Life Choices and Misunderstandings There are just so many misunderstood things to ponder. I remember someone who was said to be a literary expert explaining the meaning behind an author’s story. He went on to claim many things in the story referred to other points which the author was trying to get across. What he didn’t know was the author was in the room and when the “expert” finished, the author went over to him and said nothing he was saying was true, and he was not trying to get any of those points across. This is the problem when someone tries to interpret someone else’s work. There are some people who actually believe certain bakery products have a far longer shelf life than they have. One of those products is Twinkies. There are all sorts of stories about Twinkies lasting for years. I am not sure how this came about, but the truth is they have a shelf life of about 45 days which is 20 days longer than their original formulation. Have you ever noticed how strange the buttons on some elevators work? People think all door close buttons will instantly close the doors on an elevator, but many seem to have some sort of built in delay before they close and there is no way of knowing if the doors would have closed by themselves anyway. Which reminds me about those buttons on traffic lights. How many times have we pushed the walk button and nothing has happened until the light was going to change anyway? Are they just there to make us think we are controlling something? A lot of people who are going to buy a home do not understand the closing costs and get a rude awakening at the closing. It is so important to have a competent lawyer who will explain them to you. It is no fun to go to a closing only to find out you have to pay thousands of dollars more than you thought you would. Another thing which has surprised a lot of home buyers was they found out even though they own their home they do not have the mineral rights for the property. So, if you ever find rare minerals on your property you better check if you own them before trying to sell them. Another thing some people misunderstand is the intelligence of some ancient people. It is true they didn’t have advanced technology, but some were extremely intelligent. This has been proved by their structures and some of the things they did. We could hardly build a structure to equal the Great Pyramid today, because its measurements are so precise. The Romans created a cup which changed color using nanotechnology which should have been impossible at the time and the Arabs created Damascus steel which we couldn’t duplicate the strength of for a thousand years. No, there was certainly no lack of intelligence on the part of ancient people. Some people live their lives like they will live forever. They never want to consider the fact they will die someday. We see this all the time with the ultra-rich, some of who waste their lives with constant accumulation of wealth where many of them have far more than they could ever spend. While doing this some neglect their family and friends and life speeds by them. They also make a big mistake by aligning themselves with people who have the same sick passion, thus breaking off true friendships, because they believe those people are beneath them. There are those people who buy by label rather than buy what is practical. I have seen people who could not afford a purchase and do it anyway, because they felt it gave them some sort of social boost. A case in point was someone I knew who I worked with. He decided to buy an expensive model of a Mercedes Car. He felt the badge was everything. This caused him to have large car payments, but the car was clearly out of his class. I personally don’t care about elite brands of anything. I have found out you can buy a perfectly good car and if you want to get the best model of say a Hyundai, Honda, Toyota or Ford fully equipped you have quite a nice car which rivals a much more expensive one. However, the cheaper models are quite sufficient. The same is true for clothing, electronics and many other purchases. No one really needs a $300 pair of sneakers or a $200 Tee shirt. There is nothing wrong if you are rich and want this stuff, but if you have to sacrifice to buy it, you can’t afford it. We should not be in competition with each other trying to prove we have more and better toys than the next person. How many times have we said something to someone and they misunderstood what we meant or what we did? A couple of years ago a policeman ordered a man to hold up his hands. It was believed the man was trying to communicate to the cop using sign language which the policeman thought was threatening and after warning the man several times he shot him. The man was deaf, but the cop had no way of knowing this.
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