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Farting Around

Posted by Dutchman Friday, December 11, 2009

Take your pick of the bad things that might happen:

A.  An asteroid or comet hits the earth.
B.  The Yellowstone super volcano explodes.
C.  Global pandemic.
D.  The magnetic poles flip or change position.
E.  Nuclear war and subsequent nuclear winter.
F.  Financial meltdown.
G.  Peak Oil and ensuing starvation and die-off.
H.  Global warming with desertification and rising sea levels.
I.  The Hadron collider creates a black hole.
J.  Global catastrophe in December of 2012.
K.  Job layoff and becoming homeless.

Any time you read the paper, scan the internet, or watch television, you will hear about these things. Any one of them could result in pain, suffering and death for us and the ones we love. As a parent, you hear about them and fear for your children. The last thing you would want, is for them to suffer in any way. So, sometimes you allow your mind to travel down the road of "what would that be like". You have to have the ability to jerk yourself back from those thoughts or you could be easily consumed.

Instead of worrying about all these possible scenarios, especially F, G, and H, which seem pretty likely to me, we will do something else instead. It is nothing new for us, so we will just continue doing it. We are going to bank assets for a rainy day.

We aren't banking money though, or gold, silver or anything else of monetary value. We are saving up memories. Some time in the future, when things are tough, or we find ourselves at an end, when all the Xboxes, Playstations, HD-tvs, fancy cars, laptops and desktops are gone or are valueless, we will make withdrawals. We'll withdraw memories of sleeping under the stars by the Rifle River, drinking water directly from Jordan Lake in the Boundary Waters, water fights while canoeing the Au Sable, flying down the Alpine Slide in Winter Park, crossing the Beartooth Pass with grandpa Scott, watching a bison pass within inches of the car in Yellowstone, frozen noses while skiing, falling autumn leaves along the Polly Ann Trail, catching a Northern Pike or Cutthroat Trout. We'll remember Tyler stealing second base, upsetting a rival baseball team, and scoring 3 pointers on the basketball court, and Zach learning to swim at Stoney Lake, taking photographs at the Detroit Auto Show, or watching the stingrays at Monterey Bay Aquarium. Basically, we'll remember all the "farting around" that we did with the ones with whom doing so, meant so much.

To quote from Kathy McMahon, Psy.D.:

"The next time you find yourself feeling miserable or paralyzed because you are uncertain how to proceed, do something counter-intuitive: Do as Kurt Vonnegut once said:  Fart around.

Believe that at this point in time, your “purpose” in life is to fart around, and don’t let anyone tell you any different.

Think back on what you really enjoyed as a small child, and just do it. Make a baloney and chocolate bar sandwich on white bread. Jump in a mud puddle. Stay in bed and watch a funny movie as a “mental health” day. Let the ‘rational, on a time schedule, needing to decide, heading in the right direction adult’ take a ‘time out.’ Recognize that this “farting around” is your practice for being in the game you are playing, like it or not, and that we are all playing in that running water called life."

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I'm a middle aged divorced father living with my two sons. We like to canoe, bicycle, fish, camp, play baseball, and spend money when we want and where we want, without permission from anybody. HA!

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