Category: Meaningful Memories

The Quiet Quirky Clues to Our Core

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A baby, in the arms of her father, watched a line of adults proceed by her in church. She watched them proceed past with little interest. She watched them as I watched her, both of us looking at nothing until something caught our eye. Something caught her eye. She went from absently looking at people to intense focus. I turned to see what caught her attention. It was another daughter being held by her father in a different manner. The watcher and the watchee locked eyes for a couple seconds, and the moment passed, or so I thought. The watcher then wriggled herself into another position. “What are you doing?” her father whispered, looking down at her movements and adjusting his arms according to her wishes. When she was done finagling her fathers’ arms to her wishes, she ended up in the exact same position as the watchee in her father’s arms. I found her exposé into the human condition fascinating, because it suggested that keeping up with the jonses is just plain human nature, as opposed to learned behavior.

What does it mean? Does her mimicry reveal our innate need to achieve conformity, or the thought that we, even when very young, believe everyone else is doing it better?

***

Ever shake hands with a young kid, say seven-to-nine-years-old? They put their hand out vertical, but they add no grip, and their completion of the ritual is almost robotic. Adults apply meaning to this superficial, symbolic ritual. Kids just do what they’re told, the way we did when we were kids. They don’t know any better, we do. Yet, if we know better, what do we know? We think we gain special insight into a man by the way he shakes another man’s hand, but what do we gain? How hard is it to fake a great handshake?

“I never respected a man who didn’t shake a man’s hand,” my father-in-law said. “If a fella gives you a firm, but-not-too-firm handshake, and he looks you in the eye while he’s doing it, you know he’s a man’s man, and a man you can trust” 

“Fair enough,” I said, “but can it be faked?” It was a leading question, but I was also so curious about this staple of the insightful man’s definition of a man he thought he could trust on sight. 

“You can feel it,” he said.

That seemed preposterous to me, but he had a closing tone that suggested further interrogation on my part would be viewed as disrespectful. It was not my intention to be disrespectful, as I knew this man knew ten times more about reading people than I’ll ever know. He spent a forty-year career learning the difference between honest people and deceitful ones, and he was, by all accounts, very good at his job. 

I didn’t think my other questions were disrespectful, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that they were leading questions that asked him if he knew how wrong he was. So, I just shut it.

If I continued down this path, I would’ve told him about the weasel I met who knew how to shake a man’s hand, and he was so good at it that I thought, ‘Now that’s a handshake.’ I never put much stock in handshake readings, but this man had such a great handshake that it influenced my first impression. The weasel then spent the next twenty minutes trying to find creative ways to get me to part with my money. Piece of junk is what he was, but he had a nice, firm handshake, and he looked me in the eyes while he did it. I’ll give him that.

What does it mean? We think it’s a little cute that a young one doesn’t understand the complexities involved in the hand shake, and we dismiss the child’s failure to provide any data to our information-gathering exercise. As we age, we learn that a proper handshake conveys trust and respect, but some of us learn how to fake this customary ritual to mislead people. Relying on the knowledge we’ve attained from the meaning behind a great handshake is flawed. I’d much rather talk to them, watch them, and read them to learn the refrain in their brain.

***

“I wish I had all the money and love that guy had,” a young feller said referring to an NBA player who happened to be the son of a former NBA player. To paraphrase the Tina Turner song, What’s [Money] Got to do With It? Money can buy us all sorts of things, but there comes a point when the power of money ends.

At some point, money becomes an afterthought. Once we have enough money to support us for the rest of our lives, it’s “one less thing to worry about,” as the Forrest Gump character said. Name recognition is another powerful tool, as it can open doors for us, but once we’re in, we’re in. What do we do then? If we don’t have game, at some point, no one cares what our name is. Money can’t buy respect from our peers in school, at the workplace, or on the court. That’s where names are made and lost. When we fail, money won’t help people forget. Love and an excellent support system are the coin of the realm there. When I failed in school, the workplace, and in athletics, I would’ve loved it if someone said, “You’re going to fail, it’s what we do, it’s what we do the moment after we fail that defines us.” I would’ve also loved it if they added, “And when you fail, just know that you have me, the person who cares more about what happens to you than anyone else in the world, standing right behind you.”

What does it mean? We all know those cynical types who think that in one way or another, money solves everything. My guess is this is said most often by cynical types who never had any, because it is an excellent excuse to explain to ourselves why they haven’t measured up. We could list all of the players in our culture who never had a dime growing up, but that would be redundant. We all know that money does not help us deal with momentary failures, but we have to admit that if we didn’t have what we believed to be a quality excuse those temporary failures could crush us. If quality excuses help us get over speed bumps, what do we do then? Most of the successful people, I’ve met tell me stories of their no-money, no friends in high places rise, and I’ve heard a number of tales that detail trials and errors, and rock bottom, insomnia-rich, where-do-I-go-from-here failures that eventually lead to success. “How?” will be your first question, and your second question will be an unspoken, “What’s the difference between you and me?” Where did their inner drive come from? Their answers will usually be a frustrating amount of nothing really, except that they had an unwavering spirit behind them, often a parent, who provided support, guidance, love, and a whole bunch of other elements that taught them that momentary failure is nothing more than a learning experience.

***

I hear parents rewrite their past all the time at their kid’s baseball games. Mythologizing ourselves into an ideal image is just kind of what we do when we’re watching our kids play ball. This “They’re not as good as we were,” mentality helps us control the narrative of our lives by highlighting our character-defining moments to attempt to rewrite our character. Yet, when we’re telling our kids about the seminal, pivotal memories of our lives, how often do we “misremember” key details that never made it into our highlight reels? When we see our kids act in a somewhat less than aggressive manner, we’re despondent. “That’s not how I did it!” we say. Is that true? It is, because it’s how we remember it. It’s possible that we remember it correctly, but it’s more probable that we remember our highlight reels as opposed to our reality. It’s also possible that we’ve rewritten our past so thoroughly that that is genuinely how we remember it. I do this, you do it, we all do it. Our grandparents probably did it to our parents, our parents do it to us, and we do it to our kids. It’s so common that we could probably call this chain of rewrites human nature at this point. 

What does it mean? Our rewrites are an attempt to correct the past that we think might help us correct our present and future. They’re not lies, however, as we genuinely believe them after reviewing our highlight reels. Yet, the best rewrite we could possibly write is the one in which we try to escape the clutches of this chain. It could alter our kids future if we rewrote the mistakes our parents made with us. We may not want to recount our failures for them, but we could talk about how we dealt with adversity, moments of embarrassment, and humiliation. We could offer them a love and support rewrite that includes our own version of the “And when you fail…” note of support listed earlier that we wish our parents offered us?    

***

Alan “the neighbor” offered Ben “the neighborhood teenager” some advice on his game. The Ben, in our scenario, forgot everything Alan said two seconds after he’s said it, which made Ben the perfect repository for Alan’s otherworldliness worldliness. I wanted to tell Alan to “Save it” about halfway through his spiel, because other, more prominent types in Ben’s life offered him similar advice, and he didn’t listen to them either. Ben was all about achieving independence, or at least a level that made him immune to responding to advice. I didn’t say anything, because I knew this really wasn’t about Alan helping Ben improve his game. Allen just wanted to display his unique understanding of the human condition to us.

What does it mean? We all offer one another advice, and we all politely avoid listening to those who are kind enough to offer us some advice. Not only do I know people who act this way, I know I am one of them. There are a variety of reasons and excuses for why we don’t listen to anyone, but my advice to people who give advice is, “Save it! No one’s listening.” That’s dumb advice I know, because when we spot a flaw in someone’s game, or in someone’s life, some of us sincerely want to help them, and we can’t avoid trying to prove the knowledge we’ve attained along the way. The problem with us hearing such advice is that most of us believe doing the same thing over and over will eventually produce different results.  

***

We all try to help one another when we spot flaws, but you ever tried to get a senior citizen’s mind right on a passion project of yours? When I watch it happen a big, neon-flashing “SAVE IT!” crosses my mind. You have an opinion, we have an opinion, and the only thing that keeps some of us going is the belief that their opinion is uninformed, because it goes against our sources. Before we go about getting their mind right however, we might want to consider the demographic of our audience. Marketers have what they call a key demo, and they pay big bucks for ad space in a show that appeals to audiences between the ages of 18-49, because their intense market research suggests that they’re still susceptible to suggestion.

When we’re under 18, we’re even more susceptible to suggestion, but we don’t have any money. The 49+ demo have all the money, but advertisers don’t waste the corporation’s time or money trying to persuade them, because through market research they’ve learned that the 49+ mind is already made up. I’ve met the anecdotals, my aunt was an anecdotal. She thought adhering to the prevailing winds of change gave her a more open-minded presentation, and she hoped it made her appear fresh, hip, and younger. It didn’t, but she got a lot of mileage out of being anecdotal. Generally speaking, the +49ers stubbornly adhere to the patterns they’ve developed, and all the routines and rituals they’ve had for a majority of their lives.

What does it mean? Market research dictates that most of the 49+ demo is so loyal to the products they’ve consumed for years that they’re branded. So, go ahead and tell them your opinions, because that’s your right, but just know that you’re probably wasting your breath if you think you’re going to get their minds right on your pet topic, because they’ve aged out of anyone ever changing their mind on anything. If you disagree, go ahead and ask someone who spends millions trying to tap into the culture and reach the widest audience possible. The marketing agencies, and various marketing departments of corporations have decided that pouring millions into advertising to +49ers is equivalent to pouring money down the drain.

Once you’ve arrived at your conclusion, you might want to join me in my quest to get marketing teams to stop directing a portion of their advertising budgets to streaming services. If that fails, we should focus on getting them to offer a +49 opt out on button on commercials for those who’ve aged out of the key demo, because their beloved fast-forward thumbs are developing callouses.

The Chilly Bin

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“Chilly bin,” an actress in a New Zealand show called Wellington Paranormal said. What’s a chilly bin? It was obvious, in the scene, that a cooler, a portable ice chest, or whatever you call it in your region was the product of her concern. Colloquialisms, like this one, fascinate me. I’ve even been informed that I use some colloquialisms, we all do, without knowing it. We use terminology, phrases, and various descriptors that our ancestors, family, and friends do, and we absorb all this from those in their country, region, and locale. My cousin uses some different terms and phrases, and everyone around him does too. They also have a subtle, almost imperceptible drawl, and they overemphasize their ‘R’s’ in a manner that catches the ear. They live an hour and a half from me.     The modern version of the portable ice chest made its first relatively wide-scale appearance around 1951, which means the terms cooler and chilly bin weren’t derived from old world languages. Chilly bin also isn’t a result of a creole, a pidgin, or any other linguistic quirk with a characteristic mixing of parent languages typically born in a culture of multilingual settings. The term chilly bin was born and bred in New Zealand. So, when and why did New Zealanders (AKA Kiwis) begin calling the portable ice chest the chilly bin? A short but decent search of the term chilly bin suggests there is no person or event responsible for the term, and there is no point of origin or any identifiable historical trails for the term. “It’s just Kiwis being Kiwis,” some sources say. One explanation for this lack of explanation is that sometimes Kiwis simply enjoy “adding a touch of Kiwi personality to the English language, making it distinct and memorable.” 
Australians (Aussies) call the portable ice chest an ‘esky’, but that makes more sense because they derive that term from a famous brand of coolers sold in Australia. Americans call tissues Kleenex, gelatin is Jell-O, toaster pastries are Pop-Tarts and Aussies call the portable ice chest an esky. The term chilly bin makes no sense, in that vein, because there hasn’t been a chilly bin brand sold there until a recent effort to start one. 
How do linguistic quirks, specific to a locale, start? How do they survive the “Isn’t it called a cooler?” corrections? “Yes, but that’s not what we call it here,” I imagine fathers telling their children. “But we’re the only ones who call it that,” I imagine the kids replying. The population of New Zealand stands at just over five million, so I can only guess that people who are proud of their heritage and traditions, big and small, have a tough time sustaining them against the language found in movies, TV, and the internet. Though I know nothing about New Zealand, and I’ve never met a Kiwi, I have to imagine that younger people, though proud of their heritage and traditions, refuse to use the term chilly bin, because it sounds so local, yokel.  

It’s All Relative to Relatives

I have a cousin who moved from the Midwest to the Southern part of the United States. Our family is from a region of the Midwest that has no discernible accent, and this cousin spent his entire childhood, the formative years, in our locale, until his family moved south in his early teens. When we visited him, decades later, we found that he switched languages. I didn’t understand that as a young kid, so I asked him about it. He said something about how he didn’t intend to switch, but he picked it up as a result of linguistic osmosis.  “It sounds like everyone down here made the switch,” my brother said. “They all speak with an accent.”  Our cousin overheard this and joked, “Son, down here, you’re the one with the accent.”
“Really?” I said. “Because, if you watch TV and movies, everyone talks like us?” My innocent comment basically asked him why he didn’t see the error of his ways and switch back to our accent-free dialect. My naïve, uninformed point was that he should’ve recognized, at some point, that he wasn’t speaking in “the normal manner” the rest of us in our shared English-speaking country did.
Manufacturers make a concerted effort to localize their products for consumers, and online stores often do the same. If New Zealand comprises roughly five million, manufacturers likely do not spend too much time and effort regionalizing their products to accommodate their terminology. Kiwis surely recognize the more worldly terms “cooler,” “portable cooler,” or “ice chest,” but the maintain their terminology among one another. I could see the term chilly bin existing in an inclusive world that involved New Zealanders speaking among one another, but I would think that involving themselves in the world wide web would lead them to recognize that they’re holding onto the term in some kind of quant Kiwi manner that should eventually weed itself out among those who don’t want to ascribe to their quaint Kiwi traditions.     Americans have slang terms, the French do, and the Brits do. We all have slang terms that we use growing up, and isn’t it fascinating how they transcend generations? What Americans call a popsicle, the Brits call an ice lolly. Americans refer to the “rising chair” as an elevator, and the Brits call it a lift. Due to the fact that the Brits used to own America, the inclination might be that Britian should own these linguistic levers, but America tends to dominate the world in media, technology, and international business. When we talk about media, we’re including TV shows and movies, and since American entertainment is more popular worldwide, their lexicon tends to dominate. Most countries formerly owned by the Brits (Australia and New Zealand in particular) adopted their slang and lexicon, but the Americas branched off and refused to use British slang in an apparent effort to further their revolutionary quest for total freedom, but did the British then refuse to adopt the American lexicon, because they refuse to speak the language of their refuse? Or are dialects and colloquialisms a natural course of insular language/lexicons among people?  Order fish and chips in Britian, and you’ll receive a plate of fish and fries. Some suggest that most Brits do not call French Fries chips when they order it as a standalone, as various American fast-food chains have forced the term French Fries into the British vocabulary, but the term fish and chips continued in Britain when it’s ordered as a meal. Brits call chips, or potato chips in America, crisps. Some sites suggest that the Brits see the fried bits of potato Americans know as French Fries as those that were chipped off a potato, i.e. each fry was chipped off a potato. The actual origin of the French Fry may have started in 1629, in the country of Chile, or later in Spain, but the Belgians and French have had a long dispute that the French Fry developed in their country. Regardless, we can only guess that the Brits developed the term chips, because they are averse to referring to anything with a French designation. The term fish and chips hold true for Aussies, the Irish, and Kiwis.

The Loo 

In my locale, we’ve loaded the American lexicon with contractions. ‘Fyouwanto’ is a common phrase in certain regions of America that contracts the words if you want to. Brits say, ‘Innit’ for isn’t it, as in, “Cold day today, innit?” My very young son once noted that Americans say, “I’m headed to the restroom” if they’re in a restaurant and “I’m going to the bathroom” if they’re at home. Brits say, “I’m headed to the loo” regardless where they’re at. I’ll admit here that I always thought they were saying, the Louvre. Now, I know the Louvre, the art museum in Paris, is pronounced “The Loov-rah,” but when I hear the Brits and Americans refer to that museum, they say, “The Loov.” Seeing as how Brits often leave off the last syllable of many of the words they say, I thought “the loo” was a tongue-in-cheek shot to the French that they developed to conflate the waste removal room with one of France’s most treasured tourist destinations. 
As with most commonly and casually used terms, “the loo” has uncertain origins. As such, we can only derive possibilities and theories. One theory has it that the loo was derived from the French term for water: l’eau. “This theory suggests that the word “loo” was originally used to refer to a water closet or a room with water facilities, which eventually came to be associated with toilets. Another theory is that the term “loo” originated from the cry of “gardyloo” used by medieval French-speaking servants in Scotland before throwing their waste matter out of the window. Over time, the theory states, the cry of “gardyloo” may have been shortened to “loo” and used to refer to the location where waste matter was disposed.” Gardyloo basically means “guard yourself for the water/waste,” or “watch out for the waste matter that I’m about to throw out the window here.” At some point, so goes the theory, the Brits just shortened it to “the loo”. 

Linguistic Laughter

When my Southern cousin eventually returned to the Midwest, he said, “I was almost afraid to talk, because every time I opened my mouth, someone started giggling.” Our laughter is an unfortunate, involuntary, and almost reflexive reaction to anyone who uses different terms, speaks with regional dialects, or has a specific drawl or accent. We laugh based on the ‘I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry’ confusion. On my trip to the South, I managed to get the shock and awe giggling out of my system, but there was something about his drawl, his colloquialisms, and his slang, idioms, and patois that still had us all looking at each other, pumping our eyebrows, and giggling, because it was one of those “I’m sorry, I know it’s rude, but I can’t stop laughing” moments.  If you’ve ever been on the other end of the laughter, you know we all have regional dialects, accents, and ways of saying things that are regional and local. The worst thing I ever heard was “You’re not from here are you?” a cashier asked me. “You know how I can tell? You don’t have an accent.” My initial thought was that I didn’t have her accent. I’ve since learned that in my region of the country, we don’t have any accent. We might be the section of the country with the least amount of accent, and little in the way of regional dialect. I don’t write that to gloat, as I think accents, dialects, and drawls are colorful, and my region of the country might lack those more than any other. Yet, we do have various colloquialisms and slang terms. It’s all relative, but when we’re young, and we have no idea that there is another way to say what we’ve said our whole life, we don’t understand it when someone says something different or they say it a different way, and it strikes us as funny. Homer Simpson summed this up with his typical brilliance saying, “He’s talking funny-talk,” after hearing Herschel Krusofsky (AKA Krusty the Clown) pray in Hebrew.

You Do What you Do

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“You’re basically crushing on a teenager,” Susie said to conclude her accusation that we were flirting with our teenage server. It wasn’t true, but it was funny, and all insults are not created equal. Some hit the soft spots we spend most of our time trying to hide from spectators, and some are just plain funny. Funny gets the competitive hackles up high, and if we don’t hit back, she owns the funny.

“You’re a couple of dirty old men,” she added. We spoke to this server the way we spoke to every woman who served us food and drink. This young server engaged in our playful banter, and she laughed while doing it. We laughed, everyone laughed, and we all had a good time doing it. This was our routine. If we had a server who was a homely, senior citizen with a hairy wart on the end of her nose, we would’ve engaged her in playful banter to try to make her laugh, so we can laugh, and everyone could have a great time. Unless the server happened to be male, we were consistently playful with everyone who served us food and drink. This particular waitress just happened to be a beautiful, young blonde who wore a crop top that exposed her washboard stomach, and she had a great set of teeth. 

We could’ve laid out our “completely consistent with our character” defense, but that likely would’ve devolved into a tired “Nuh uh!”/“Yes huh!” debate. We could’ve called Susie’s age into question and asked her if she was jealous that she was no longer a young, hot body that old men might want to entertain intermittently for a couple hours. Attempting to reset the parameters in this manner can fall under a petty and mean umbrella, however, and Susie’s challenge was not a confrontational, mean-spirited challenge of our character, but an entertaining way for her to belittle the men around her. If you step out of that parameter and become unnecessarily defensive, not only will you face the humiliating “I was just joshing,” but you also reveal something weird and uncomfortable about yourself. No, when someone like Susie hits you with something funny like this, you join in. 

Even if such a comment makes us angry, and especially if it makes us angry, we join in, and attempt to outdo them there, in their spot and the frame they’ve created in the moment. If you let it go, you lose; if you try to “Well, what about you?” them, you lose; and it you get too defensive, you lose. The best course of action is to play with them on the playing field they’ve created and try to beat them there. 

“We’re old, she’s young, I get it,” I said to Susie. “I agree with everything you’re saying about us and our relationship here, but she has belly exposed.” 

“What does that have to do with anything?” Susie asked.

“The exposed belly changes everything,” I said. “All conditions being equal, you take out the exposed belly, and she’s just another woman who is far too young for us to even engage in polite conversation. The exposed belly changes the chemistry and circuitry, or for you mystical types, the interiority, of the adult male mind. It’s science.”

“She’s probably eighteen-years-old,” Susie said to further her admonishments. “She’s young enough to be your granddaughter.”  

“Fair enough,” I said. “But that crop top she’s wearing exposes the fact that she has a washboard stomach.”

“And that she’s eighteen.”

“If you study your science, you’d know what the exposed washboard belly of a teenager does to the chemistry and circuitry of the male brain. If I reach the point where you begin to question my level of brain activity, perform all of the traditional, medical tests, but if everything else fails, walk a female washboard stomach in front of me. If I don’t respond in anyway, pull the plug.”  

***

“I’ll let you try a little bit of this drink, but if you don’t like it, you cannot make a face,” I say when I let someone try something I love. I didn’t invent the drink I want them to try, write the song, the book, or make the video I want them to watch, but for some reason, it’s so important to me that they like it too. I don’t own shares of the company or have any personal stake in the success of the product, but it’s my opinion that they made something delicious, interesting, and I want to share that temporary, nebulous bond with you. When they make that face it suggests that the drink is absolutely disgusting, it hurts in some strange way that is impossible to describe to anyone who doesn’t share my brain with me.

“I don’t care,” we say, “I still like it.” That’s a front, a BS front that we create to hide our pain. There is some element of truth in it, however, for we will continue to drink it, listen to it, or read it, and we will continue to enjoy it in all the ways we did before they made that face, but it still hurts that they don’t like it the way we do.

“How can you drink that sludge?” some say, further down the line, to compound their insult. They flip the page on us by somehow making us defend our appreciation of the product we once wanted to share with them. It’s almost as if they know we have some vulnerability on this subject, and somewhere deep in the recesses this feels like a violation of some bond that we once wanted to share with them. 

***

“Who do you think is going to win the big game?” 

“I don’t know.”

“Of course you don’t know. I don’t know, no one does, it hasn’t even started yet, but we all sort of play this game with one another to guess who is going to win. If you’re wrong, no one cares. No one cares if you’re right either, as a matter of fact. It’s just a little game we adults play with one another, and no one remembers who said what five seconds after the game ends.”  

***

The material in this article is not meaningful, important or germane. Was it brilliant, hilarious, or groundbreaking? No, it is what I do. Some have natural gifts for storytelling, others have talent, but the rest of us have to work through it, for it, and to it. At some point in between, we reach a point where we can only do what we do. We all have talents, limitations, and everything in between. “Explore,” I say. “Eat it, drink it, learn it, live it, love it.”  

Once we dig past that crusty superficial layer, it’s easier to dig, but if we dig too far, we hit that which is pleasing to the eye and ear. It’s a purposeless depth with an artificial feel to it, and it feels fine to write it, but when we read it, we know it ruins the article. When we learn to avoid such depths, the reader might say, “This is great and all, but what do you want me to do with it?” There’s a beginning, an arc, and a conclusion, but to the reader it’s not everything it could be. To which we the author responds with the tired but true, “It is what it is.”

What is our definition of success? How do we know when we’ve achieved completion? Next question, what do we do when we don’t? We develop excuses for failing to achieve the maximum, but another point follows that point where we realize that we probably weren’t D) all of the above. We may have been A) and C), but we were lazy, scared, intimidated, or not ambitious enough to put a foot on the next rung up on the ladder. It might be one of those things, all of them or none, but I wonder how many suffer from the ‘I just never thought of myself as one of those guys’ mindset. We’ve all heard about the definition of success, and we love the general discussions of one guy succeeding over another, but how many of us know that we’re going to succeed within a structured format, regardless the obstacles they place before us? This concept struck me when Jackie and Jody informed me that they were both anchors for competing local news networks.

“How do you even think you’re capable of such a thing?” I asked them. I knew Jackie on an intimate, friendship level, and I spoke with Jody on an almost-daily basis. They were my people, and I couldn’t believe that any one of my people could go beyond dreaming of such things. 

“It’s a low-rent, very local network,” Jackie said. “You’ve seen it. The production value of my broadcast is zilch. It’s about two notches above what some guy filming himself in his mom’s basement. It’s nothing to write home to mom about.” It was to me. It was a stratosphere I never even considered before, and I didn’t think I’d ever even meet someone who thought like they did. I don’t know if Jackie and Jody had a better support system growing up, or if some people just believe in themselves more than others. I don’t know, but I’ve met a number of people I life who succeeded beyond my wildest dreams, and they never thought as much of it as I did. They dreamed higher. We could grow frustrated by it, develop excuses for our inability to succeed, or just keep doing what we do.