Do You Want To Know?

The younger Mr. Wilner heard part of the conversation regarding the doctor’s appointment I mentioned here and made an off hand remark about it.

“Do you want to know about it?”

“If you have some kind of cancer or something, than yes, I do.”

I smiled and told him cancer understood I am still too damn tough to mess with. “Look at what Grandpa did and he was much older than me.

You know very few things set me off, that one did but all is fine.”

He nodded and had the dog not decided to go meshugeh I might have continued. But he heard something that made him fight to get outside and reminded us that at 12 he still has ample energy when motivated.

The dog is one of my closest confidants and I often consult him throughout the business day as he is often the only one home with me.

Yesterday morning I chased him through the house and surprised him when I dove under the table after him.

He doesn’t have to bend or duck his head so it is a common tactic he uses to get away but upon occasion I like to remind him I still have some agility left in me.

Use It Or Lose It

Stubbed my toe the other day and rumor has it that echo you hear in the distance is the sound of the curse I let out.

Woke up feeling a little groggy and disoriented and decided to shower in the dark so that I could pull myself out of it without feeling exceptionally grumpy.

Phone started ringing at 7 AM and I glared hard at it.

“Why is it the people you want to call you don’t and those you don’t want to think you are the most interesting man in the world.”

Dog didn’t have an answer but wagged his tail at me and offered something that looked like a smile.

“If someone is important to you don’t forget to make sure they know it. That sounds simple but sometimes the best advice is.”

Dog wagged his tail at me again and I took a moment to look at the class schedule my daughter had sent over.

“She has chemistry and a lab coming up. The girl is a neuroscience major–do you know what that means? It means that I am probably not going to be able to help her. Got an A in Chem in high school and a A in Biology in college for whatever good that’s worth, which is probably not much.”

Dog wagged his tail again and strolled over to sit next to me while I responded to emails at the computer.

Shook the funky mood off and started rolling through the work like a wave through sand castles.

Read one that made me shake my head and tell the dog that a mind is a terrible thing to waste.  “Got to use it or lose it and this person has lost it.”

Think, Don’t React

The voice on the other end of the call was filled with a mixture of anxiety, frustration and anger.

I listened and followed up with contradictory advice.

“Think, don’t react. Take a moment to visualize where you want to go and consider the best way to build an effective roadmap to get there.”

That same voice asked me to explain if that is how I operate.

“Do you want to know or are you asking because you think it is polite?”

They were taken aback and said sometimes I am especially blunt.

“Sometimes it is better to get to the point and leave the finery aside. Saves valuable time and the answer to your question is life is absolutely a game of Chess.

But I operate on a gut level almost as often as I think things through. You can call it intuition, educated guess or whatever you want. But it is not always something I took a ton of time to think about.

I reckon there is often a bunch of decisions made in a split second that I don’t consciously think about that are tied to that gut response. A series of stimuli that I absorb and process quickly but I try to balance it all and not let paralysis of analysis stop me.

Got to keep moving forward, always forward.”