Am I a bad man for saying every time I hear Justin Bieber talk I want to shake and slap some sense into him. Maybe it is because he comes across as an entitled prick or maybe it is because I can be a crotchety old man.
Or maybe it is because he is an entitled prick and I am a crotchety old man who feels like the kid hasn’t had any decent parenting so I think I can help with a quick attitude adjustment.
Not so much by kicking his ass but by taking away his money and forcing him to do manual labor in some third world village where he is not a famous man, but some white guy no one has ever heard of.
The primary problem is that it would probably end up becoming a reality television show and I’d get pissed off because someone would make lots of money off of it and it wouldn’t be me.
The Winter Of A Dad Blogger’s Discontent
I surprised myself with some of the content in There’s Gold In Blogging & Other BS… because I opened up in a way I hadn’t expected to. Don’t know if it is evident to anyone but me, but that is ok.
Ok because it showed me that I really have come farther than I realized and that I must be feeling a little less irked about some of the crap I went through. It was hard, really hard and when I look back at some of the things that happened in part of 2013 and ’14 I just shake my head in wonder.
Some people showed their colors leaving me to ask if those were/are true or just related to their own storms, don’t really know and am not particularly worried about it.
That is because there are some things I give to faith and say they will come or they won’t.
A colleague recently asked me if I was relentless or exhausting and I told them that in some areas I am exhaustingly relentless but only if the situation requires it.
When they asked me what it meant I smiled and said not to worry about it.
“I think you owe me a real answer.”
I just laughed and told them not to hurt themselves thinking. When they told me they thought I was being uncool I looked him in the eye and said what was uncool was his expectation he could only take and never give.
“Now you are just being a dick.”
“No, I am planting seeds for the future. That is how smart people work, they plant seeds and do their best to be good stewards of the land they are tending to.
Lessons Learned & Lessons Shared
Steiner the minor, the teenage boy who can almost share some of my clothes and I have regular conversations about life.
I have many with his sister too, but they tend to be of a different nature. Some of it is because she says she needs her mom for girl talk and I am just not a girl.
As long as she keeps talking to me about important things I am cool with her bouncing more things off of mom because there are some things I’ll never understand quite the same way.
And that is why the not so little boy anymore comes to me with certain questions. I do my best to share the lessons I have learned along the way but the truly hard stuff is hard because it is usually stuff you have to figure out on your own.
The experiences that break your heart, be they love affairs or business deals gone sour aren’t created in such a way that you can provide step-by-step directions through.
All you can do is listen, be supportive and try to help them understand you know more about it than they realize and that you survived whatever it is/was.
That is part of what I love about these quotes I sometimes share with you here because I can share them with the children too and have discussions we might not otherwise have.
I tell them that so much in life is predicated upon hard work and what you put in intermixed with luck/karma/fate or whatever else it is you want to call it.
Speaking Of Faith
I have been wrestling with it for years, trying to figure out how much is based upon stuff we can control, things we can’t and all that lies in between it.
For the past few weeks I have had something playing around in the back of my mind, some subconscious message or thought that I have tried to flesh out by writing here or here but I haven’t quite worked out what I am supposed to think or take from it.
What I keep hearing is the voice at the end of the Star Wars trailer that say “let it in.”
Intermixed with it is a sense that if I start the right exercise, take the right path or do this one thing I am going to move from where I am at to somewhere else.
When I close my eyes and let my mind loose I see myself at my age but with the body I used to have and some peace of mind I haven’t had for a while.
I figure it is all going to happen because of seeds I planted and the effort I put in to be a good steward of the land.
The big trick here doesn’t lie in figuring out how it happened or why but just allowing for the possibility.
It might be as simple as recognizing I have been in my own way or it might be something else. The point isn’t to push to make it happen it is to just water the flowers and see they get plenty of sunlight and live not just with purpose, but with joy because two is always stronger than one.
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Jamie November 23, 2015 at 2:35 pm
“I do my best to share the lessons I have learned along the way but the truly hard stuff is hard because it is usually stuff you have to figure out on your own.”
I so agree. Though it is hard not to give advice — with the best of intentions. I’ve decided that most times I will go ahead and tell (my children) what life experience has taught me, knowing full well that they will probably do whatever they choose. It’s my hope, in the far reaches of their minds, that they will remember what I said and that when things don’t turn out as they planned — my words will reinforce that they made a stupid choice. ha.
Jack Steiner November 24, 2015 at 9:25 am
When I was a teen there wasn’t much you could tell me because I was dumb enough to feel like I knew more or enough to do what I had to. So I have been known to flip between your method and telling mine in great detail what they could expect if they kept going down a certain path.
Mitch Mitchell November 22, 2015 at 9:36 am
This time I’m going to comment on the topic of faith because it’s intriguing… at least based on what you said.
If I take your words at face value, it’s not faith you’re struggling with but the concept of fate. You said “how much is based upon stuff we can control, things we can’t and all that lies in between it.” Whereas there are some people who believe these things are predetermined and rely on their faith as firmament, I tend to not believe in either the connection between faith and fate or, truthfully, fate as it’s defined by words like these.
What I do believe is that how a person lives their life determines their eventual fate. It’s people will achieve great things or suffer multiple pimp slaps towards an end they deserve. We can change, and hopefully change for the better. If not… luckily I won’t be around those folks when the time comes… unless I’m the one that has to do the pimp slapping. 🙂
Jack Steiner November 23, 2015 at 12:19 am
Hi Mitch,
Yeah, I wrestle with the concept of faith and how much control we have or don’t have. Don’t know that I believe in a predetermined fate but I am not entirely convinced that we have as much control over what happens as we like to think.
The classic example in my life comes from a job I had many years ago. I was the number one salesman and the whole place blew up around me, didn’t matter that I was ridiculously good and successful because the partners were fools.
Or maybe it is better to talk about the crash that came in 2008 or 9/11.
Both of those had a very significant impact upon my life and I had to work my ass off to try to recover from the pimp slaps that came with it.
Some people would say it is just random and others that it was about lessons I had to learn. Don’t know if I agree with either, but I definitely learned a lot from it all.
Larry November 21, 2015 at 7:07 pm
What’s up with that guy at work? Strange conversation.
You went through a tough time last year – glad it’s just a bad memory.
Jack Steiner November 22, 2015 at 11:56 pm
People are strange, never know what you are going to get. Am certainly glad things have improved, what a crazy time it was.