I suppose if it were possible to lay out all the food I'm going to eat for the rest of my life, the amount would cause me to react in some dramatic way.  Perhaps I'd salivate.  Perhaps I'd gag or get nauseous.  Too much.  No way to deal with the quantity.

.. ..

I wonder if that's the way I, and many other people, react to the world's woes.  Too much.  No way to deal with the quantity.  Global warming.  Poverty.  Hole in ozone layer.  Melting ice packs.  Air pollution.  Traffic deaths.  Cancer.  HIV.  Swine flu.  Ebola virus.  War.  Violent crime.  Heck, non-violent crime too.  The economy.  Bigotry.  Tribalism.  Plain old rudeness.  The middle east.  ....North Korea.....  Overcrowding in prisons.  Overcrowding on the freeways.  Overcrowding all over the durned place.

.. ..

Maybe as a way to deal with this, just as we do, inadvertently with all the food we're going to eat for the rest of our lives, we only look at a small portion at a time.  Even the federal government does this.  Trying to change health care and health insurance matters, while trying to deal with the economy, while dealing with wars in ..Iraq.. and ....Afghanistan...., climate matters get pushed to the back burner.  Can't deal with everything at once.

.. ..

As individuals we could spend every cent we get, and every waking moment trying to save people from hunger, homelessness, lack of health care, etc.  But few - if any - people are going to do this.  I'm not sure if everyone working on such matters - and I mean everyone - would do the trick, but I do know that not everyone is going to.  There are always problems.  There is always poverty, hunger, illness.  There seems to always be war.  People, most certainly including myself, tend to do what seems most expedient, what serves oneself best.  And perhaps we brush a few crumbs off our table of time and money and energy towards the problems, as a sop to our conscience.  I generally give a dollar to anyone who asks me for money, but I'm aware that my real motivation is avoiding the thought later on that I should have helped this person.  A dollar seems to quiet that thought.  I could help an individual.  I think.  I could take this person into my home, or even put them into an apartment and see that he or she is fed and clothed and taken care of.  I'm not quite sure I could afford that, but I might be able to.  Perhaps I could devote myself to making it happen.  Work for some extra income in order to take care of this person.  And that'd be one person whose life would, or at least might be, better.  One person.

.. ..

There'd still be all the problems I mentioned above.  Global warming, poverty, etc.  This one person would be helped.  That's not a bad thing.  It's a good thing, probably.  It is not an effective solution, however, except for this one person.  And it might have a negative impact on my life.  If I give this person money that I would otherwise spend on something frivolous, perhaps that would be practical, although if everyone joined in, there'd be a lot more money given to charities, and probably a lot more businesses going under because people were giving their money to charity rather than buying video games, Hello Kitty handbags, or potato chips.

.. ..

And if I were to give away money that I would otherwise put aside (save or invest) then I'd be more likely to join the ranks of those in poverty later on in my life, when I may very well need this money I'm not giving away and not spending on Led Zeppelin t-shirts.

.. ..

There are a lot of problems, and a lot of sadness all over the place.  Perhaps a small bit of it happens because of human behavior of various kinds.  Lots of it (tsunamis, floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes - assuming none of these are caused by climate change created by us) seems to have no connection to human behavior.  But what to do?  What to do?

.. ..

I think between e-mail and the regular post I get 5 to 20 begging letters a month.  From organizations, mostly, though some of the e-mail (mostly in the form of various scams) may be from individuals.  I can't help them all.  If I sold everything I owned, and gave away every cent I had, I wouldn't be able to give even one penny to every poverty stricken person on earth.  Probably not even within the citizenry of the ....U.S.....

.. ..

So what can I do?  And what should I do?  First off, I believe what I should do is what I want to do.  That may sound selfish and I agree.  It is selfish.  I believe that the only thing one truly owns is one's own life.  It is my life.  It is entirely up to me to choose what to do with my life.  My own values - and I certainly encourage everyone else to adopt them - would limit me to actions that do not harm or cause suffering.  Even there I've compromised.  I drive a car.  This is harmful for the environment.  I buy things that come with plastic packaging, and this is also harmful for the environment.  I probably use more energy than is really my fair share, considering how many people do not have access to sufficient energy for their most basic needs.

.. ..

Doing what I decide I want to do, seems to include wanting to be of some assisstance.  First I must take care of me.  After that, I think my choices are to help those who are already meaningful to me - my friends, for example.  And after that, the struggle to address climate change seems to me to be the most meaningful matter to deal with.  If the earth changes to a less liveable state, it will inevitably effect absolutely everyone on earth.  This makes it more urgent than a cure for cancer, poverty, or even ending war - although there may be a connection between war  and accelerated climate change.

.. ..

So here I am.  Trying to live my life, save for the future, and perhaps advance the fight against global warming in a small, very small way.  Me and Al Gore and Ed Begley Jr.  Where's Mr. T., we can be the new A-Team.

During a considerable amount of the 1990's I was unhappy.  Depressed, actually.  I didn't like myself.  I felt embarassed to be me.  I don't know if I would be able to explain this, or determine what caused me to feel this way, but I felt unloved and unloveable and I definitely felt miserable.  Every moment of every day?  Nah.  But far too frequently to enjoy life.  I got past it.  Maybe because of therapy.  That certainly could be what got me through it.  On the other hand, maybe not.  Maybe it was like a storm I passed through.  It seemed to have started in late '92 after the breakup of a multi-year long distance relationship that I should have ended much much earlier, but that didn't end until she ended it, and I'm thankful she did - though at the time I didn't feel this way.  Was that the cause?  The trigger?  I don't know.

.. ..

What I do know is that I found a way to focus on good things in my life that became a nearly daily exercise and that I think is useful for myself and for others.  Useful in the sense that it forces one away from the negative, even if only in an intellectual sense.

.. ..

I made a list of 100 things in my life that made life feel worthwhile and/or gave me pleasure.  Now pleasure is not happiness, but it's sure a lot better than focusing on sadness.  Making a list focused me on what there was in my life that made each day worth living.  Each day I'd try to make that list without referring back to the list of the day before.  Not that they couldn't end up being the exact same 100 things.  That was okay.  Also, if I got really stuck before reaching 100, I let myself look at earlier lists.  I tried to make the list without looking at prior lists, but it wasn't against the rules.

.. ..

My list included a few friends' names, and even a few favorite authors or book titles.  But a lot of what was on the list were things from nature (sunrises, ripe peaches, blueberries, lightning, butterflies) and things that many of us may take for granted (having a decent place to live, running water, access to health care, a good running car).

.. ..

It was definitely an effort to make that list 100 items long, but that effort really made me focus on what in my life gave me pleasure, joy, happiness, and I could always refer to the list if I were feeling particularly blue.

.. ..

It is, I think, pretty normal to take certain things for granted, especially if they've been part of our lives for a long time.  There are plenty of people who suffer from health problems from early on in their lives, but, thankfully, I'm not one of them.  Therefore, good health is easy to take for granted.  But it is one of the things I am extremely thankful for, since we all know, from our own experiences with illness, no matter how temporary, how dramatically bad health changes our outlook.  A big house, a fancy car, a great career, maybe even a loving family, definitely take on less importance when one's life is filled with pain or discomfort and anxiety about what comes next. 

.. ..

So, for myself, I try to remember to focus on those things in my life that make my life feel worth living.  Sunrises and sunsets.  Naps in the afternoon.  Playing guitar.  Ladybugs.  The sound of a train in the distance (definitely not pleasurable if it's right next door).  The scent of pine trees, the sound of water (waterfalls, rainfall, even showers).  Mountains in the distance, sweet potato pie, puppies.  Having my own place to live with indoor plumbing.  Air conditioning.  Political freedom.

.. ..

Perhaps it's a bit like saying grace.  Thanking the universe for the goods I've received.  And keeping the bads a bit at bay.

When I was younger - not that much younger, actually - I believed that just because a piece of furniture - say a couch - had always been a couch, and never changed into something else, didn't mean that at any given moment it wouldn't change into something else - say a fire breathing dragon.  And devour me.  Or you.  That the universe, being billions of years old, dealt with time differently than you or I.  Something has remained what it has always been for - what?  Minutes?  Hours?  Days?  Weeks?  Months?  Years?  Centuries?  Millenium?  So what?  A mere snap of the finger for the universe.  So if a mere couch has been a (mere) couch for decades even, what of it?  So it's a couch for 40 years, and then it's a fire breathing dragon.  Just because neither you nor I have ever seen anything like it, doesn't mean it can't happen. 

.. ..

This, however, was not a comfortable way to view life.  It had to do with feelings of uncertainty, anxiety, fears.  Somehow, during the years I was in therapy, my point of view changed.

.. ..

Yet, the thought remains.  Just because something has never happened, or simply not happened in one's own experience, or in what one's read of or heard of, doesn't mean it won't.  In the early 80's I lived in ....Portland.. ..Oregon.....  I don't know if volcanologists felt differently, but your average man (or woman) on the street certainly wasn't expecting ....Mt... ..St. Helens.... to return to being an active volcano and blow it's top off.  It hadn't happened in, I think, anyone's lifetime that was living at the time, so no one thought it would.  But it did.

.. ..

It's 9/11, and eight years ago on this date something happened that no one expected to happen.  Or if not no one, few.  Then it did.

.. ..

....Mt... ..St. Helens.....  9/11.  The Red Sox winning the pennant.  Bernie Madoff.  No one expects, and then....

.. ..

I believe it is difficult for us to maintain a sound perspective on things.  We're humans, we deal mostly with other humans.  We deal with our human businesses.  If, like me, you live in a big city, you see few stars.  A sky chock full of stars might give a person a slightly different perspective.  Remind them that they're but very very small creatures in a very very large universe.  But living, as I do, in the ....L.A.....  The world seems like something constructed by mankind. area, I see few stars, and many many more buildings and streets than trees and animals.

.. ..

But it's not.  The world, our world, this earth, is, compared to us, immense.  And much much much much more complicated than our day to day lives.  And the world, our world, this earth, is minute.  A speck of sand compared to the Milky Way, and the Milky Way a speck of sand compared to the universe in total.

.. ..

I'm an actor, which is sometimes considered an artist.  And I like art in many different forms.  Otis Redding, Mozart, Picasso, Henry Moore, Albert Bierstadt, Derek Jacobi, John Gielgud, Dennis Potter, Manet, Nureyev, Blind Blake, W.M.S. Turner, Copland, and others.  But I cannot see that any art, made by man, compares to the beauty of the natural world.  Sorry Pablo.  Sorry Rudolf.  Sorry Dennis.  A bear, a tree, the ocean, the clouds, clover, a ladybug, the sound of the wind through the trees, a lightning storm, the subjects of those awesome photos taken by the Hubble Telescope.  That's beauty.  That's incomparable beauty.

.. ..

Was there actually a time before all this was all this?  Will there be a time when all this is no more.  Or something different?  And if all this becomes something different, will it come as a big surprise?  Something that no one expected?  And if so, then what?

Didn't I just write about this? 

.. ..

My friend Heather, who is also my realtor - I'm shopping for a condo - was to meet me in Encino this afternoon.  She driving up from town on traffic clogged 405, me from ....Glendale...., and traffic on the 101 was so bad I got off to finish the trip on surface streets.  Only Heather got there ahead of me, opened the lock box (a place where the keys to a property are kept so that realtors can show the place) and found no keys.  That's the 2nd time this week this has happened. 

.. ..

There seem to be 3 possibilities for the reason.  1) The property has been purchased or at any rate is in process, and the keys have been removed by the seller's agent.  2) The realtor who looked at the property last forgot to replace the keys and drove off with them - this would be sloppy, unprofessional, and rude, but still no worse than a mistake.  3) The realtor who looked at the property last purposely took the keys so that he or she would have a better chance at a sale.  This would be somewhat understandable in today's economic climate, but inexcuseable in matters of manners or morals.

.. ..

Heather and I each lost over an hour of our days, and put mileage on our cars and burned gas (consider both pollution and the cost of gas) unneccessarily. 

.. ..

Has this become a way of doing business?  My last two blogs have been about dealing with unhelpful corporations, and now this blog deals with the dirtier aspects of the real estate business.  One would have to be a polyanna to think that everyone will behave politely and fairly, but it still rankles when one is effected by the other kinds of behavior.

.. ..

If the person who drove away with the keys falls into the 3rd reason I described above, I certainly hope they get their comeuppance in some way.  Perhaps a root canal.  Or to return to their car and find they have a flat tire after the next time they show a property.  Ha!

I have been using the same cell phone for at least a few years now.  Probably longer than that.  It's a phone.  No camera, and I don't know how to go on-line with it, or text.  It's a clamshell design and recently I had begun to wonder whether the sound quality had gone downhill, and if I should get a new one for that reason.

.. ..

I had saved a small lanyard from my previous cell phone, and installed it on this one.  A lanyard is simply a small sort of leash.  I found it convenient.

.. ..

However, I didn't find it so convenient when, getting into my car last Saturday, the lanyard got caught in my car door handle and was thereby jerked out of my hand and went scuttling onto the asphalt of the parking lot I was in.  The battery popped off the back.  I put the battery back on, powered the gadget back up and that's that.

.. ..

Only that wasn't that.  Three days later I realized that my phone didn't work.  It turned on.  Actually it did everything it's supposed to, except the audio seemed to have gone bye-bye.  I could place calls, but not hear the person, or, more frequently I suppose, the answering machine at the other end.  The phone would ring, audibly, but I couldn't hear the person who'd called.  The rest of the functioning attributes of the phone were rather superfluous without this one, all important function.

.. ..

So I went to Sprint, my wireless carrier - which is my pet name for them - and priced a new phone.  There was a similar, but slightly sleeker, slightly slimmer, slightly less easy to use the slightly smaller buttons phone, that didn't have a camera - something I crave in a phone, the not having a camera - for only $19.99 if I signed up for two more years of service. 

.. ..

I'd finished my last two year contract years ago, and really didn't want to sign up for another.  There were also 2 phones I could get for some higher price, the entirety of which would be refunded as a rebate - a strategy I simply don't understand.  This will cost you 80 million dollars, but we'll give you back 80 million dollars after you buy it.  How in the world does that make any sense? - but these 2 phones each had cameras.  See above.

.. ..

So.  $19.99, comes with a charger for the home, but not for the car.  Requires a 2 year use contract.  Fine.  Ring me up.  So the nice gal starts the paperwork.  First I have to read the contract, which is available for me to read on a 4 inch by 3 inch screen in tiny font.  Then sign, or at least click on "OK".  Oh, and there's an $18 activation charge.  Why would anyone buy a phone and not want it activated?  Therefore, why isn't the activation charge included in the price?  Easy answer.  They can't say it costs $19.99 then.  This is nearly identical to the strategy pursued by Dell which I blogged about 2 days ago.  It is, I think, part of American business practice.  If you've ever bought a new car, you've experienced it.  Did you want the protective coating?  Tinted windows?  Extended warrantee?  Upgrade the stereo?  Tires?  An engine?  Did you want the car activated....

.. ..

I could, of course, have said no.  I'll go get a phone from T-Mobile, or AT&T or whoever else is out there with a cell phone business.  The problem is that I'm not dealing with a Sprint employee who cares one whit whether I go or stay.  The bottom line is not this person's concern.  Customer satisfaction is not this person's concern.  Very little about their job is of concern to them.  They have to be there and do this work in order to get their paycheck.  Everything else is just noise.

.. ..

And, like with Dell, I would hesitate, and then decide that my time was more valuable to me than this additional charge, and this one, and this one.  Does that mean I throw my money around, or even away?  I don't think so.  I think it means that this sort of wearing down is effective, and at some point I want my life to be about something besides getting the best deal.  I'd rather put up with being mildly - and not so mildly - ripped off, and have time to read a book or watch a movie.

.. ..

But I hate being a faceless consumer, of no importance at all to the businesses I do business with, except as a pocket they can put their corporate hands into and withdraw money.  The consumer society may have made life more liveable for many many more people - I'm not sure it has, but it may have - but it hasn't made any of those people enjoy the experience of being treated as domesticated animals.

.. ..

And one final, contrary, positive note.  Phillip Moon, the guy who helped me put my website together (www.markchaet.com) for a very reasonable price, has since then helped me update my website, when I couldn't remember how to do it myself.  Just this week I had to contact him again for the same purpose.  I couldn't remember how to make the changes.  And, as usual, he helps me, is very nice and friendly and efficient about it, and doesn't charge me any more money.  Phillip reads my blog sometimes, so I hate to say I'd be willing to pay him for helping me, but I would.  Phillip, of course, is not getting rich by doing this.  And the people who run Sprint, and Dell, and lots and lots and lots of other ....U.S..... businesses are primarily concerned with getting rich.  They're corporate ....America...., and they want to run the world.  Phillip is a nice guy with some worthwhile saleable skills who wants to make a decent living.  Oh ....America...., we need more Phillip Moons and less Dells or Sprints.  At least we need more of the one and less of the other in terms of the way things are run.

.. ..

Did you enjoy this blog?  That'll be $9.95, please.  Did you want it activated?