Welcome friends!
I was watching a music award show on the TV the other night and was pleasantly surprised to see a tribute to the singer Cher who came out and did a few numbers. Maybe her voice was a bit stronger when she was younger, it would be rather strange if that were not the case, but she sounded fine. And the lady certainly knows her way around a stage. Never one to be coy she mentioned during her short and gracious acceptance speech she had recently turned seventy-one and had been in the music business more than fifty years. I find that sort of thing quite impressive. How many flash in the pan musical acts have come and gone over the years? But that wasn’t the most impressive thing to me. No, the most impressive thing to me was that rather than tooting her own horn as one might expect any successful American to do she instead attributed her success mostly to a combination of luck and working with good people. Such humility and I think honesty. It made me reflect on the traditional association of age and wisdom one finds in many cultures. Don’t get me wrong. I certainly don’t think we’re all destined to become wise with age. I doubt anyone has ever thought that in the history of the world. A lot of older people become downright insufferable. But sometimes one meets old timers who have lost interest in playing the game and puffing themselves up and so on and just want to let you know something they’ve found to be true during their lifetimes. So valuable when one meets someone like that. But then for some reason my thoughts wandered to that dishonest, greedy, grasping, boastful, old man American conservatives recently installed in the White House. Must be about the same age right? But gosh what a contrast. Can one imagine Mr. Trump claiming that his vast fortune was due to anything other than his own perspicacity and hard work? It occurred to me the difference wasn’t in the nature of a random interpersonal variation in temperament and personality. President Trump talks and acts pretty much the way I would expect an enormously wealthy conservative old man to talk and act. Cher talks and acts the way I would expect a female liberal of a certain age to talk and act. So do one’s beliefs shape one’s character or is one drawn to certain beliefs because of one’s character? I don’t know but I thought today I’d speculate a bit about the first possibility.
Let me first get pesky reality out of the way and just say that of course I believe what happens to one during one’s lifetime is due to all three factors I just mentioned: personal effort, luck, and outside forces... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website. All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee. Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right? If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then. Thank you my friends!
