Category: Philosophy

Yesterday, my wife and I attended a funeral of a family friend. He was a man that I really didn’t know much about, he just seemed to always be around. He would have probably been considered of the Korean War generation, but wasn’t from this country at the time he was of age.

We had to travel to Eugene to attend the funeral. It is a city that I have spent very little time and is very foreign to me. Navigation is confusing and nothing seems familiar. We decided to take this alone time and do something we rarely get to do, go to Indian Food. It was here that I stumbled across the label ‘Unflavored Towels’.

I havent seen the polling numbers on people that prefer flavored versus unflavored, but I assume that it is probably fifty-fifty (insert ha-ha here). The point of all of this is that you don’t have to understand the exact meaning or translation to get a sense of the intent.

Here was a man that was 87 years old and the church was full. I would estimate 200 people were at this funeral. Every seat was taken, the vestibule had twenty or more people, the mothers room was full. I haven’t seen that very often.

His family was bigger than today’s standards but not huge, survived by a wife and four childeren. He was one of ten, but being from Mexico and older, there were only three siblings in attendance. That means that in order to get that sort of turn-out, at that age, given those circumstances you had to mean something to quite a few people.

As I stated, I didn’t really know him. Juan and his wife bridged age the gap between my wife’s grandparents and parents. They lived almost 100 miles away, but yet they seemed to be at every family function, including the Sunday afternoon barbeque and the Thursday night birthday party. Spanish was his native and preferred language, but he could speak fluent English as well. For me, that is a bit of a self conscious barrier to communicating with someone, unless they initiate the conversation.

Probably a third of the service was also in Spanish. Again, I wasn’t totally clear what was being said. The words were spoken very rapidly but given the setting, body language, audience participation, etc I got the spirit of each particular speaker.

The results were tears and laughter and a huge turn-out. Isn’t that the way that you would want it to be remembered? I don’t think that you have to know the man to understand that was a life well lived.

As I have been spending a lot of time in the shop, I have had the TV on in the background as some of the best shows of the 80s, 90s and 2000s have been playing in the background. On the antennae, there is a network called Laff that plays blocks of sitcoms. Usually by the time I turn it on, “Home Improvement” is on. After an hour or so, “Night Court” plays for two hours and the “That 70s Show” comes on for two hours.

I can remember sitting around an old black and white portable with my brother and cousins watching “Night Court”. We would laugh and laugh. We were probably in grade school at the time. Seeing it now, there is some low brow humor, but it is PG compared to much of the dialog on more recent shows.

The thing that struck me is how strong the moral message is in the show “Night Court”. Every episode wraps up with some message about spending more time with your aging parent, working out marital problems when they are put into appropriate perspective or understanding mental illness.

“Home Improvement” always had some sort of lesson as well. It wasn’t quite as in your face or as wide ranging across issues, but a lots of good relationship moments. Moving on in scheduling and time, “That 70s Show” makes me laugh a lot. I like to watch it, but there is not the moral undertone of the other two shows.

The era of the sitcom has come and gone. Sure, there are some still but they don’t have the same soul. Shows like “Will and Grace” are risque but also pushing other values more along the lines of social engineering. We are dominated by reality TV programming with shows like “The Bachelor” which I don’t even understand why people would watch it. It is no wonder people are watching individual programming on mobile devices.

I can remember when “America’s Funniest Video’s” premiered and it seemed as though everyone at school was talking about it. We have lost some of our societal cohesiveness with all of the viewing options available. I think that has been some of the drive to push more extreme programming to try and get more attention. For me, I will keep watching Laff.

In today’s ‘insta’ world I feel like the difference between easy and simple get used interchangeably without regard to the actual definition. We are bombarded by marketing pertaining to fitness, weight-loss, entrepreneurship, making money, selling on ebay, buying a car, taking supplements on and on, add naseum.

Human beings use there brains to process information into relatable chunks. By our nature, we want to get things done the most expedient way unless for some reason we particularly enjoy the activity. It is natural to optimize it by cutting corners or combining steps.

Using a personal example, often times when baking recipes call for sifting the flour and pre-mixing the dry ingredients. I understand the science behind the instructions (typically a gluten reaction minimization) but I don’t like doing the extra dishes and I cant say that I have noticed the difference, so I don’t do it.

The word easy should imply a skill level or expertise, meaning requiring little. Whereas the word simple is more of a duration. Easy can be simple and simple is usually easy but they are not mutually exclusive. Using the two effectively in any sort of endeavor requires knowing yourself, likes and dislikes.

For instance, I have been studying content creation and building a brand, making money etc. for a while now. The Gary Vanderchuck idea of 1000 true fans sounds good, but you have to know something about the internet and computers, marketing, have something to offer and be consistent in delivering to build a brand. I think that I can do it, I want to do it, but will I? I know that one of the things I really don’t want to do is manage social media interactions while I have millions of content ideas.

Our society is developing automation and widget’s to make these things easier if you take the simple steps of setting them up. Think about writing a book fifty years ago using a typewriter, later a computer made editing easier. Now you can self publish and sell a book on Amazon (Publish on Demand). An author from fifty years ago might say that it is easy. So, these evaluations are also relative to the context of the opinion, however I would argue that it is easy to become an author in today’s world. What’s not as easy is to make a living without the right marketing or luck.

In the end, I think the formula for success is not that hard (read: easy) when you genuinely apply yourself every day (read: simple). Also consider that if others are doing it, than you can probably make it work. I am experimenting with the medium, the formatting and my abilities to find the right fit. It probably wont be what I thought it would be, the journey is a growing experience.