Tag Self determination

Advanced planning?

Michael 2 Comments

Let me start by saying I don’t expect anything to happen soon but… Like many Americans, and maybe other Earthlings, I have planned and prepaid my, ahem, final expenses. When I first entered into the agreement? program? coercive activity? it was called pre-paid arrangements. After a while, the monthly bills would list it as pre-planned activities. (You know, activities like pickleball and croquet.)  Now, even though the arranged activities have long been paid, I still get a monthly mailing detailing new options and and additional services in what is now referred to as advanced planning. 

I have a problem with this nomenclature. Shouldn’t all planning be of the advanced type. Doesn’t the “plan” assume it’s happening “pre-“ something. What would the opposite of pre-planning be anyway? Crisis management?

It seems to me that somewhere along the way, someone wanted to capitalize on making plans but ‘plan’ all by itself sounded too weak to be a viable strategy. Plan. Dull, unimaginative, overlook-able. Can you hear the marketing guys talking about plans?

Plan? Won’t do. Much too unremarkable. We need to spice it up or people won’t go for it. Let’s call it a pre-plan. Maybe an advanced plan. How about advanced pre-plan? Too much? Okay. We’ll start with pre-plan and go from there. If in a couple years we need to goose it up a bit, we know we have ‘advanced’ in our back pocket.

Personally, I think ‘plan’ all by itself gets the message across. It’s a message we spent some time on in yesterday’s Uplift post at ROAMcare, Be prepared. And yes, had I been more prepared today, you”d have gotten this post in your mailbox hours ago.

What not to do

Michael 5 Comments

When I had my first surgery in the early years of this century, things didn’t go as well as they could have, and I spent a lot of time in bed watching television. (That could be why I don’t watch much TV now. Anyway…) There was a show I stumbled across called “What Not to Wear.” Over the course of a week distilled to a half hour or hour production, our intrepid hosts turned ugly ducklings into if not beautiful swans, better looking ducklings. The advice seemed simple enough.  Don’t follow a crowd. Don’t even do what you think you want to do. Do what works best.

I was thinking about that when I was reading this week’s major news stories – the releasing of National Guard on the nation, Cheesedoodle Donny and Pentagon Petey berated career officers, and of course, the government shutdown. All, yes all, a result of some people who just do whatever pops in their heads without consideration, without thought, without doing what would work best. They need a makeover show called “What Not to Do.”

Here in Pennsylvania, there has been a budget impasse for three months. They’ve not approved a budget on time in 10 of the last 14 years. It doesn’t matter what party is in the Governor’s office, the Democrats and the Republicans loyal to their party rather than their constituents, drag on and on, while on their way to eventually passing the same budget the Governor presented them well on time, all the while making news time for themselves, recording soundbites over what’s wrong with the other party, and how they are doing this “for the people who elected me to work for them.”

Over in Washington, the last time there was a shutdown over a budget fight was the last time the orange menace tried to run things his way. For 35 days the two parties listened to whatever their party leaders told them to argue about rather than to their constituents. It ultimately ended when the air traffic controllers, who hadn’t been paid for 35 days, walked out, leaving many politicians stranded in DC, unable to take their lobbyist paid junkets. All they had to do 35 days earlier was the right thing.

In yesterday’s Uplift post, The way of love, we discussed the right thing, how to get there, and how to stay there. It’s worth the few minutes to read it. Then maybe forward a copy to your Senators and Congresspersons.

Do as you say, or do as you do

Michael 5 Comments

Do you do what you say? Apparently, according to some social media reports I’ve seen, some half million people do. They are the ones who cancelled their Disney vacations, Disney weddings, and Disney+ and Hulu subscriptions. Not so many cancelled their ESPN subscriptions. Football trumps principles. That’s the verb, not the anthropomorphic cheese puff.

Perhaps it was because it was so easy. Boycotting Target had its success but the people more hurt by it were the Target employees who were “downsized” to keep the share holders happy. The outrage against CBS and Paramount never gained actionable speed probably because no one was certain what Paramount does nowadays. Should they maybe not go to a movie? But Disney, everyone knows Disney and not patronizing Disney stuff is easy. And nobody gets hurt. Just a company. No people. The Disney family members are protected bystanders rather than innocent bystanders (see Target sales associates) in such that regardless or how many or how few people travel through the various Disney parks, they still require the same number of people to work. (Think like if a play is performed in from of one dozen people or 120 people, if still takes the full company and crew.) It  is truly a matter of the only ones affected are the stockholders, the executives, the rich people at the top of the food chain.

Regardless if you are on the left side or the wrong side is not important here. Those who do what they say to do, or some might phrase it what they threaten to do, have an certain honesty in their lives, a level or respect for their words by turning them into their actions.

A good example of one who does what he says is a non-person, a character, a fictional figure – Atticus Finch.

We wrote about a great lesson Atticus Finch taught his children. His belief that all people deserve to be treated equally? Yes but no. His respect for life? Yes but no. His integrity? Yes but no. We brought all that up in yesterday’s Uplift post, Being Atticus, but his trait we were most taken by was his consistency is doing as he says and how he taught his children to do as he does. Whether you’re a movie fan of To Kill a Mockingbird, or a reading fan, or both, you are familiar with either the line, “I have to be the same in town downtown as at home,” or, “Atticus Finch is the same in his house as he is on the public streets”  that calls to mind that what you believe in your heart you should not hesitate to express.

Take some time, click that link and read Being Atticus and then be him. We need more like Atticus and some of them need to be real people.