Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Lessons Learned This Past Year

- Get your wisdom teeth pulled when you have the chance. If you wait too long, they can't take them out and it leads to lots of trouble.

- Don't give up too early - witness the L.A. Galaxy's championship this year.

- When committing human ashes to the sea from a boat, make sure you do so from the downwind side of the boat.

- Expect your students to amaze you once a week. I consciously tried to do this last semester and I was amazed in each of my classes at least eleven of the fourteen weeks of the term.

- When something mechanical goes wrong, don't make the mistake of combining temperamental pessimism with a limited sense of mechanical insight. Don't assume it can't be helped. Get someone else to take a second look so you won't, for instance, end up bending a car door hinge beyond repair.

- Go ahead and ask God for good things, and don't let your circumstances determine your horizons. I had failed to pray about a constellation of issues for some time because I couldn't see any way they could happen. After several years of grumbling and sadness about this, I prayed and asked and things fell together for me within a month. This gave me the unique feeling of feeling profoundly blessed and profoundly stupid at the same time.

- A cat is going to be a cat, whether you like it or not.

3 comments:

Jeff said...

I learned the ashes lesson from Big Lebowski.

Captain GoBart said...

I am trying the last one, about asking God for things. It is difficult for me, as it seems for you as well. Thanks for leading the way, stumbling as we are, fellow pilgrim.

Anonymous said...

Got my wisdom teeth pulled early.

Sometimes pride and fear of no answer prevents us from asking God for good things. Sometimes it might be our perception that we're being a little selfish.

Cats suck. ;)