retail

In a world of Amazon.com, the entire concept of retail confuses me:

• Pay More.
• Work Harder.
• Take Longer.

How is that I spend as much time waiting at a checkout line as I do getting on an airplane? If TSA can search my entire body, bags, and 2 weeks worth of clothing in under 5 minutes, why can't my local grocery store check me out in less than 10?

We're talking turkeys versus explosive powder here.

Was there ever a time when this made sense?

1. Push a wheeled basket through dozens of aisles largely irrelevant to what you came to purchase.
2. Move items from shelf to basket. The more you buy, the harder it gets.
   
3. Get in line. The more you buy, the longer you wait to pay.
4. Let me reiterate that: buy more, wait more.
   
5. Pull everything out again.
   
6. Have every item scanned in front of 1/2 dozen other people.
   
7. Pick a product the store forgot to label.
   
8. Have your life announced over a loudspeaker.
   
9. Wait longer.
   
10. Place every bagged item back into your basket.
    
11. Push to car.
    
12. Take groceries out of carriage again.
    
13. Place into car.
    
14. Drive home.
    
15. Take out of car.
16. Carry inside.
17. Take out of bags.
    
18. Place back into shelves... just like the ones you pulled the products off of at the store.
    

Hmm...

Lens

My favorite pair on shades are the polarized kind. Driving to work the blue lens in the sunlight makes trees look green, the sky bluer, and everything much brighter and colorful than normal.

Plus I don't squint.

Pretty cool how all it takes to get a new view on the world is to change the lens you're looking through.

Evolution

Life is a series of moments. Some we forget in an instant. Some stick with us for a lifetime.

A month ago I witnessed a dying man living a life fuller than most of us could ever dream. This weekend I saw the body of a man in one place and the essence of his being everywhere else. They say that, "when the heart weeps for what it has lost, the spirit laughs for what it has found." The great spiritual leaders talk of a life somewhere else after death. What I saw this weekend tells me that immortality starts right here and now. To become an original worth copying. To begin in one form, to evolve into another; in stories, in memories, in laughter, in lessons taught for generations to come. To become part of the fabric of a collective unconscious. What man would ask more from life than this?

Albert Einstein once wrote,

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

Like you said Uncle Frank, "there is only one way."