Category Archives: Alan’s Quest

Here are some thoughts for beginning 2010 with the right philosophy and mentality. (In Cole Porter’s “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” Sinatra sings, “Use your mentality, wake up to reality….”)

Remember Y2K? Not exactly going to be more than a minor blip in the footnotes in Wikipedia, is it? No airline crashes, no banks collapsed, not even the alarm clocks failed. The “swine flu” has proved to be a rather average illness, with fewer deaths than those caused by the normal, seasonal influenza. All deaths are tragedies, but we must retain proportion.

Global warming? My reading tells me that no one is really sure how much humankind is contributing or even if we can seriously alter what we are contributing. The Russians just announced plans to create rockets to engage and deflect an asteroid that’s due in the next 20 years, that most scientists estimate has one chance in 450,000 of hitting us. (The Russians are understandably sensitive, since the last rock of this sort DID hit Siberia and leveled about 80 million trees a while back.)

There are those claiming that the government is hiding aliens somewhere, and that the Mayan calendar is predicting the world’s end, and that excess spray tanning will eventually end life as we know it. (Maybe it already has—have you taken a look at some of those “stars” on “Dancing with the Stars”?!)

We can’t fall victim to the panic epidemic.

My point is that we (fueling and/or fueled by the media) have a tad of a tendency to be apocalyptic. I’m not deep enough to tell you that it’s meant to represent expiation for our sins, or redemption for our hubris, or simply deal with the fact that, basically, no one understands the universe.

I can tell you this: Live each day to the fullest you can. That needn’t be a flurry of activity, it may be spent in quiet contemplation. But it should not be subsumed in fear. It should not be wasted in constant apology, but rather invested in ongoing contribution.

We are all too ready to believe that there are huge, uncontrolled forces trying to destroy our lives or at least manipulate our futures. I’m here to tell you that’s not so, and that empirical evidence does not support such a belief system.

My computer wasn’t affected by Y2K, nor was my brain (which recognized panic and overwrought reaction at the time). I’m concerned, not detached, about the challenges we all face, but I’m much more concerned about the pragmatics of how we educate our children, take care of the helpless, and make the streets safe, than I am about claims that medium-rare cheeseburgers will kill me if that asteroid doesn’t.

Maybe I can get the Russians to work on the burger thing. They apparently have plenty of time on their hands. But, in the meantime, I’m going to enjoy everyday life, try to improve the lives of those around me, and thereby improve and enrich my own.

© Alan Weiss 2010 All rights reserved. Alan’s latest book is Thrive! Stop wishing your life away….

Every year at this time, as the weather turns decidedly colder and the leaves begin to fall, we see the arrival of some kind of beetle, which my wife and I call “the brown bugs.” They seem to lead a brief life in the cold, and they appear outside on the balcony and inside in the adjoining master bath, where they slowly explore the immediate vicinity. The photo shows one that I found crawling by me in my den this morning.

The Great Dog Trotsky used to simply eat them. (He was very adept at eating bees, by the way, and would sit silently in the flower beds, stunning them with a quick nip, then bopping them with a huge paw, and devouring them. He taught our terrier to do that. “Protein,” said my wife.)

Buddy Beagle finds them too slow to try to play with, although they do fly like ungainly World War II B-24s, and Koufax would not deign to even touch a bug, much less devour one. Whatever their natural enemies are, they seem to have disappeared, since there are more than the usual number this year. We see about four a day, though it may well be the same bug four times, I admit.

My wife puts them gently outside (where I’m convinced they come right back in again) and I simply tolerate them, since they only last about two weeks. They are hardy critters, not minding freezing temperatures. I absently noted one in the dogs’ upstairs water bowl, floating, and forgot about it. A day later, when I emptied the bowl into the Jacuzzi, the floating bug seemed to shake itself, and then walk away, none the worse for a lengthy immersion!

These bugs move slowly and fly slowly, resembling a bad Japanese science fiction movie with lousy special effects. But in their fortnight or so, they emerge, eat, mate, and I assume lay eggs for the next generation. This group confines itself to a small corner of our home. I’ve come to admire them.

I know that some of you would consider calling in the insect police, or fumigating the place, but we live here on six acres and saw four deer the other day on the way to our morning workout. I can’t be selective in enjoying nature. Live and let live. Who am I to destroy life that really isn’t causing me any problem?

I’m going to have to call my wife to remove the one in my den and put him outside. I’m sure I’ll see him again before too long.

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

Did you see where Tiger Woods lost the PGA Championship to a 37-year-old who has qualified for less tournaments than Tiger Woods has won? Y.E. Yang kept his cool and beat the greatest golfer in the world in one of the greatest tournaments in the world. If you don’t lose your cool, no matter who is standing next to you, and believe in your ability, and play your own game, you’re going to win your share. This was an incredible upset, and a testimony to being unafraid. Tiger actually choked.

Now if we could just throw out the idiots who shout “in the hole” after every shot, maybe we could all enjoy ourselves….

We saw the Tony-winning “God of Carnage” last night from house seats. Billy Crystal sat in front of us, and I reminded him that he shook my hand in the front row at the conclusion of his one-man play a while back.

That was the highlight of my evening.

Jeff Daniels, Hope Davis, James Gandolfini, and Marcia Gay Harden moved from the expected to the predictable, two couples ostensibly trying to reconcile a fight between their sons, but who wind up in violent argument themselves. You know what’s going to happen from ten miles away, so the tension is in how it transpires. Despite the mostly excellent acting (I find that Gandolfini reads his lines, and it’s not the Soprano connection that does him in, it’s his acting, which is emotionless), the ten miles is a long trek on tough roads.

About a third of the packed house laughed at lines that not only weren’t funny, but I’m convinced the playwright never intended to be funny (the work, by Yasmina Reza, is a translation). This is an increasingly bizarre nature of the theater today: People who seem to be desperately trying to convince themselves that they’re having a “good time,” and that they “get it.” They appear to want to justify the tab.

Daniels, probably the best actor on stage, was the stereotypical wheeler-dealer who kept taking cell phone calls. Finally, obviously, the cell was ripped from his hands and dunked in a vase, which was greeted with applause. Get it? We’d all like to do that, right? (Meanwhile, a guy across the aisle took a quick text message and returned it on a glowing screen. I guess he was a brain surgeon doing a remote consult.)

The obligatory, sort of sporadic, tepid, standing ovation followed the evening, the kind that begins with a few people standing up and blocking the view, as opposed to everyone leaping to their feet. The good news is that it is one scene, one act, and we were out at 9:40 before 10,000 other theater-goers, and it was easy to get a cab back downtown.

I had to thank God the carnage was that brief. Otherwise, I might have left at intermission, which one couple chose to do ostentatiously an hour into the drama. They scurried up the aisle as if afraid to be caught and dragged back.

© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

May we all appreciate this evolving, great experiment in human freedom and dignity, not only what’s it has done for us who live here, but for those who have benefitted everywhere. And despite the flaws and faults that accompany a free and pluralistic society that critics love to harp on, may we relish the great contributions to humanity that our way of life constantly provides.

Enjoy the fireworks and the hot dogs. And be thankful.