Category Archives: Life Principles

Life Principles

If It Don’t Come Easy, You Better Let it Go

Today’s kids don’t get dating.  And the misunderstanding has been long in coming.  Frankly, I didn’t understand dating when I was young.  Dating is like shopping.  When you’re going down the aisle at the grocery store, you’re not falling in love with every cereal, every mayonnaise, every apple, every pork roast in the store.  You’re looking them over to see which one deserves to go home with you.  After all, you’re the one that is going to have to eat it.  Dating should be more like judging and rating, rather than seeing what base you can get to.  It should be more about planning for the future than about even falling in love.  Because once you have fallen in love, there is no return receipt.  At that point, you better hope you fell for the right one.  If not, there is only trouble up ahead.

Hopefully, the trouble can be limited to an uncomfortable breakup so you can both get along the way of your lives.  But nowadays, too many kids not only allow themselves to fall in love before they have a clue who this person is they are with, they often end up with kids on the way before they know this person they are with.  Now you REALLY have a serious problem.

When I was young, I had good motives in dating.  But I didn’t have a clue what I was doing.  I fell in love at age 20 with a woman 3 years my junior.  I fell all the way.  Way too serious, way too soon, not a clue where I was headed.  Two years later, my heart was crushed as this young woman realized she wanted to go in a different direction.  She had become seriously ill and almost died.  She matured quickly in a short amount of time.  The bottom line; I was devastated and crushed.

At age 22, I had reaped what I had sowed.  And I was bitterly lonely, sad and desperate for love again. Now at age 60, a word to the young.  Bitterly lonely, sad and desperate is the WORST place for your head and heart to be while dating.  Everything inside you is pushing you with tremendous pressure to find that love again.  What should you do? Moving to a deserted island with a same-sex friend would be a good idea; a deserted island so there are NO opposite sex people around — you need to get your head together.  And the same-sex friend for support in the hard times.  You MUST heal before you will ever have a clear enough head to start dating again.  Lest you grasp at the first glimpse of love and end up in a bad relationship.

People who are desperate overlook incompatibilities and problems with the people they are grasping for.  But that is what dating is for — finding the RIGHT person, not just the NEXT person.

I did this when I was desperate.  And ended up not only hurting me, but the person I married the first time around and our kids.

I am a strong believing Christian and generally like biblical answers to these kinds of issues.  But in those young days, I got some really bad and stupid advice from my spiritual leaders.  It went something like this:

“Should we get married?”

“Do you love eachother?”

“Yes.”

“Then get married.”

That’s about as deep as it got.  It was the worst advice I have ever been given.  With the smallest bit of probing, our pastors giving this advice would have discovered that we both found each other on the rebound from other broken relationships.  That should have been the first of many BIG red lights.

As much as I appreciate pastors and spiritual leaders these days, my advice would be simple, short and to the point.  And I wouldn’t even have to open the Bible.  I would just give the couple a CD of an old Tanya Tucker song with the lyrics and tell them to listen to it over and over. And consider it very seriously because the person they are with is a potential life partner.  And it’s best to find out NOW if its really going to work instead of years and kids later.

Lyrics

I know a man, a good friend of mine;
He spends all his time tryin’ to make love work out right.
But the woman he loves, she don’t feel the same, no;
I don’t know much about love but at least I learned one thing:

If it don’t come easy, you better let it go.
‘Cos when it don’t come easy, there’s no natural flow.
Don’t make it hard on your heart, you might be better off alone,
If it don’t come easy, you better let it go, yeah.

I know a woman, she’s got a heart of gold.
You know she’d do anything to make her man feel right at home.
But the man she loves, now, he’s a restless kind of guy,
I wish there was a way I could make her realise.

That if it don’t come easy, you better let it go.
‘Cos when it don’t come easy, there’s no natural flow.
Don’t make it hard on your heart, when you might be better off alone,
If it don’t come easy, you better let it go, yeah.

Let it go, though it’s hard I know;
Let it loose, I tell you, it’s no use.

If it don’t come easy, you better let it go.
‘Cos when it don’t come easy, there’s no natural flow.
Don’t make it hard on your heart, when you might be better off alone,
If it don’t come easy, you better let it,
You better let it,
You better let it go.

If it don’t come easy, you better let it go.
‘Cos when it don’t come easy, there’s no natural flow.

—————————————–

Presently: I am happily married these days to a woman I met in 1994.  We’ve been together most of that time and married since 1998.  We are compatible and happy because it HAS come easy.  I’m a slow learner, but at least I got the lesson!  The worst mistake I have made in my life was hurting my kids when their mom and dad split.  God bless them both.  They deserved better.

Life Principles, Politics, Spiritual

I Thought Separation of Church and State Was a Two-Way Street

“Ladies and gentlemen, under the guise of separation of church and state, under the confusion that the Constitution dictates freedom from religion rather than freedom of religion, modern America has thrown prayer out of schools, wants to erase “in god we trust” from currency, removed the ten commandments from government buildings, and sanitized school history books to measure recorded history as BCE (before the common era) rather than BC (before Christ). But now the godless are thrusting their agenda inside the doors of the church. That is certainly over the line that was drawn in the sand by the signers of the Constitution.”

I Thought Separation of Church and State Was a Two-Way Street

by Bill Sardi

Life Principles, Politics

Marriage Defined by the Supreme Court

United States Supreme Court, 1885, Murphy v Ramsey, 144 US 15, 45

“”Certainly no legislation can be supposed more wholesome and necessary in the founding of a free, self-governing commonwealth..than that which seeks to establish it on the basis of the idea of the family, as consisting in and springing from THE UNION FOR LIFE OF ONE MAN AND ONE WOMAN IN THE HOLY STATE OF MATRIMONY; [the family] is the sure foundation of all that is stable and noble in our civilization; the best guarantee of that reverent morality which is the source of all beneficient progress in social and political improvement.”

Life Principles

Some Life Lessons of a 59 year old

1) Don’t marry out of insecurity.  That means you should not marry someone out of fear that no one else would ever have you.  Marriage is a lifelong proposal and the one you marry MUST be someone you are able to be one with.  An old country song advises, “If it Don’t Come Easy, Better Let it Go.”

2) Virginity until Marriage Has its advantages.  Today in 2011, I see a sea of people raising families that did not come into existence by conviction, planning, preparing and praying.  Almost all the families I see came into existence because unmarried, uncommitted people had sex and got pregnant.  Their decision to stay together and raise a family was not the result of preparing and planning, but was a matter of making the best of a bad situation.  And the state of the family in 2011 is proof that this method is frought with difficulty and failure.  And failure produces hurt and unhealthy children; our citizens of our future.

3) Live Your Life.  Don’t Settle for your life living YOU!  If I had it to do over again, I would start at an early age and start putting real goals out in front of me and making a life plan to achieve those goals.  Don’t just wander through your life aimlessly.  Who are you?  What are you about?  What makes you tick?  What are your interests?  Incorporate all those things into a plan that gives you a chance to REALIZE your needs and desires.

4) Have some conviction in life.  And have your convictions tethered to time tested convictions, not just the latest silly fad that has floated by.  How about tethering your convictions to the Bible?  There’s a good anchor!  Learn not only from the One who made you, learn from 6,000 years of human history instead of some zany liberal college professor in your college classroom.

5) Learn from your elders. New and good ideas are fine, but life isn’t about trying to outthink the entire history of mankind on planet Earth or outhinking God.  The latest generation is really not as brilliant as they fancy themselves. Inexperience plus zeal does not equal wisdom!

6) Get in the habit of saving money.  On the balance sheet of a business, the value of the company is equal to the assets minus the liabilities.  That means that if you have a $150,000 house that you owe $120,000 on, 3 credit cards each with $10,000 on it, a checking account with $1,000 in it and a line of credit balance of $1,000, well my friend, you aren’t worth a dime even if you do make $30/hour.  You have lots of “stuff” but your net worth is exactly ZERO. And zero net worth isn’t going to do much for you when you get too old to work and have nothing to lean on.

7) Get out of debt.  Carry only the least amount of debt necessary.  Debt is a drag on your life.  The Bible tells us that the  debtor is slave to the lender.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be a slave to anyone.

8 ) Live within your means in a deliberate and organized way.  That means develop a budget that fits your abilities and needs to the best of your ability and stick to it. The alternative is continual financial pressure on your life.

9) Assess your ability to deal with reality and live according to reality.  I know a person who has never had a fulltime job by choice.  This person was also victimized by a close friend who spent their life savings. The result of the loss of money and the lack of income eventually led to this person losing their home from inability to maintain the mortgage.  The lesson this person took from the experience (accompanied by much anger) was that the ones he/she lost the house to were crooks because it was his/her home.  Of course, this is NOT the lesson of this tragic experience.  But it is a good illustration of someone who does not live in reality.  Don’t lie to yourself.  Face reality and make decisions to deal with the reality, not the fantasy in your head because reality will always win, especially if you make decisions based on fantasy.

 

Economy, Life Principles, Politics

Bad Liberal Ideas

Watching Obama being “grilled” on 60 Minutes on TV. I am so tired of the mindset that thinks the country should be concerned about income equality.  What a stupid concept. Here are some off the cuff comments about bad liberal thinking:

  1. Republicans (i.e. Bush) Screwed up the Economy. As I recall, the economy did quite well during the Bush years.  We experienced a recession after 9-11.  But the Bush tax cuts stimulated the economy and that recession was very short-lived. That’s because conservative ideas work!  Up until the 6th year of Bush’s presidency, the economy was doing well.  In early 2007, houses in our neighborhood were selling in the low 300 thousands but started turning south.  Today, the same houses are selling for under 200 thousand.  Problems started happening in 2006. Coincidentally, that which controls the purse strings of our federal government, the Congress, was taken over by the Democrats in both houses in 2006. What happened from then until Obama was elected was in spite of Bush, not because of Bush. There was a big power struggle going on.  It is my opinion that Bush’s decision to bail out the banks was wrong.  Obama continuing this idea of bail outs was also wrong, but to a larger degree.
  2. We should have income equality.  This is pure communism and there is no excuse for this kind of thinking in America.  It is totally foreign to the American way of life. Let me ask you this: If you take a job from a company and agree to a certain wage and are paid that wage for your work, what’s unfair about that? If you don’t like making $15/hour being a street sweeper, is someone stopping you from going to school and becoming a software writer for $30/hour or a CEO making $200,000/year?  Are you actually suggesting that the person who made the effort to become a CEO must be equalized with the pay of the street sweeper?  On what legal, financial or even moral grounds do you have the right to do that? And if the street sweeper is to make mountains more money, where is that money supposed to come from? Let’s say you start a drive thru latte stand business.  Do you honestly think that the money the rich have somehow limits you from selling your cup of coffee for $3?  But that is what the liberal argument is saying – that you have less money because the rich have more money.  But your money is directly tied to how many cups of coffee, lattes or mochas you sell for X dollars a cup.  Maybe you start selling cakes and cookies on the side.  Maybe you eventually start hot lunches at lunch time.  And maybe you eventually branch out and franchise your business.  All of that is based soley on the bottom line of your company which is a function of income minus expenses.  How does the wealth of the rich have ANY influence on your coffee business?  Answer: It doesn’t.  Liberals complaining about the wealth of the rich is simply an immature response to the fact that they ENVY those who have more than they do.  That’s not a financial problem.  That’s a character flaw.
  3. We need to tax the rich more. For what purpose I ask?  Our 15 trillion dollar debt is so high, we could confiscate everything that ALL the rich people have and hardly put a dent in the deficit.  Our federal government spends way, way, way too much money.  I think the federal government should not only spend less, I think it should be severely shrunk.  I’m talking 30, 40, 50 percent smaller!  We don’t need and can’t afford all the crap the federal government thinks it needs to have its fingers in.  We are a free people who live in sovereign states whose federal government is not supposed to be involved in that which is not clearly laid out in the Constitution.  If we actually lived by this law, the government would be but a fraction of its present size. I would also like to observe that the rich already pay the lion’s share of taxes in this country.  When the bottom 47% of citizens pay nothing and the top 5% of tax payers pay 54% of the tax bill.  Did you catch that?  54%!!!!! So I say, the rich pay too much and the bottom 47% should simply sit down and shut up!  They have no say because they are freeloaders.

 

 

Life Principles

Living by Good Principles

People argue about God all the time.  I’ve lost count how many times I’ve been asked where Abel’s wife came from in the Bible.  People will believe what they will.  But there is one law of God that no human being will ever escape from on this earth.  And that is that every man, woman and child will reap what they sow.

Wise people will take this to heart and realize that it is not smart to float through life without a clear understanding of how life works and how to make good decisions.  Wise people learn from those who went before them.  Wise people will live in an organized fashion based on principles that have been formed from those who have gone before us.

Children think they know better than their parents.  They haven’t got a clue.  Adults who think they know better than the accumulated wisdom of the human race would do well to wake up and realize they don’t have a clue either.

Be smart.  Learn from your elders.  No, they are not always right, but they will generally be right because they have gone before you.  They have made their share of mistakes and know where the pitfalls are.  You can either listen to them as they point out the pitfalls so you can avoid them or you can push them aside and go out and trip and fall all over again.

Here are some principles to live by that will help you reap good things instead of bad:

 

  1.  Listen to your elders.
  2.  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
  3.  Stay away from credit cards.
  4.  Be self supporting.  Get a job and do your best.  If you need education for the job, get it.
  5.  Do not be promiscuous. How many people are scraping bottom because they had kids as a teen and now live on public support.
  6.  Consider the future at ALL times.  Have a plan for your life.  Where do you want to be in 10, 20, 30 years?  Then plan for it or it will never happen.
  7.  Stay away from illegal activity. Obey the Law!
  8.  Don’t live above your means.  You’ll just end up in debt and chained to your bills for the rest of your life.
  9.  Stay away from bad people.  They will hurt your life and infect you with their disease.
  10.  In love, take the time to make sure you are compatible with the person you are considering.  If the relationship is always a struggle you should consider breaking it off.  An old country song says, “If it don’t come easy, better let it go.”  I agree.  Do this or you will end up hurt and divorced which hurts not only you but your kids.  BAD, BAD, BAD!
  11.  Save a certain percentage of your money.  Get into the habit.  People who know how to save always do better than those who live for the moment and blow their paychecks every week.
  12.  You can never love your kids enough.  Be a mentor and help them.  Try not to pass on your own weaknesses. (Good luck!)
  13.  Be forgiving.  No one is perfect.  Don’t hold grudges.
  14. Pay your bills and obligations and do it on time.