Random Thoughts - August 2025

Ted Reads Random Thoughts

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Another case of Mama being right.  A 2022 study suggests that picking one’s nose may be a factor in causing dementia.  My Mom just said that someday my finger would get stuck in my nose forever.  I didn’t think she was right but I didn’t want to risk it.  Scientific Reports volume 12, Article number: 2759 (2022) 

Someone reminded me that my zipper was down.  I quickly retorted that it saves me time.  I’m actually not sure where those rationalizations come from.  That defensive rationalization was out of my mouth within milliseconds.  Are such thoughts actually a rationalization (rational lies) if it is also true?  Maybe both?

I believe that the most important tool that a person can possess in any kind of relationship with another is the ability and willingness to look at what they contributed to the outcome of a situation that didn’t work well.  A dust-up.  An argument.  A disagreement. 

In my work and personal experience, it is the least used.  Blaming the other person is the #1 strategy. At best it limits intimacy and more often it is one of the slow growing cancers that will eventually kill the relationship.

People sometimes ask me what kind of person they should be looking for in a partner; this is what I tell them.  Once you have met someone who attracts you, ease them into a conversation about their previous relationships and ask them why those relationships didn’t work.  What you are to listen for is who or what was to blame.  If what you hear is a balance between what the other person did or did not do and what the speaker did or did not do, go for it.   Don’t be discouraged if they are hard to find.  There aren’t many who know how or are willing to be self-reflective. 

I’ve been told that it takes “two to tango”.  It’s my belief that it also takes “two (or more) to tangle”.  This principle applies to any relationship. 

I wonder what would happen if a country would be willing to ask themselves, “What is our part in this thing that ‘they’ did to us?”   

There are a few other things that are guaranteed to kill a relationship.  Read John Gottman’s work.  He can prove it.  

A friend of mine shared one of their “Random Thoughts” with me.  She wondered why and what the effect is of Therapists, Dentists, Doctors, and other professionals describing their business as a “practice”.  Practice.  Is there another level above practice?  Does the word “practice” inspire confidence?  Then I got to thinking about other words to describe a business such as private, as in private practice.  Is there such a thing as semi-private practice, or a public practice?  Why?

I saw and liked this.  “Poetry is music we haven’t heard yet.” Another is “Poetry is prose with all the unnecessary words taken out.” 

This thought crossed my mind the other day.  The imagination of life, of love, is always somewhat greater than the act of living it.  I wonder if that isn’t the work of hope and imagination.

A friend reminded me of the adage, “You’re either a pilot or a passenger.”  Trouble comes my way when I confuse the role I am needing to play.

A thought that went rolling through my head this morning. “Life is not lost only to death, but by my failure to live it.”

The pain that I feel in any situation seems to be equal to the resistance I create to what is, which always involves change of some kind.

I was thinking of my 85-year-old uncle.  And myself to some degree.  We grew up on a farm in an era where the work was never done.  As we get older, our work is taken away from us sometimes.  Whether it be because physically we just can’t do what we used to do, or we are not allowed to, or “it” goes away because it is no longer necessary.  That doesn’t mean we quit.  I had this thought.  “One’s work may be taken away from them but the internal need and desire to work can’t be taken out of them.”      

It is approaching the one-year anniversary of the series of events that changed the way I live my life.  I am fortunate to be alive.  Ed, a good friend of mine calls the life I was living as the “Go Go” stage.  He says the next stage will be the “Go” stage, and I have found that to be true.  If you are wondering what the next stage its, it will be the “No Go.”  What I have noticed is that my time horizons have shifted.  A year ago, I was thinking and planning major commitments a year or two out.  Now, because of the medical changes I am thinking and planning a week or month or so out.  That absolutely represents a huge loss and yet surprisingly has brought an unexpected benefit.  What is happening is that more and more each day, each experience is more and more rich.  I wonder if as time goes on and my time horizon becomes more like an hour or a day, perhaps a moment, the opportunity will be for me to find more and more fullness in each moment.  If my experience so far is any indication, I’d predict that to be true. 

I was talking to a friend and he used the word “odd” when he was meaning “old.”  We decided that both words work; odd old fellow and old odd fellow.  It seems that as I get older, I get odder.  Then I thought, the older a tree gets the more unlike any other tree of its heritage it becomes.  Same for us humans maybe? Uniqueness? Weirder?  That made me feel better.

I am at the “Wings beneath my wind” stage of life.  If you know, you know.  If you don’t, if you live long enough, you will. 

“Can I have your birthday?” the medical attendant asked.  I said, “Sure if I can have yours.” (She was much, much younger than I.)  That is my idea of a joke.  She laughed.  I recently read a study where laughter makes one more optimistic and hopeful.  That’s the kind of gift where both parties benefit.   

“She has talent in spades” ???  I know what it means, but……

It seems ironic and sad to me that the best chance to get information about both sides of an issue such as the pros and cons of the current tariff strategy (assuming there is one) is to ask ChatGPT.  Sad, because I make up that “back in the day” one could listen to a broadcast or read a newspaper or magazine and have a chance to get both sides.  As I write that I realize how naïve a belief that was.  Such sources have always been biased in one direction or another.   

What an unexpected pleasure it was to witness at a local restaurant, from a table near by, the look of delight when a three-year-old’s very own bowl of French fries is set before her. 

When I revert back to my lament of, “I just don’t understand how people can treat other people that way,” reminding myself of the Pro-Social/Anti-Social Scale and what kind of people populate which parts of the continuum, my angst is cooled.  It seems that the suggestions promulgated about how we are supposed to treat others apply only to my clan, my kind, not those of others. 

Speaking briefly about religion, many of the practices if seen as quaint, would be fascinating and fun facts.  Like the old, so-called blue laws are.  If presented as fact, however, in my experience they can be catastrophic.  They can easily kill people. 

I learned that it is probably not best to share a nightmare with a loved one when they were in it, and they played a significant malevolent role.   I am not sure what the opposite of a nightmare is - a GoodMare? I’ve learned that if a loved one was in one of those and they played a significant role, it’s ok for me to share those.

A “Something I need to adjust to” is the fact that though the world continues to get larger the role I play in it is becoming smaller. And I know the common advice is to fill in that space with other things to ‘replace’ what I am and have been doing. Intuitively I know, for me at least, that it would be a diversion. Not that diversion and distraction are bad, I know there just aren’t any large enough to fill the space between who I am becoming (shrinking and going slower) and what the world is (expanding and going faster).  I have some ideas about how to take advantage of this moment, but it is more like a step at a time, rather than something I can see off in the distance.

Speaking of stories, I believe we all make up stories about life, living it, what it is all about, who we are, who you are, etc. Then we organize our lives to do our best to make the story we have created the truth and come true. Some of us may actually try to sell our story to other people. Insinuating that have found “the way”.  Others will try to sell theirs to us and we buy into it.  We wear it then, though it is always a bit ill-fitting, though we keep that part to ourselves. There comes a moment for all us story tellers that the story doesn’t work anymore.

For example, “If I strive to be kind, fair and loving, that is what I’ll get in return,” and then we are leveled by unfairness and brutality. “The world is a harsh, ugly, dog-eat-dog, mean place,” and then we are gob smacked by a benevolent force that we struggle to take in.

For me it happened at age 27. For others it’s 47 or 67 or 87 or on our deathbed. We are then in the middle of an existential crisis. This is not a make-believe crisis. It is a real one. All that means is the story I have told myself doesn’t work for me anymore.

It is an incredibly sad thing that we don’t talk about this to our fellow travelers. It is normal. It happens all the time. When ‘something’ just doesn’t work anymore. The ‘something’ is the story we have written about how it is.   Without stories we go crazy and/or kill ourselves.

I wonder how much of our self-criticism and the criticism we send other people’s way is a refusal to accept the things we cannot change. There are those who would suggest that we can make anything happen. There are those who tell us we are extremely limited in terms of what we can actually manifest or make happen. Where is the truth?’  That answer is a part of the story I mentioned above.

I am still looking for the part of me that I allow to emerge when I go to my special places (Kauai, the Farm, South Dakota, Guatemala, Ireland, UK, Panama, etc.).  The part that I put back in mini storage when I come back home. I’m glad I let him/them out when I go there but I am sad that I put him/them away when I return home. It isn’t about home. This happens regardless of where I am living. Any tips are welcome.

Someone commented that they had been sick as a dog. Why a dog?  Why not mouse, or horse, or ……?   And is there a difference between eating like a horse and eating like a pig?

Since we have that, do we really need the phrase pigging out? Isn’t that already covered by the former or is there something special about pigs that warrants two references to pigs and eating?  And why, dog days of August? 

I was wondering why 360 degrees in a circle. Why not 380, or 400?

I was reminded by a young, wise, old soul who suggested he lived his life trying to “not allow the need for perfection to be enemy of the good.”

What’s the deal when one uses phrases such as something being “just north of,” or something “going south”.  I know what they mean when they are used, but what’s the origin? I make up it could be prejudicial and demeaning. I know, I could probably ask Siri, but I don’t want to “spoil the pudding.”

I wonder why primates laugh, and do they get the same benefit.  Science suggests so. 

I was playing Tic Tac Toe with my grandson, and when neither of us won, I heard myself say, “Cat’s got the game.” I immediately wondered where that phrase comes from.  Followed closely by how did “Tic Tac Toe” become the name of the game.

I was waiting to be seated at a somewhat fancy restaurant.  In this holding area there were two huge fish tanks.  There were of course fish swimming around.  Mostly from one end to the other.  It got me to wonder if they were aware of the world outside the glass, or if for them, the world they were swimming around in represented all of reality.  As I have tried to share what happened for me last fall for a couple of weeks, as I was having my near-death experiences, this fish (me) got to travel outside the fish tank.  The movie, The Truman Show, represents what I am talking about.  

I was sitting up in the mountains doing some writing and had this moment of deep gratitude for having the privilege of being able to enjoy such a moment, when billions of other people were struggling to breathe or eat or walk, or see.  The last line of the poem I was writing about the cloud show that was unfolding for me was “and I, one of the undeservedly, privileged ones am able to sit on my duff and consider these things.”  Duff? What’s that all about?

I’ve shared this before but was reminded of it again recently when a friend suggested that they guess they would “never be satisfied”.  They were saying that in a way that sounded as if they were criticizing themselves.  In my mind, “never being satisfied” is not a character flaw.  It is not something to be overcome, it is to be celebrated as growth. 

It is simply a by-product of what it means to be a human being.  We are human beings, we are always changing, always growing, along with everything else in the universe.  “Never being satisfied” is often used in a pejorative way.  I’ve found that I am better off if I listen to that voice, rather than condemn, or allow others to criticize me for it.  It’s like that moment when I realize that my shirt doesn’t quite fit anymore, to the point where it is constraining my natural movement.

I’ve been asked about and criticized for saying things about what I see is going on in our country today.  There is a part of me that wishes I didn’t notice, like so many others seem to be able to do.  I think some of us are cursed, in a way, because we cannot not see.  For those it has always been this way.  Since we were little kids.  I realized that I am one of those people who when they see something, they can’t help but stop, see, point up into the sky and hope that some other folks will stop and look up too.  There is a movie that speaks to this phenomenon.  “Don’t Look Up.”

I just read a study that suggests that spending two hours alone with ourselves enhances the human experience, both for ourselves and the people around us.  It seems to bring out the best parts of our humanity, which has always been based on cooperation with, care of, concern for others.  Well, not always.  Not these days for example. 

I was having lunch with a friend, and mentioned a culinary dish my mother used to make.  I was about done telling the story, when they interrupted and said, “We have already discussed this.”  I allowed myself to be hurt by that (I didn’t actually make a conscious choice to let myself be hurt, my hurt got out of the barn before I could catch it and I had to just sit with it sitting on my lap).  It made me wonder if being on the receiving end of such innocent comments like that are one of the reasons that some of us older people get quieter as time goes on.  I know that I became more reluctant to engage in conversation for the rest of the meal.

Kindness, generosity and social connectedness.  I know what it means to “fudge” on a test.  But why use the word fudge instead of cheat?

I was reading a research piece that suggested that experiencing emotions like awe, wonder, and delight can significantly enhance prosocial behaviors.  Actions which are intended to benefit others.  Kindness, generosity, compassion, decency.  That’s been my experience also.  In workshops I facilitate I ask each of the participants to share a delight, or a moment of awe that they experienced that day.  For some, it is hard to pick just one.  I consider that a good problem.  It suggests to me that they have multiple experiences.      

If my political ranting is bothersome to you, people are dying because of what my country is now doing and I promised myself, as a little kid, I wouldn’t be someone who pretended to myself that they weren’t.