I GUEST THAT”S ALL RIGHT

Holly has been cutting my hair for about 20 years. It has to be that long because when she started, she had just had her first child. Mariah is now 20.  I must say that her haircuts are the best I’ve ever had!

She sees my blog every now and then and I have to kid her about it when I suggest that she is missing some of my humor. She counters by saying she would rather hear the humor from me in person. Now she has started her own blog. She is telling about the major life change that she and her husband are about to make. They plan to move to Panama next year, and her blog posts are telling about all the difficulties that she and hubby are going through. In a recent post, she talked about “reinventing herself”. I took issue with that in her comments. But apparently she thought that what I said was appropriate. As a result, asked me to write a guest blog for her. So I did. And here it is.

GUEST BLOG FOR HOLLY
By Don Meyer, an 82 year old character, who thinks he knows what he is talking about.

In one of her recent blogs, Holly said --
What does it mean to reinvent yourself? Does it mean taking on a whole new persona ? Or Changing your personality completely ?


And I commented --
Personally, I think ‘re-invent’ is the wrong term. My feeling is that we should strive to become the person we are capable of becoming. If that means moving to a new country, that is what you should do. I don’t think it’s a matter of change, but a matter of personal growth.

Re-invent? Who, or what, would we like to be?  What is wrong with the person we are? Okay, we all have our shortcomings, and perhaps we do or have done things in the past of which we are not particularly proud.  We don’t erase those by becoming someone or something else.  We are, after all, human beings, which to me means that we are error making creatures.  All of us.

So perhaps we are not satisfied with who we are, but ‘re-inventing’ ourselves is not the way to go.  What do we do?  The first step is to be honest with ourselves.  Admit our shortcomings to ourselves. But let’s not dwell on them.  It is my belief that each of us is born with particular talents and abilities.  And the personal growth I mentioned in my comment is to recognize those talents and abilities and develop them. Maybe you like to paint or write. Perhaps you have a knack for design, or to teach, or lead others. I think there are talents that are not recognized as such -- patience, the ability to comfort others, a sense of humor, generosity, forgiveness, -- I’m sure you can come up with others.

Hiding behind the latest fashions, or mimicking some celebrity doesn’t improve us.  That’s just putting on a persona and pretending.

Perhaps Shakespeare said it best (in Hamlet, act 1, scene 3, Polonius to his son, Laertes) -- to thine own self be true...


Fun --

A HELPING HAND

A motorist is two hours from San Diego when he is flagged down by a man whose truck has broken down.
The trucker walks up to the car and asks, "Are you going to San Diego?"

"Sure," answered the man, "Do you need a lift?"

"Not for me. I'll be spending the next several hours fixing my truck. My problem is I've got two chimpanzees in the back which have to be taken to the San Diego Zoo. They're a bit stressed already so I don't want to keep them on the road all day. Could you possibly take them to the zoo for me? I'll give you fifty dollars for your trouble."

"I'll be happy to," says the man. So the two chimpanzees are ushered into the back seat of the car and carefully strapped into their seat belts. Off they go.

Five hours later, the truck driver is driving through the heart of San Diego when suddenly he is horrified!!
There is the man walking down the street and holding hands with the two chimps, much to the amusement of
the crowd. With a screech of brakes he pulls off the road and runs over to the man. "What the heck are you
doing here?" he demands, "I gave you fifty dollars to take these chimpanzees to the zoo!"

"Yes, I know you did," says the man, "but we had money left over.....so we’re going to the movies!!!"

I saw this same joke a few days ago, except they were penguins.