Where’s your comfort level?

Are you on a roll?
Do you feel lucky?
Is everything coming up roses?
I find that having no expectations for greatness suits me well. Goals achieved are simply measurements reached. I don’t like measurements, even though mine are quite comely, if I do say so myself. Statistics, generally-speaking, are made to be manipulated, plied and molded to suit the agendas, points of view and spreadsheets of those tasked with our supervision.
I’m getting older and more patient. I think that is the sign of someone who is destined not to become a curmudgeon. The curmudgeons I remember in my youth were always less tolerant of the kids coming up and grew less patient as they aged toward their own individual recessions (well over the current eight percent average nationally I might add).
“The country is going to hell, I say!”
“Look at the younger generation—such a sense of entitlement, no willingness to pay dues or wait their turn.”
“They want the world and they want it now!”
Although I am not a fatalist, I believe there is a good deal of fortune to be had in good timing.
Good timing benefits the lazy, the less tolerant and also those of us who are both young and old alike, riding up the escalator of life in our youth before taking the stairs back down just prior to retirement.
One thing I accept yet find tiresome is how much more tracked we are these days.
On the job today I heard a client discuss how the state is tracking his Internet activity for the purposes of making him pay sales tax on his online purchases.
To me, this is quite sad.
Some of you may feel the Internet is still like the wild west, but in reality it is not.
We are tracked more than ever and we agree with it so much that although we’ll grouse about changes to Facebook and how our privacy is disregarded by the Zuckerbergs, we participate in social media because it fails the “one and done” acid test: we can’t eat just one—status update or tweet, that is.
We have taken to applying motivational sayings to get us through work days that involve regular interaction with less than capable or engaged leaders on the job. This is because our leaders themselves are indifferent many times.
Some of us threaten to quit, issue ultimatums to ourselves when no one is within earshot about how they will just up and leave some day out of complete dissatisfaction with everything that is going on in their lives.
It should not take being completely miserable for us to recognize we need to do something different, something against our grains that will increase our respective comfort levels when it comes to dealing with the less than pleasant aspects of our lives.
I believe our comfort level with being tracked is pretty high. That is, we really don’t mind our lack of privacy when we are online. Being online affords us the ability to shop in relative calm, without dealing with the public and without all of the expected smiles on our faces we are supposed to have while traipsing through the aisles at Wal-Mart–when inside ourselves we are just dying a little more as we pass each corner merchandising display.
As long as the trucks continue to get products to the shelves we will be at least partially content, as they will bring the food we put in our bellies.
Don’t get too high.
Don’t get too low.
You’re simply, having a wonderful Christmas time.
Ride the tide when it’s high and understand that it’s never as bad as it seems when it’s low.
Let the spirit move you—far, far away from all thoughts contrary to good health and well-being. Comfort those who are grieving loss this season.
Remember what is important each and every day; then you can truly live in the moment, always looking forward and only occasionally glancing back to observe that extremes of good and misfortune are only temporary harbingers of the complete body of work our lives become.