Ned Luce

Well, Christmas is this week and I share some presents I get from my friends. 

Not physical presents, you see, they send me inspirational or funny or risqué messages regularly. I get some from New Mexico, some from Missouri and some from Wisconsin. 

If you have any email friends, I suspect you have seen many of these, or maybe all, but I hope you enjoy them either as the first time you have seen them or as a review. The really good news is that I only selected a few!

First the intuitively obvious attributed to Doug Floyd. “You can’t have harmony when everyone sings the same note.” 

Now from “Aunty Acid.” “I’m not adding this year to my age. I didn’t use it.” 

And here is some marriage advice. “Be good to your spouse. Remember they could poison you and it would be counted as a COVID death.” 

Jules Renard notes that, “The truly free man is he who knows how to decline a dinner invitation without giving an excuse.” Not real hard to do in the days of COVID.

On the subject of COVID, I still can’t believe that people’s survival instincts told them to grab enormous stockpiles of toilet paper. How about a public service announcement for my loyal Canadian readers. Social distancing = 6 feet = 2 meters = 1 moose =
5 beavers. You are welcome, eh. 

If you managed people in a company five years ago and you were counseling them on their careers, did any of them give the right answer when you asked, “Where do you see yourself five years from now?”

The notes I get seem to be disproportionally addressing age for some reason. Might you know? 

For example, “Most people don’t think I’m as old as I am until they hear me stand up.” 

Similarly, “I really don’t mind getting older, but my body is taking it badly.”

Some people try to turn back their “odometers.” Not me. I want people to know why I look this way. I’ve traveled a long way and a lot of the roads were not paved. As somebody said, live your life and forget your age. Learn a lesson from your dog. No matter what life brings you, kick some grass over that s… and move on.

Sydney Harris notes that “The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say ‘I was wrong.’” 

No matter how educated, talented, rich or cool you believe you are, how you treat people ultimately tells all. In life, it’s important to know when to stop arguing with people and simply let them be wrong. This is because, as Charles Darwin noted, “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, not the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

I honestly don’t think I will ever get tired of seeing people get vaccinated!

Love a curmudgeon, keep wearing your mask and have a great Christmas.

(Ned Luce is a retired IBM executive and Port Ludlow resident who would like to remind faithful Leader readers that two wrongs don’t make a right — but two Wrights made an airplane.)