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(Ten) Random Thoughts

1. Sometimes our past decisions influence our present more than our present decisions, but that does not mean we cannot change our present situation by the decisions we make today. In that sense, anyone who says you can't change the past is wrong. Your past does not have to keep you prisoner.

2. If food tastes better when you are happy (and I believe that it does), and if you are happier when you are social (which I believe you are), does this mean that food tastes better when you are being social?

3. I have heard, more than once, that you can find out about a person by looking at his or her bank statement, that what a person spends money on shows what he or she loves most; but what if the only items listed are necessities? A lack of purchases might mean that the man is just cheap. :-)

4. Reading fiction is supposed to encourage in the reader an empathy for other people. Like anything else, what seems to promote health actually promotes its opposite: read too much fiction, and it seems you can become self-centered and socially unaware.

5. People have suggested that the United States should take pennies out of circulation. If I were a nickel, I would fear that I was next.

6. Heroes remind us that we are meant for greatness.

7. "Foibles" is a funny word.

8. I once cried because I played so horribly in front of complete strangers in a city basketball league, and I was once placed in a math class intended for kids who did not understand math. Later, I looked for opportunities to play basketball with strangers, and earned A's and B's in math classes. The difference, in both cases, was the encouragement of the people around me and my own commitment to the belief that I was not hopeless.

9. Skydiving feels like you are looking out the window of a plane, only there is no window and you look like a hamster with food in its cheeks while you are falling. I guess this means that skydiving is nothing like looking out the window of a plane.

10. I read recently that memories ("images" was the word the author used) are like puppets because we can control how they appear in our minds. This must be why nostalgia is so powerful. We select the good memories and forget the bad. It may be that what we think of as hard times now will become endearing memories later. Maybe, then, we should practice "present nostalgia:" while not ignoring the bad in our circumstances, we can look for the good. That will be more realistic than nostalgic thinking, though maybe not as comforting.

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