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Tuesday, April 17, 2012

And.....You Want Change???

There are five published books out there that are offered for sale in various venues with my name on them.  Blogging has become an obsession.  Many topics are tossed around in my Reluctant Hero Trilogy and in my blog posts and, from time to time, a solution or two is offered.  By no means do I lay personal claim to genius but I am in no way a blithering idiot.  Recently, I published a blog post titled, Living In Walmart.  In that post I recalled how in the past, beer and soda bottles were recycled.  Then I mentioned that the beer and soda manufacturers should return to that method of bottling/packaging instead of continuing to use plastic throw-a-ways.  I sadly lamented that that would not happen because of the negative effects to the manufacturers' bottom line (plastic is cheap).  But that does not mean it cannot be done in the future.  And the future was an evident point made in Living In Walmart.  So, why am I bitching?  I got a telephone call.

An acquaintance of mine left me know that I should keep my opinions to myself.  He said that all I did was complain and offered no real solutions.  I asked the man what suggestions he had to give me, other than keeping my opinions to myself; I was all ears.  My question was answered with silence, punctuated by a hard swallow or two (thought the guy was gonna choke).  I turned the conversation to my advantage.  When I asked how he could criticize my work without a ready answer (solution), in effect just shooting off his mouth, he hung up (reversal of fortune is tough for some people!).  In no way was this taken as a personal loss, far from it.  It's OK to be critical, but keep your belligerence in your back pocket; you may choke on it.

Change is hard, inevitable, and at times rough but it can be worked through.  That bottle business that I wrote about in Living In Walmart took decades for it to reach the proportions that it is today.  The future demands long term planning/thinking and not thinking/planning on the cheap.  Sacrifice can be painful and expensive, depending on how you measure life.  Answers will not be found at the bottom of those throw-a-way bottles; they ain't no Cracker Jack Box.  Find them in your head and act.  Saying that it cannot be done  is the first and final step to failure.

                                                    Copyright@ 2012 Terry Unger

In Honor of Arminius

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