Good morning! It’s a gray, miserable drippy day here in the heart of central New England. Where the rivers flow, the boneheads rule, and it’s always 1954.
The question has been asked if I live my life according to some kind of code. Do I have principles. Values.
On a Friday morning, this is a very large question. I am only in the middle of my first cup of coffee. Still, I am awake. I have already restored my computer from backup, re-installed my printer. Convinced the dogs to go out, even though it’s raining.
They do not like the rain. Poor babies.
Speaking of boneheads, such are those who populate WordPress’s upper echelons. They run the company. With whips in hand they drive the corporate horses into a frenzied gallop towards the Cliff of Destruction. I guess they so admire Microsoft and their extraordinary success with Windows 8 they have decided to emulate them. Nothing exceeds like excess.
As such, they are fine ones to be asking me about my codes, values, principles. They should take a look at theirs.
But I digress. Forgive me. Sometimes my irritation overcomes my commonsense.
Of course I have a code. Values. Principles. Everybody does, whether or not they know it, whether or not they’ve given any thought to the matter.
Each time you make a decision affecting how you interact with other people, it is a mini-demonstration of your codes, values, and principles. When you tailgate other drivers, carelessly talk or text on while you drive, you are demonstrating your lack of concern for the welfare of others. You are here for you and no one else.
When you show up late for a dinner and the host and other guests are thoroughly inconvenienced, you tell them by your actions what you think of them. If you force others to clean up you messes, it says what you believe. It doesn’t matter if you go to church and profess pious religious values. Who and what you are is what you do. You are how you treat other people, how you live your life. The rest? Blowing smoke up your own ass.
There are so many assholes in the world and they seem to be in charge of just about everything, from corporate boardrooms to customer service. So, in an effort to retain whatever sanity is left to me, I live life simply.
“Shut up, Marilyn” is my motto.
When I read the moronic rants of idiots on social media, do I answer them? No. I click the page away. When I’m standing in a grocery store line and hear conversation between morons, filled with appalling ignorance and misinformation, do I try to correct their wrong-headedness? Not a chance.
“Shut up, Marilyn,” I say to myself. “Just shut up and butt out.”
Age confers wisdom and that is what I have learned. They don’t want my opinion. No one cares if what they spout is true. Most people believe their opinion is as good anyone else’s, whether or not it’s based on anything.
So I shut up. It may not be the best or highest-minded course of inaction, but it works for me.
SERENDIPITY - SEEKING INTELLIGENT LIFE ON EARTH 
Shut up and listen works for me… By the way, I enjoyed your digression, too! 🙂
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Thanks 🙂 These days I have a permanent mad on at WordPress. They are being real knuckleheads and paying no attention to any of us. It’s making it hard to do what we do. Sigh.
The snow is disappearing, even though it is in fact snowing. It isn’t a serious kind of snow. Just flurries. Winter’s protest against spring.
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I love the picture of the house framed by the window frame–the netted fencing–the frost or snow, mist, leaves. The small splash of red. A wonderful scene is set. As for people not caring about telling the truth or wanting to hear the truth–many do, Marilyn. Sometimes it is necessary for me to simplify and simply block negative or foolish people. Control my own world for awhile. For at least a year of my life once, I maintained sanity by pinning one passage from the I Ching up on my wall over my desk. It dealt with the importance of just going underground at times and marshaling one’s forces. Both writing and photography are an excellent additional excuse for doing so. Judy
Permalink: https://grieflessons.wordpress.com/2015/03/27/6867
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I’ve been sick a lot. I used to do a lot of windmill tilting. I don’t anymore. I can’t, not if I want to survive.
I wish I believed that most people want the truth, but my experience is that the majority want to express their opinion, but don’t care whether or not it’s based on any kind of reality. Some people are truth seekers. I am. You are. But are we a majority? Even a large minority? I don’t think so. I know I’m cynical. I come by it honestly.
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Oh Heck, Marilyn. If the vast majority were truth seekers, we’d probably turn liars, just to be original!!! (Ha…) At periods of my life when I was being swindled and lied about, the worse thing that happened was that they made me angry and at war with life. They turned me into them. Since then I’ve realized that aside from the money I lost, the worst thing was that they changed my personality and vision of life. Finally, I moved away and gained a little bit of insight about moving away as much as possible from terribly negative influences…and to try above all to try to maintain a positive view. As you know from reading my posts, this is not always possible, but we all spring back. I hope. I hope you, too. You are doing something positive in your writing and photography, so you continue to find a positive slant on life to some degree. (When you are ready to have me shut up about this, just tell me so…) Just trying to furnish a little ray of light. When the weather clears, it will be easier. Gloomy days tend to create gloom, at least they did for me…J
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I’m starting to adopt that as my motto too. I used to think that people listened, but they don’t. It makes life a lot more peaceful, doesn’t it?
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Yes, it makes life less of an endless battle. I just got tired of always being in some kind of fight, online or off. Too stressful.
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I believe that firmly, and I follow an organized religion. But for me, to follow my conscience in what I do is the first and main thing.
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I think that is the most important thing for everyone!
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Me too 🙂
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You’re right. We are what we do. Great post.
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Thanks. I’ve believed that since I was in college. It’s why I don’t follow any organized religion.
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When I hear ignorance being spoken, it riles me to no end. I say nothing. Exception: when words are spoken to someone that obviously have hurt that person deeply, and that person cannot defend himself/herself for some reason.
My mantra: speak no evil; do no evil. I have to swallow many times when I would love to burst out with a great comeback to nastiness and ignorance. “From whence it comes” dictates my verbal reaction or not.
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When it gets personal, it’s a different story. As long as it isn’t directed at me or mine, I stay out of it. Point taken!
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Great post. The first photo is just amazing.
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Thank you. It is difficult to capture that mist. Sometimes the camera automatically cuts through it, so I take pictures at a lot of different angles and hope one of them will work out 🙂
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Oh Marilyn thank you for this post, especially this: there are so many assholes in the world and they seem to be in charge of just about everything, from corporate boardrooms to customer service.” Thank you for putting into words- all of them, what I think too. Great post, made me laugh, while also giving me validation. Well done!! 😀
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Thank you!! I finally realized I don’t want to spend my life in a no-win battle with the assholes of the world. Maybe they’ll do each other in. I can dream.
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You are the third rant, including me, about this silly stupid daily prompt farce we have to put up with. Facit: do your own thing, we have no other choice. Loved your descriptions of the morons of this world, and yes, just keep quiet. I know definitely that one of this super examples in Facebook “unowned” me because I was not doing the same thing as she was on Facebook, like giving declarations of love and hate. So we will continue regardless with a few fur balls now and again to help linder the suffering.
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It’s pretty tiresome and I’m beginning to wonder why I’m bothering. With each “fix” they make to this platform, doing what I do becomes more difficult and less satisfying. My visitors and views are WAY down … I don’t know whether that’s a statistical issue — that they are gathering the numbers differently — of people are fed up and leaving WordPress for other venues. Maybe both. I’ll try to keep on keeping on, but it is getting harder and I’m getting weary. This should be a battle. It is supposed to be fun … and it isn’t fun. Not in over a year.
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Oh what a post :-). I pick my battles and I am not always able to shut up, mainly because I would explode.
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Hence blogging. It provides an outlet. Otherwise, someone would probably shoot me.
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Love this post! Spot on! I, too, have learned to just shut up. Talking to most people is wasted energy. I love your words about being responsible TO other people. In my experience, not many people understand that concept. Last but not least: why is it always 1954 where you live? Forgive my clueless ignorance if this is some popular idea I should know about. I am interested since it’s my birth year.
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Thank you. 1954 is the year that Our Town stopped accepting the future. The town is stuck in the past. It doesn’t get “future” as a requirement, so we have no industry, no tax base. We have no hospital, doctors. Many of our churches are closing because even they can’t stay stuck forever in the past. But we have horrible town management and they don’t want to change, maybe can’t change.
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I felt that way when I lived in Roanoke, VA for a couple of years, but it was more cultural, and I loved it for awhile having come from the fast paced and rapidly growing D.C. area. I live in the Richmond area now where the past and in particular the Civil War are more important than anything, which seems to keep race relations from improving. Horrible (and dishonest) City management here. The external auditors recently gave up their contract and quit because of the mess the City is in. Fortunately I live in suburban Henrico which is great.
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Sounds like home, but because this is a small town and quite rural, you can’t completely ignore it. When we first got here, it was sort of charming, in a dumb kind of way. The charm of these corrupt local officials has long since worn off. I’m just glad I’m at a point in life where I don’t have to wrangle with the school system and we get our services in other places. Other than buying groceries and paying taxes, we have little to do with the town.
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Silence is golden is true in so many ways!
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And it also keep you out of trouble!
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And therein lies the problem. Those of us who know that what the boneheads are saying, is pure BS, decide to keep quiet. This goes up the ladder to the top rungs of government. I’m not snappin’ my suspenders either, because I’m just as guilty, but I’m just sayin’.
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I do complain. I have complained. I have a headache from banging my head against the wall. One person can’t do it. It takes not only a village: it take millions of people saying “hell NO” and putting their money where their mouths are. As long as we buy what they sell, they will keep doing it the same way. It was only because people refused to buy Windows 8 that Microsoft finally backed off and it took them two years to do it. Morons, because they lost billions of dollars to prove that money still talks and consumers have the final say. And should.
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