One Smart Feller

A while back, a friend posted this video on his blog.  His blog has since been deleted, but the video remains a family favorite. I'm posting it here largely so I can find the thing again. Enjoy!

 

Win From Within

I love this commercial. I've always had a deep appreciation for nearly every Michael Jordan commercial anyway, but this one is one of my favorites. Some health group wants the ad pulled because it promotes being awesome, even when you have the flu, and that's apparently more than nerdy people can handle. That just makes me like it even more.

I've always been a big fan of this one, too.

 

I suppose the message of the (first) ad is that I haven't won and therefore I'm a loser, and I don't really like it in those terms so much...but maybe some truth exists there.

Oh, Peyton

It's the Peyton Manning Sweepstakes.

If you have any interest in the NFL at all, or really if you even just watch the news regularly, you are fully aware of what I'm talking about.  If not, I'm not sure this will interest you, but the best player (and one of my favorite players) in the NFL is an unrestricted free agent.

No one wants to see this happen to Manning.

Reports have indicated at least a dozen teams are interested in Manning, although if it weren't for the salary cap I would think that every team would be.  As a Bears fan, there's a part of me that would like to see him in Chicago, even though the Bears already have Jay Cutler.  As a Peyton Manning fan, though, I'd hate to see Manning get plastered play after play after play like we sometimes see with poor Cutler.  (Well, "poor" for a guy in the middle of a $50-million deal!)

Manning reportedly spent six hours with the Denver Broncos on Friday and six hours Sunday with the Arizona Cardinals.  I like both of these teams, and would be happy to see Manning go to either one.

The Cardinals hold a special place in my heart.  As an NFL original team, and a former Chicago team, I like the Cardinals.  I like Larry Fitzgerald, too, and would like to see what a Manning-Fitzgerald combo would do, especially if the Cards could manage to sign Manning and Reggie Wayne.  Bring Jeff Saturday along, too. And, then move the team back to Chicago.  They can share Soldier Field with the Bears and put a dome on top for Manning's sake.

Since Manning is nearing the end of his career, and is obviously focused on getting back to the Super Bowl, it would be nice to see Manning succeed in Denver, if for no other reason than because it would make my former youth pastor Steve happy.  Seeing Manning in orange and blue doesn't sound all that terrible, either.  I'll cross my eyes and pretend I'm watching him play for the Bears--except, the Broncos' offensive line is better.

It's this other team everyone keeps talking about that bothers me.  Miami?  Boo.  Hiss.  If you follow the NBA, you'll know that this team heavily favors buttholes and  Peyton Manning just doesn't fall into that category.

What I'd really like to see is for Manning to sign with the Houston Texas.  No one is talking about this, and I don't know why not.  The Texas are good, and adding Manning puts them easily in the top five teams in the league.  This has to happen.  They'd be really really good...you know, like maybe go to the Super Bowl this year.

Of course, I'd like to see the Bears screw that up a bit and sign Mario Williams to play opposite of Julius Peppers. The Bears would absolutely terrorize other teams.  This has to happen.  It would be incredible...they might even go to the Super Bowl.

I know I said I didn't want to see Peyton Manning get hurt, but...I just can't see how to stop it now.

Disposable

Disposable.

I hate that word.

We live in a culture where we have actually convinced one another that the effort involved in extracting oil from the ground, transporting that oil to a refinery, refining that oil, using that oil to make plastic, molding the plastic into the right shape, packaging it, shipping it to a distribution center, shipping it to a store, buying it, and taking it home is less than the effort to wash a spoon.

Everything we do anymore is wasteful beyond belief if you really think about it.  If I make myself a sandwich for lunch, I get a loaf of bread at the store that is packaged in a plastic bag.  Then I buy it and they put it into another plastic bag.  Then when I take it out of those two plastic bags, I make my sandwich and put it into another plastic bag, which often goes into yet another bag along with whatever else I plan on eating.  That's a lot of waste for some bread.

What kind of world are we leaving to our children when we use our natural resources to create stuff that we will use once and throw away, turning valuable resources and quickly converting them into waste? We're wasting resources and creating problems all in one swift swoop, all for the sake of a bit of temporary convenience and the almighty dollar.  What kind of people leave that kind of legacy?  I'm not exactly what Rush Limbaugh would call an environmentalist wacko, here.  I just want my kid to be able to live in a nice place.

It's not really the disposable plastic that bothers me.  The problem is that we treat everything the exact same way.  We treat people this way.

In the interests of full disclosure, I confess that I have more than once shared the following advice:

In life, some people are like a splinter in your backside.  It hurts to remove them from your life, but if you fail to remove the splinter, it will become infected and fester and will cause you far more trouble and far more pain in the long run.

I stand by that advice, but cutting someone out should be the exception and not the rule. It is the attitude to take towards that jerk you've been dating that hurts you (but is so cute!), not your friends and family--and I'm fairly loose with my definition of "friends" here.

I'll spare you the images of people scattered like the plastic bags
in the other picture. Instead, this nice picture of some Jewish folks.
 Eight of them survived the Holocaust.

People aren't disposable. People have eternal souls. Even if you don't agree with that statement, you should live as if you do because treating people as if they have value makes the world a better place. Mother Teresa treated people as if they had value. Adolph Hitler treated people as if they were disposable.

I don't think too many people would stop and think about it and conclude that we want a world where we look at one another as being worthless like a plastic spoon or a grocery bag.  Yet, I observe behavior and see people treating one another as worthless.

"Forget about her. She's messed up."  That's an actual quote from an actual person--and a "good" person at that.  To me, the attitude expressed therein is scandalous, not because the attitude is so much worse than the attitude of anyone else I know (or any worse at all for that matter), but rather because it is standard. The vast majority of everyone I know lives by that attitude (though a significantly lesser percentage would be so crude as to actually come right out and say with their mouths what they live with their lives). It has been said that the only people that aren't messed up are the ones you don't know too well. We are all messed up, and anyone who says otherwise is a liar.


Everybody has their limits, and none of us can handle everything on our own. We might consider trying. 

Some will suggest that they want to focus their efforts on helping those who deserve it rather than those who do not. How would you have fared if your mother had said, "I'm going to wait until I see what kind of person this baby is before I go to the trouble of feeding it and changing all those nasty diapers"? If you think you are less messed up than your neighbor, if there's any truth to that opinion you can almost certainly attribute a great amount of your success to winning life's lottery more often than they. You have received more gifts in life, therefore you owe more.

You are going to die. I know this comes as a terrible shock, but it had to be said. You will die, and what will you have left behind? Your life won't be measured by your checking account or your fitness level or any of those things we so often get caught up on. It doesn't matter how "successful" you are--people will remember you for the kind of person you were, the investment you made in their lives, whether you loved them or not.

Decide who you want to be and become that person. Quit trying to decide who deserves it.

"Love does not measure. It just gives" (Mother Teresa).

Courage

"Courage is not limited to the battlefield or the Indianapolis 500 or bravely catching a thief in your house. The real tests of courage are much quieter. They are the inner tests, like remaining faithful when nobody's looking, like enduring pain when the room is empty, like standing alone when you're misunderstood."
 - Charles Swindoll

Like-minded

"They are two minds with but a single thought--hers."

Informed

"Her acquaintances may not be the best informed people, but they certainly are the most informed."