CAREFUL LISTENING FOR THE NEW YEAR: CAN YOU HEAR ME YET

Careful listening to difficult conversations is key to better understanding.

But you know this. You might not practice it, but you know it by a certain age.

Think of being fifteen and listening to Mom and Dad explain how to drive a car after you got your learners permit.

Careful listening then meant you might get to drive alone when you turned sixteen and pick up little Susie for a drive to the beach parking lot.

Horsefall Beach, Sunset Beach, Bastendorf Beach. Lot’s of beaches where I grew up in North Bend, Oregon.

It gets a little dicey when a police officer hits their lights and knock on the window. Dicier still when you learn little Suzie’s dad is a reserve policeman who listens to the scanner at night.

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What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the words “Mental Health Awareness?”

Some people see a conversation about mental health awareness as a call for help. A plea for rescue.

Don’t be one of those.

Avoid putting someone on your personal suicide watch list if you have those conversations. Careful listening is enough.

During this ongoing covid pandemic we hear a lot about mental health, mostly failing mental health.

Does that mean you need to rush over and collect their knives and ropes and prescription medicines and guns?

Make it part of the conversation and see what they say before you swing into action.

Careful Listening To Gun Talk

In America it’s hard not to have an informative gun talk.

If you didn’t know better you’d think every citizen is born with a gift certificate to Hyatt.

And you wouldn’t be wrong.

But any casual gun talk isn’t a cause to call in the SWAT team, hit the ground, and low crawl out to your car for escape.

I know a man who came across a store of weapons unexpectedly. Like a good citizen they checked out the legal aspects of finding a gun cache.

An auction house was one remedy, but in order to put them up for bid the police had to run the weapons through their system to be sure none were used in criminal activities.

After exploring legal problems the auction house decided to find the owner and return the guns to them.

It was not an ideal outcome, but the guy who found the guns was concerned when the owner turned out to be less than reliable.

What would you do in similar circumstances?

Buy an arsenal, put up a security perimeter around your house, and take tactical urban combat classes a the local range?

Get a concealed carry permit?

Or trust in the goodness and love in the hearts of all men?

Can You Hear Covid Calling

Maybe you’re caught covid twice and see no point in getting vaccinated because of your natural immunity gained the hard way. And because that’s how a MAN does it.

I don’t call bullshit on everything, but when I hear this talk I’m skeptical.

People dodge the covid vaccine for many reasons, some better than others.

Good reasons: compromised immune system, initial bad reaction, living on a mountain top in a hermit hovel.

Bad reasons: Based on your eighth grade science class, you have reservations about the scientific process; you don’t want to turn into a magnet; your uncle’s neighbor’s ex-wife’s third husband said he heard it gives men a soft pud.

Why did this blogger get the shots and booster? Well, let me tell you: I’m not going to be the conduit of disease to my wife, kids, or grandkids. Not going to spew a plume of virus so I wear a mask.

Here’s the hard part to understand. Science isn’t ideological, doesn’t worship a particular deity, and can strike you down whether you live large, small, or somewhere in between. Why not use science as an ally instead of an adversary?

Taking medical advice from hack politicians currying votes, from discredited doctors building a shitty brand, or celebrities and athletes showing their stupid side off the field and screen is no way to go.

If you’re truly doing ‘my research’ then learn what the hell research entails. It’s reading uncomfortable information from books on the top shelf and bottom shelf, so you’ll be working for that knowledge.

It’s not a spoon fed process, so if you count on a one-stop dipshit who gives an answer, a definitive answer to every question, keep looking.

Complicated problems don’t always have canned answers.

If they did, the answer would be get vaccinated and wear a mask.

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