Dart's View of Life, the Universe & Coffee
Suze and I visited Lake June-in-Winter Scrub Preserve State Park this morning. I was hunting the elusive Florida Scrub Jay, but failed. I did however, capture images of a Red Headed Wood Pecker, which is a first for me. I have seen them before but never obtained a good photograph. The bird was about 100 yards or more distant so my zoom was at 400mm. Had to crop the photos to bring them closer. Still, except for slight noise in the background they turned out pretty well.
We arrived in Florida from Boise, Idaho December 30th and moved into our newly constructed home December 31. Unpacking is actually still ongoing at this time. We did manage to get out a couple of times, and these are our first photos since we returned to Florida.
Transitions. Effective December 30th 2020 I am back in Florida. We left Idaho and flew across the Rocky Mountains toward our first stop, Denver.
The Southwest flight was 100% packed. Not one seat empty. I sat in the middle seat at the back of the plane, giving a window seat to my wife a few aisles up. The next flight from Denver to Orlando, Florida was almost four hours, and yep, 100% full. Again, I had the middle seat.
Needless to say we waited a few days after we arrived and then got COVID19 tests.
We grabbed a hotel that accepted cats, and the next morning drove to our new house in the Placid Lakes area, SW of the town of Lake Placid.
Brand new house, literally finished a few days before we moved in. Metal roof, Windguard windows. Beautiful, and 99% good quality work. Sue was very happy.
But, what a transition from Boise, Idaho to South Central Florida! In culture, people,weather, family, friends and just about everything else.
Louie,one of my cats sits on the bed and his furry facial expression represents my feelings as well.
It has been a turbulent year with fires, left wing riots, right wing violence, people of no particular party riots/protests, pandemic, lock downs and the most agonizing presidential election in my memory. So many people I know from the left and the right are afraid and stressed about the conditions of the country and world. With predatory news fomenting fear in order to have higher viewer ratings or more clicks on their websites, it is easy for anyone to fall into this trap. As I have,
This is why we must connect with God on a daily basis. As I have done that this morning, I read the following:
Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever. 1 John 2:15-17
There are dozens more verses in the bible concerning this, so reading this I am wondering why I am so stressed and worried about the country and the world? I grant you we all need to be concerned about our safety and family’s safety. That is normal. And we all have a sense of justice and an idea as to what should be happening in the world, what is right, what is wrong. So there is a need to be aware of the world, and be concerned. But ultimately, the world’s ways are evil. The world is scheduled to end at some point in time. According to the bible, the world is only going to get worse, not better. Eventually, the end will come.
In a sense, we are on a train heading full steam toward a long bridge that is down. Collapsed. So, the world, this train, is heading toward that. There can be no paradise in this world. No heaven on earth. We can find peace, love and happiness within our own small circle of friends and family, through our work, our desires, our hobbies, etc. And yes, by all means we should work to right wrongs, and help people who need help. But do so as a train passenger on a dead end railroad would do it to fellow passengers, to comfort them until the end.
Because if we are of God, it will NOT be the end. It will be the beginning of our eternal life.
I am proud to be an American. But America is changing, as is normal. The world is changing. 10,000 years from now, when we are in the other dimension or heaven or where ever, will we give two cents about America? America is our country. Not our God. We worship God, not a man made government. I think it is important to remember that.
So, I will be concerned about the things occurring in the world, I will do my part to help others, but I am not going to get stress if some say America or the world we know is fading. It’s OK. This is not my home. My home is with the Creator of the Universe.
Just my thoughts.
-Dart
…is to be a recognized writer. To have published enough fiction or humor that I can honestly say that I am a writer. An author. This has been by one and only dream since I was about 11 years old. I had been telling stories, making them up on the fly, for years. As a smaller child, Mario and I would swap stories back and forth, making them up as we spoke. But when I was about 11 years old I actually saved up my money and purchased an Underwood manual typewriter. It weight as much as a small car. Pushing the keys down hard enough to press ink off of the ribbon took muscles for an eleven year old.
I had no idea how to type, so obtained some books on learning. I practiced “She sells sea shells along the sea shore” as well as something about a brown fox jumping over a fence. Whatever, I practiced and practiced. I could not incorporate all of my fingers, and touch typing escaped me. I used two fingers on each hand and occasionally a third or my thumb. Believer it or not, many years later when applying for jobs I always scored above 65 words per minute, at a minimum. Often I scored into the 70s.
Of course, after learning on an iron Underwood typewriter, later on when computer keyboards came along, I still punched those keps like a monster. I wound up going through at least two keyboards a year.
I actually submitted a couple of short science fiction stories to magazines, but failed to be published.
Then, real life hit. College, and then jobs. I spent many years as a bank manager and then 25 years as an Assistant Dean and Director of Financial Aid at a university. Working in management my whole life, I wrote probably 10,000 words a day just in emails and office memos, annual reports and so forth.
What this did was suck all the creativity out of my writing skills. As a young man, I could write beautiful words. But after decades and decades in management, I lost that skill.
Now I am trying to achieve that dream. I have written about 35 short stories, I have two novels hovering about the 30,000 word length, and I have a hundred pieces of poetry, as well as several humor pieces. I have published seven stories.
So, I have a lot of work to do. I have taken an online fiction writing course, I have studied, I have joined a writer’s group. But I need to do more. I especially need to work on regaining that magic I had as a child with words.
Wish me luck..
I am a morning person. At least, after my two mugs of strong coffee. I am exhilarated, just literally filled with creative juices. Unfortunately, mornings are a difficult time to write currently. Too many things to do other than writing, and I have responsibilities.
When the evening comes, my wife goes to bed early to read, and eventually sleep. I don’t hit the sack until at least 1AM. Often 2 or 3. So I have the entire evening, four to six hours, alone and unoccupied. Yet…my creative juices are bone dry. An empty tank.
I sit down at my computer and try to write, and it is as if I have regressed back to Cro-Magnon status. I can barely type out, “The sun was hot. My dog barked. I….whatever”.
I can barely form simple words. Certainly nothing creative at all.
But if I want to be a successful writer, I have to take advantage of the time I have available to write. So, I searched the Internet and have found some suggestions to get me in the writing mood.
I think a great deal, and wonder about things. Today I am asking the question, “Why does depression exist and what is its purpose?” I guess that is two questions.
Anyway, regardless if you believe in a Creator of the universe or just evolution, most things are here for a purpose. (Actually, I happen to believe in a Creator and evolution!). Eyebrows for instance, keep sweat from running down your forehead into your eyes, stinging them. Millions of years ago if you and your buddies were running full tilt trying to escape some large vicious animal, the ones with eyebrows could see better without all that stinging sweat in their eyes, so they escaped. And bred. The eyebrowless ones not so much. That’s evolution. Or, if you believe in a Creator, that is love. God doesn’t want us to always have stinging eyes or be eaten by some animal.
We can also understand the Fight or Flight reaction when faced with danger. If a bobcat leaped out of your linen closet suddenly, fangs the size of carrots, you would immediately have the need to either sock him in the eye or flee down the hallway. So, Fight or Flight is necessary. Fear has its uses too. Fear of losing your job could make you work harder. Fear of Bobcats flinging themselves at you from the linen closet will cause you to always ask your husband to get fresh linen. Anger has its purposes too, as does happiness.
But what purpose is depression?
I am not referring to breaking up with the love of your life and being sad, getting fired sad or other depressions triggered by real events. That’s sort of normal, isn’t it? I am talking about serious depression that seems to come out of nowhere and lasts a few days or in some cases, longer. What purpose does it serve? Does it protect us from something? Does it help us in some manner? I can see losing a job depression might cause one to consider what they did to lose that job and then make adjustments in their life. Although, being fired is bad enough, do we need to be depressed too?
Depression has been with us since the dawn of time. It is reported Eve was so depressed after the talking snake tricked her into eating an apple she refused to talk with Adam for a millennial. Even back then, it was always the husband’s fault.
But as we advanced why didn’t depression fade away? Evolution says the strong survive, the weak don’t. How did the trait of depression continue and in fact, grow more of a problem today?
One theory, formulated by Andy Thomson, a psychiatrist at the University of Virginia and Paul Andrews, an evolutionary psychologist at Virginia Commonwealth University states depression is beneficial. They suggest “… that bouts of depression help people gain perspective through the ways in which negative feelings facilitate analytic thinking.”
People who are depressed tend to focus intensely on the problems at hand and break them into smaller analytic chunks–in effect, depressive feelings enhance our problem solving skills to the point that “people who get more depressed while they are working on complex problems in an intelligence test tend to score higher on the test.”
Depending on what statistics you refer to, anywhere from a third to 80% of Americans are suffering from depression. Since 2020 arrived, with fires, riots, a pandemic, Murder Hornets, disputed elections and so forth, latest statistics say everyone is depressed including our dogs and cats.
I don’t buy that theory though, that depression is beneficial. When I have a case of the blues I rarely solve problems. I usually eat a couple of cartons of Chocolate-Chip Mint ice cream, then get more depressed because I am over weight. And that depression causes me to eat a sack of cookies. So, well, let’s not go there.
Maybe it is just bad brain programming? Pretty much except for writing depressing poetry, sad music or making dark art, any other career or endeavor attempted would be damaged by depression. Do you want a depressed surgeon removing your gall bladder? Ever have a root canal by a depressed dentist?
From my perspective, depression is a net negative. It should have been bred out of the human race by now. The happy survive, the depressed eat more ice cream and get diabetes.
Maybe this is a programming error between our animal selves and our mental/spiritual selves? Like a glitch you might have between a hard drive and motherboard on a computer?
Maybe depression is necessary to handicap the human race. If a large part of the population wasn’t always hampered by depression, we could have invented bigger bombs and space ships to go bomb other solar system planets? Maybe it is hard coded into our DNA to keep us from advancing too fast?
Or maybe depression is designed to make us reach out for help, perhaps connecting to others or to our Creator?
Or maybe depression exists so that others can experience the spiritual benefit of reaching out to help others?
Honestly, I just have no idea why evolution and/or God would allow depression to continue to exist.
References:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/depressions-evolutionary/
By the way, should you actually be depressed while reading this, and you need assistance, you can call one of these national free hotlines.
Dart
I took a spur on the moment drive to Horseshoe Bend as I haven’t been there in a few months. Discovered Rocky Road and Horseshoe Bend Mill Pond.
