but decided against it. These are not lectures. They are simply a trail of conclusions I’ve come to see over more than a half century of doing what I’ve done in my “day job” as a mental health professional. And if any of what I’ve written here makes sense to any of my readers in this primarily baseball subject site, this thematic digression will be worth it. I won’t stay here, but probably will come back to it from time to time.
____________________
HIP! HIP! HOORAY! The 2017 MLB Regular Season is now only 3 days away!
____________________
Bill McCurdy
Publisher, Editor, Writer
The Pecan Park Eagle
Houston, Texas
The Pecan Park Eagle 
Leave a Reply