Patience and Time…two very interesting concepts.  I am beginning to think that at times people can be very selfish with both.  If you’re not patient with the people you love and care about then you are being selfish and if you expect everything right away and not allow for time to take care of itself you’re being selfish.  I have come to the realization today that patience really is a virtue and the best things come in their own time and we just have to be patient and wait for the happenings in life to work themselves out.  I like this quote, life really is about timing…and you need to know when the right time to make a move and when is the right time to sit back and listen…sometimes great things happen when you just see where life is willing to take you all on its own.

More on time….

“The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.” Albert Einstein

I really like this quote because I think it’s true.  I don’t believe time actually exists…I think it is something that we have made up in order to make everything make sense, give some type of order to the events of life…what if everything does happen at once but we have trained ourselves to think linear when it really isn’t?  What if we can’t see what happens right in front of us simply because we don’t think it’s time for that particular thing to happen?

I have to say that some people would disagree with Emerson.  Some people get really annoyed and even angry when you try to go beyond the normal happenings of the day, when you try to throw something new into the routine.  Some people prefer to know exactly what will happen every day no matter what…while others never want the same routine.  I think that most people have parts of their life in a set routine, either what they do at work, or how they get up int he morning, or what they do when they get home….some of these routines are hard to break, while others you can bounce all around and still get things done.

However, there are some people who live for adventure.  Some people choose jobs like police officers, hiking guides, different jobs that don’t have set routines and they are able to see and do different things with different people each day.

I have to wonder how many people are the adventurous type and how many are the type that like routines to the point where they have an off day all day whenever something does not fall the way it has int he days before it.  I’m willing to bet there are more people that lie somewhere in between, I know there are extremes, but I think most people would agree that trying some new things is a good thing and some routine is also nice at times.

Can one person really make that big of a difference?  This is a great sentiment that I ran across while looking at a wall of quotes, but if everyone’s ideals are different then I have to assume that if everyone were to live according to this particular quote, that there would also be someone who is equally determined to act opposite from your personal ideals for the world….what happens at that point?  Does it become a battle of the wills to force your change onto the world?  Or can people co-exist with different idealistic goals?  Is living according to your own ideals suppose to make a difference in the world?

What if your ideals go against the conventions of society?  What if someone’s ideals go against the laws of their country?  Are they still suppose to openly defy the laws and live according to their ideals anyway?  Do they secretly wish for their ideals to be accepted?

Where is the line of living in accordance to your own ideals and still accepting everyone else’s ideals while still living according to the constraints of society?  How far do you push the line of the taboo?

It’s nice to see quotes from people like Gandhi, but you have to wonder if there really is any truth to their inspirational purpose, or if they are just pretty words to see on a wall….

“Obviously a major malfunction.”

Steve Nesbitt, NASA public affairs officer, Jan. 28, 1986, shortly after the space shuttle Challenger exploded.

I feel like this quote can be applied to how we feel when looking at something that happens in life.  Sometimes you can only look at a situation and say “oh shit”…..I mean, really, what else is there to say?  It’s done, over with, a major malfunction in the plans that you had set forth and were going well until that point.  But now it’s in the past, you might not even be sure what went wrong, it probably doesn’t matter what went wrong, it simply did, and now you have a mess.  Just like the pieces of the space shuttle, floating out into open space.

Sometimes a moment catches you so off guard that it’s like it happens in slow motion, or in a daze, or just replays over and over in your head…and there is still nothing to say other than….it’s obviously a major malfunction.  Nothing more…nothing less….what else is there to say at that point?

Why is it that sometimes things come out of no where and hit us like a brick wall?  Why is it that while many events throughout the day are predictable, there is always something that happens that you never would have seen coming, no matter what angle you looked at it before it happened.

Some things are so random in this life that the quote “crazy random happenstance” really stuck out to me from the movie “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog”  I thought that it was cleverly used in the movie as a very ironic situation because the character is speaking of a very planned event.  I have a friend who says that the most important part of spontaneity is careful planning.  That phrase has always interested me.

If you were able to stop time for a little while, what would you do with it?  Take some time to relax?  Get a massage?  Get things done?  Go on a vacation?  Would stopping time actually solve anything?  Would all of the problems and the fear of change still be there when you eventually unfroze everything?  Would you need or want to unfreeze things?  It’s an interesting thought….Like time travel, I wonder if it would be as great as it is in theory.  Theories are great because they never go wrong…everything works in theory.  I still think I would like the option of stopping time….Making sure there is time for all aspects of life.  Not caught up with work and ignoring the social life at all….What moment would you freeze, or who would you freeze if you had the time?

For those of you who have seen Dr. Horrible in action, you know that the freeze ray freezes a person, so who would you choose to freeze in time?  That one person who wont stop talking or who is always knocking on your door or calling your phone?  Is that the person you would like to just sort of take a time out for and stop time for them?  Would you pick the person who annoys you the most?  Or maybe the person you want to look at the most, but just don’t have time for at the moment?…..So many possibilities.

I have to wonder how some people can have so much information stored inside of them and yet seem to almost refuse to use their common sense to actually puzzle out their own original thoughts.  There are a few people who strive for the truth, think through everything…but the majority of people that I see around me most days makes me really wonder if  people even remember how to think for themselves any more?  I know that the younger generation expects answers to simply be handed to them…I have to wonder if they get that because their elders have simply resigned themselves to simply following whatever message is spread the loudest in the gossip lines of neighbors or on the most news channels.

Some people are intimidating with all of their knowledge and their great use of common sense, debate skills, etc….why are these people so hard to find sometimes…???  I’m glad that I have been able to surround myself in my personal life with intelligent people…but when I go to work I see what is outside of my own little circle…..Sometimes you wonder if some people are ever involved in an intelligent conversation about anything…..And if they do get involved if can they give any reasons for the opinions that they so strongly defend because that is what they heard on the latest news report….I love having good conversations and debates with people, but sometimes I am amazed at how people enter into such conversations without any actual facts to back up their opinions…or even solid logic to back themselves up.

Sheeple is a great term for how the majority of our society seems to be acting these days.  People question their best friends but believe what some “specialist” on the evening news says without hesitation….what kind of sense does that make?  I’m afraid for where our society is going if we (as a whole) continue to blindly follow and line up for the slaughter… sooner or later, we wont be able to avoid what we are asking for.  Put the axe in the hand of the executioner…don’t act surprised when your head is rolling on the ground.

FYI: military anti terrorism training tells us specifically to avoid letting anyone know that we’re military. We’re supposed to hide our ID cards and travel like normal citizens. As a soldier, I don’t have any authority to arrest or detain anyone. I’m also not trained for it. If you need someone to flashbang and clear a building, I can do that. You need a firewall installed or your Cron jobs scheduled, I got you. If you need someone to make a snap judgment and save the airplane – I’m not better at it then your average joe… save that I’m probably more like to use deadly force if I think my kids are in danger. I enjoy all the free drinks I get on the flight. I like that people congratulate me for being in the army. other than that, you better hope there’s a US Marshall on the plane.

What if I did jump on someone? What if I guessed, incorrectly, that Ahmed was carrying an applejuice or breastmilk bomb? I’m going to jail. I have no authority to act or detain. There are no rules of engagement to protect me because I’m only supposed to engage under lawful orders. I’ve been trained on what I can do in the event of a terrorist episode… NOTHING. Asking a US soldier to detect a terrorist plot and save your plane is like asking a Chiropractor to perform open heart surgery. I’m not even staying at a Holiday Inn Express, so everyone is screwed.

Though if, as I mentioned earlier, I KNOW that John-Doe is about to do something, I’ll definitely jump on him. Of course, then Airport Security will prolly Rodney King my black ass.

More information for those that give a damn:
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab got through the second best airport security in the world. What makes a person think he could not have gotten past the best? Why is it Obama’s fault? it wasn’t even our friggin air port.

In case you didn’t know: at Schiphol, for flights leaving the EU, there’s a separate screening setup — X-ray machine and metal detector — at *each gate*. The “security zone” is a glass-walled room from which you board your flight directly — and no other flight. So the security at your airport of origin _could_ be piss-poor, but you’ll still be screened to Dutch standards before you’re allowed to board an onward connection. (And the Dutch, when they do security, seem to have a chip on their shoulder about being insufficiently German.)

Here’s the real problem: Abdulmutallab managed to smuggle his IED through the most secure airport in Europe — far tighter than anything you get in the USA, probably second only to Tel Aviv.

Don’t blame Obama while the honorable senator from SC is blocking our President’s TSA nominee. DeMint equates unions with Satan. As long as he’s beefing with Obama over unions, we’ll be less safe. Don’t blame the security personnel that they didn’t grab this guy’s nuttz. I’m sure anyone who reads this could combine Google with their local Lowes and construct an IED that’d make it thru air port security. I made it thru with a lighter, 2 dollars in change and a diaper bag… Jee-zus, I could’ve burned someone and pelted the pilots with nickels.

This is an excellent quote that reminds me of another quote from the movie V for Vendetta:  “Author’s use lies to tell the truth, Politicians use lies to hide the truth.”  I think that both of these quotes send a great message about how the truth can be revealed in the fiction that is created through people’s creativity….generally, it’s a pretty safe way to expose the truth, because the author can always claim that it was a fictional story that was completely made up, while others can see through the title of fiction and recognize the truth….

I have found in my own readings that I see a lot of things in the world today that have been exposed to me through fictional stories that I probably would not have thought about, or at least not analyzed as in depth if it hadn’t been for the stories that sparked the thoughts and connections to our worlds today.

I believe that artists and authors make such powerful statements through their work that are simply not appreciated as often or as much as they should be.  I think that a lot of a culture and society can be exposed by looking at what kind of creativity comes out of the people of that society.

Hearing expressions like this one be twisted around always makes me think of the power of words.  Changing one word can change the whole saying drastically.  Words are such powerful things that my favorite author, David Turrill, wrote, “we name things to make them real.”  I think that he had a point, without a name, how do we talk about that thing?  If we can’t talk about it, we can’t express thought about a thing and therefore the thoughts are not put out into anyone else’s mind and are then easily lost. 

Words help us to make thoughts into reality.  I really think that sometimes the only barrier between a thought and reality is the words to clearly define and express something.  In a lot of ways, words hold more power than people may realize.  Words can comfort or hurt people.  Words can define and make something important, or blow off and make something disappear into the world of the unimportant.