Tag Archives: opportunities

Cradle-to-Grave

Cradle-to-grave: (adj) from birth to death

Just another night, sitting around with members of the human tribe, thinking about the wonders of the world, ignoring them, and pursuing problems.

The weakness of our race is the foolish notion that we can live forever, while simultaneously being obsessed with a terror of the grave.

Which one is it?

Are we going to live forever? Or will the next processed hot dog we consume give us stomach cancer?funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Yet the insurance companies, the government, the churches and in many ways, the business and entertainment industry make their money by dragging us into a “cradle-to-grave” mentality.

This is why people become so obsessed with a new baby. We even pretend they’re cute. The notion of new life reminds us of our own lives and sprouts a yearning to be young again—or at least as young as our number of birthdays will permit.

But there is only one way to live a good human life.

You must eliminate the second, the minute, the hour, the week, the month, the year and the lifespan.

If you become obsessed with the second, minute and hour, you’ll be a nervous ninny, incapable of enjoying the life you are presently breathing.

If you find yourself overly adult—insisting on the week, the month, the year and the lifespan—you will fret over health, retirement and the loom and gloom of your demise.

Here it is: human life runs by the day.

This is why each one begins with the sun and closes with the sun. It comes up, it goes down. There is life.

If you live as if only one of these will be provided, just think how delighted you are to awaken to a new sun and a new day.

If we woke up every morning convincing ourselves to include as much joy as humanly possible in our sixteen waking hours, then we’re bound to have many adventures we couldn’t possibly have planned—which will spontaneously arrive to take our breath away.

But if you’re worried about the next minute or if you have some sort of fund or insurance to cover your burial, chances are you will not have grasped the true significance of how life is contained in the single day.

Life is not cradle-to-grave.

Life is a birth and a death—with many, many, many twenty-four-hour opportunities in between—to delight yourself.

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Afternoon

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter AAfternoon: (n) the time from noon or lunchtime to evening.

Here’s a secret: life is about uncovering your delusions and quietly correcting them before they smack you in the face.

All of us are delusional.

The difference between success and failure is whether you acknowledge your delusion, hunt down these little pieces of silliness in your soul and extract them before they diminish your true opportunities.

Let us deal with the delusion of “afternoon.”

An interesting quandary: lots of people hate the morning, insisting they aren’t “morning people,” and also would not consider doing anything in the evening, since it’s their “free time.” So they put tremendous pressure on the afternoon, when they have the least  amount of energy and possibilities, and the fewest contacts with people who are awake and ready to indulge in commerce.

Can there be a worse time to do business than from 1:00 P.M. to 4:00 P.M.? Successful people already started the ball rolling in the morning, and those who love the evening hours approach the afternoon as if it WERE morning.

You find yourself in a no man’s land.

Now, you can feel free to disagree with this assessment, and some of you probably will. But here’s what I have found to be intelligent: whether you like it or not, the morning is when things happen. If you get over the delusion that you cannot function in those early, waking hours, you can learn to take your day on and use the afternoon in a more Mexican light.

Use it for a siesta.

Since most people slow down after lunch because of high blood sugar and general fatigue, as much as you can, try to bring less importance to the afternoon and more value to it as personal time.

For instance, I take a nap.

Having risen early in the morning to write, do commerce and take care of personal affairs, after lunch I allow myself the great delight of snuggling and snoozing. When I arise in the late afternoon, I am ready for a second bout with the day, usually involving more time with friends and family.

If you live for the night you will become a vampire and suck out your own blood.

But if you live for the afternoon, you will wonder why there isn’t much business or activity going on.

If you live for the morning, you will overcome your fear of scrambled eggs and find that there are many other people, industrious in nature and wise in discovery … who will meet you there.