New 'Essays in Idleness' & Other Reviews from The Hard Flex Cafe

Few of my very good friends or family share more than a passing interest in my passions.     I would worry about them if they did.     Or else I might be identifying with, say, a professional sports team and calling them “our” team.     Okay, no harm, no foul.     Maybe.     But what I’m talking about is personal stuff, the stuff that   you  want that makes up your tastes .     If you have any tastes then it’s likely you also have conflicts of interest with yourself. I made sure that my children did not follow in my career footsteps and both gratefully found life-partners more sane, sober, and unlike me than I could have imagined.  They’re all very good people.  Your children grow up, if you let their mistakes be their own and not yours, then they leave and will get on with being human without you having made the matter of living harder.  Don't make anyone else's life harder, not if you can help it.  So do help when you can, love ceaselessly but don’t expect anyone to care abo

  Dōgen the Bootmaker and the Perils of Living in the Material World AS my favorite Beatle once sang,   I'm living in the material world Living in the material world Can't say what I'm doing here But I hope to see much clearer After living in the material world   George finally asks for salvation from the material world.  I sure hope he got what he wanted.  It’s no small matter dealing with one’s success and failure.  We all want a “better” life, including better things and better choices, and some even want honest values and know there is a deeper inner conflict that we don’t ever quite resolve.  Before what George called the “Big Ending” we might even ask ourselves what it means to live better with fewer, not less and if better  is  somehow better.   I take up this as a spiritual quandary because I like nice things.  Dare I say better things?     I am likely more vain than the next guy but where would my heroes be without their vanities, their pursuit of their own version