Thursday, September 20, 2012

Progress


What Matters Most…..…Commentary by Jim High
Today I want to talk about progress because this past week I was a recipient of a lot of  it in a big way.  Sunday, September 9, I started experiencing mild chest pains, not unlike I had experience several times before, pains that always went away.  Sunday afternoon and evening they didn’t. 

But first let me get back to my topic.  Any study of history is really a study of the progress of mankind.  I don’t think you can find in any sweep of history a time when the world and humanity have not experienced progress and find themselves always better off in the future than they were in the past, maybe not in every specific individual case, but certainly in general over the whole of society.
My family’s history with death proves this point.  Until I was eight years my Great Grandmother and both my Grandfather and Grandmother lived with us on Jefferson Street.   My Great Grandmother died at home, I don’t remember her being sick, at near 100 it was A-G-E, as my Mother use to say.  Her funeral by the way was in the living room of our home, with my brother, sister and I bustled off to someone one else’s house for the day.  That was in 1948.
Two years later my Grandfather contracted pneumonia, was taken to the hospital where he died rather quickly at age 70.  There were no miracle drugs to kill that infection and bacteria in 1950.  Again his funeral was in the family living room with us kids shuffled off to someone else’s home for the day.
Only 13 years later my Dad died of cancer in 1963, at age 53, after a year-long battle with this dread disease.  During his illness, which involved only radiation treatment because no other cancer treatment had been discovered, he had to be moved from the hospital to Dr. Stacy’s office downtown to get this cutting edge medical treatment.  The hospital didn’t have it.  He was bedridden for the whole year of his illness, so we set up the dining room at home as his hospital room.  We even widened a door and built a ramp so we could roll his hospital bed out into his greenhouse in the backyard to see his orchid collection.  When he died, I was 22 and in charge of his funeral, which I decided to hold in Pegues’ new Funeral Chapel.  It was a much better experience I’m sure than the old living room funerals of the past.  I considered it progress.
My Grandmother died peacefully at home in her room at 96, again of A-G-E.  Fast forward to my Mother’s death from a massive heart attack and stroke at age 85 in her bedroom on Jefferson Street, the ambulance came and took her to the hospital where 24 hours later she died peacefully.  That 24 hours cost just over $8,000 in the year 2,000.  My Dad’s year long illness had cost only about $7,000.  Is this progress?  I’m not sure. Maybe we shouldn’t measure death in dollars.  Only one certainty exists in life, however, and it’s that we all die.
Back to last Sunday.  Yes, I was having a heart attack and by 1:15 a.m. I decided to drive myself to the hospital to see about those chest pains.  About eight ER folks worked franticly to get my 214/130 blood pressure down, and do all the other stuff to stabilize me, including the EKG which confirmed the heart attack.  Then it was up to the Cath Lab so the heart specialist could look at my heart.  One 90% blocked artery.  He inserted a little metal stent to open it and hold it open.  And just like that I’m back to normal.  I was in ICU recovering by 3:30 a.m.  Was moved to a private room Monday afternoon and discharged Tuesday afternoon.
What Matters Most………I was told that I could resume my normal activities in 48 hours, which I have.  Now that is true progress, at least in our medical services.  I haven’t gotten the bill for those services yet.  So I’m afraid there’s a lot more progress in that area also.
© 2012 #19  Jim High can be reached at P. O. Box 467, Tupelo, MS 38802-0467

 

 

Monday, August 13, 2012

What Matters Most


 Quotes

We all love quotes because they sum up in a few well chosen words and idea or concept that makes sense.   Sometimes you might even catch yourself saying something, or hear someone else say something that makes you stop and say, “I better write that down.” 

In fact, posting my thoughts on Facebook and elsewhere causes me to say this so much that I do stop and write down those short little phrases and comments that seem to sum up my thoughts.  My list of quotes is growing, maybe if I get famous other people will quoting me.  But until then I’ll just keep reading the quotes of others.

And that’s just what I do every morning.  I always have from eight to ten different books that I read from each morning during the time between 5 a.m. and about 8:30 when I need to begin my work day.  And I always have a book of quotes in the stack.  In fact, right now I have two.

One is the Calendar of Wisdom compiled by Leo Tolstoy.  Each day of the year he has quotes from others and his own thoughts listed.  The day’s quotes usually follow a theme for the day, although he does not announce the theme.  Tolstoy considered this the most important book that he wrote, and he wrote it late in his life. 

I’m reading it through for the third year in a row.  Yes, it’s that good.  I make notes in the margin if I agree with the quote, and sometimes just cross it out if I don’t agree. Some really well known people have had their quotes crossed off by me.  It is interesting to open the book each day and see what I was thinking about the same quote a year ago.

Recently I finished a huge book of quotes called Divine Sparks compiled by Karen Speerstra.  She spent a life time collecting quotes and cataloging them by topic.  Then she selected 500 words that represented the topics and published a book with multiple quotes on each topic from over 1,800 different people.  The book is nearly 600 pages and must have close to 5,000 quotes.  It took me 500 days to read it through the book reading all the quotes for each word.  She subtitled the book, “Collected Wisdom of the Heart” and it is a good course in wisdom.  I’ll probably start reading it again beginning in January of 2013.

My other current quote book is Change Your Life – A Little Book of Big Ideas compiled by Allen Klein.  His big idea quotes are centered on thoughts that follow the letters of the alphabet though he leaves out a few letters.  Speerstra did not however, her first word with quotes was “Abundance” and the last word with quotes was “Zoroastrianism.”

What Matters Most……..why the quotes themselves, of course.  Here is a brief sampling.

“Everything depends on the use to which it is put.”  --Reinhold Niebuhr

“What is moral is what you feel good after; what is immoral is what you feel bad after.”  --Ernest Hemingway

‘The price of anything is the amount of life you pay for it.”  --Henry David Thoreau

“All happy families are like one another; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”  --Leo Tolstoy

“Personally, I have never liked folks who didn't speak plainly.  Communication is meant to be understood, not figured out.”  ---Jim High

© 2012 #16  Jim High can be reached at P. O. Box 467, Tupelo, MS 38802-0467






Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Fantasies or Reality


What Matters Most…….Commentary by Jim High 

Are you worried about the Mayan Calendar that is supposed to say the end of the world is going to be December 21, 2012?  Do you believe Big Foot lives in the woods of the Northwest?  What about flying saucers?  These are all fantasies. 

Let's take flying saucers as an example. You’ve seen lots of photos claiming to be objects that look like flying saucers. We read lots of reports of sightings in the sky, some even by pilots and others who are not idiots, but intelligent responsible people.  We humans have even done some limited space travel ourselves by going to the moon.  

But, there are three kinds of people when it comes to this fantasy.  First are people who say flying saucers are just not real, period.  Second are the people who are flying saucer nuts and believe it all, so much so that some think they have been abducted and taken somewhere.  And third are those who, like me, think there might be something to it, but we have no proof and the evidence does not point to any type of valid logical reasonable explanation of why other worlds would be flying around just looking at us without contacting us directly.  So for now we just say when the evidence shows they are real, we will agree that they are real. 

Which are you as it relates to flying saucers?  And more importantly, which are you about all those other fantasies that exist out there.  It’s always best to live in reality instead of fantasy.  It’s better to rely on facts and hard evidence, not fantasies or wishful thinking. 

“We know our life as it exists only here, in this world; therefore, if our life is to have any meaning, it should be here in this world.” ---Leo Tolstoy
“Do not wish for death just because your life is hard.  All the burdens on your shoulders will help you fulfill your destiny.  The only way to get rid of your burdens is to live your life in such a way that you fulfill your destiny.” ---Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Life is neither suffering nor pleasure, but the business which we have to do, and which we have to finish honestly, up to our life’s end.” ---Alexis De Tocqueville
What Matters Most………………Live in the reality that is before you and don’t let fantasy about anything get in the way of understanding the reality of your life.  Don’t give fantasies a second thought.
© 2012#10  Jim High can be reached at P. O. Box 467, Tupelo, MS 38802-0467


Saturday, March 24, 2012

Humans, Facebook and the Universe

What Matters Most…………………..Commentary by Jim High

The Internet is the most amazing phenomenon to come on the scene in my life time and Facebook is by far the most interesting result.  Google and Wikipedia are probably the most useful, but Facebook is now approaching one billion users worldwide.  Think about that for just a minute and you realize the power it has to connect people, get the word out about anything that’s going on, and to effect real change in our global society.  Never before in the history of humans have we had something as powerful as Facebook, and it’s only just getting started.

As of this week I have just over 900 friends on Facebook.  Some are what we call “FacebookFriends” - meaning we know them only on Facebook and nowhere else.  I have both friends and “Facebook Friends” in foreign countries, and we communicate and message one another from time to time.  People post all kinds of things on Facebook making it the world’s largest conversation.  Some of those conversations turn into debates, and folks seem to be more likely to say things on Facebook that they wouldn’tsay in a regular face to face conversation.

If you pay attention to the posts from others you can learn a lot.  Recently a “Facebook Friend” who likes to post photos from deep space taken by the Hubble telescope posted a color photo of Centaurus A, a galaxy that’s being wracked from within by a massive Black Hole.  On a galactic scale distances are almost irrelevant with galaxies being from 150,000 to 1 million light years across and so far away that it boggles our human perception.  Centaurus A is only 12 million light years away which is practically next door in our observable universe.

But looking at this photo on Facebook got me to thinking, so I posted this comment.  “And we humans think we know everything?  But scientists tell us that 96% of everything in the entire universe is unknown to us.  We can’t see it, but their math says it must be present although they have no idea what it is.  So we know, can see and measure only 4% of the known universe, the rest of it is called Dark Energy and Dark Matter, dark meaning unknown.  But the really big question is that self-conscious human life has evolved only over the last 3 to 6 million years out of the 4 billion years since the formation of planet earth.  And evolution never stops, so we humans are not the end result that most people think we are.  The question then becomes where is evolution taking us, or will the Life Force of the Universe just cast us aside and move on without us?”

Well as you might imagine that comment got the conversation started.  Some thought that we humans didn’t matter at all.  One  person compared our importance in the grand scheme of things to mushrooms that grow on the forest floor.  Someone said we’re just another dust bunny under the sofa that is the universe.  But some felt that we did matter, if only to our world and to our immediate surroundings, friends and loved ones.

To keep the conversation going, I asked, “Is mankind a distraction or an improvement in the process of evolution?”  And I answered my own question by saying that only we humans have the power to decide if we are a distraction or an improvement.  The real question is what will we decide?  Will we destroy our world with nuclear war, or ruin our environment by using up all its resources, or cause global warming that will make earth uninhabitable in another 500 years,or so?

Ancient man wondered what the lights in the night sky were.  Modern man knows what they are, how big other stars and galaxies are, and how far away, but today we wonder why they are there and what it all means.  And in our short lifetimes that average much less than 100 years, does it matter at all why the universe is out there?  I wonder.

What Matters Most……..is that I only know one thing for sure.  The universe does not seem to care about us here on the third rock from the Sun, but at the same time the Laws of the Universe are such that we all get the same treatment and have the same potential.  What we do with that treatment whether it’s good or bad, and with our potential as humans is entirely up to us.  That’s why our individual lives are so important.

© 2012 #6  JimHigh can be reached at P. O. Box 467, Tupelo, MS 38802-0467

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Uncertainty and Risk

What Matters Most……..Commentary by Jim High

Uncertainty and risk are two things most people try to eliminate from their lives, but I hope to explain why in order to really live you must accept some level of uncertainty and risk in your life.  I spent 35 years in the insurance business dealing with uncertainty and risk, but that is not what I’m talking about.  Insurance after all is just a way, with the payment of a monetary premium, to arrange to transfer your uncertainty and risk to some large insurance company.  And the only way they have of taking care of you is with money.  Does any amount of money replace a life, or a home? 
But, while I’m on the topic of insurance, and I do think you should buy it, let me also mention that Risk Management is actually more valuable than insurance, because by analyzing what your risks actually are, and making changes to prevent accidents and problems from developing in the first place, you can keep a lot of the uncertainties from happening.  That’s way better than just getting paid money if they do.

It’s the personal uncertainties and risks of life that I want to talk about.  Most people as I said just try to eliminate any uncertainty and risk from their personal lives, but that can lead to a very dull existence. 
The days of our lives are all we really have in this world, and we ought to make as many of them between birth and death as memorable as we can.  The ones we remember most vividly are the days that were full of uncertainty and risk, and what we did to overcome it with success in spite of anything and everything.  Let me illustrated with a few examples of how uncertainty and risk are actually good for you.

I think of the time when I learned to fly an airplane, and especially my first solo flight.  Talk about risk and uncertainty that was it.  You know it’s coming, but you don’t know when.  Then one day the instructor calmly gets out of the airplane and tells you to take it up for three circles around the airport and three landings all by yourself.  That’s not the time to be afraid, to back out, or to say you are not ready yet, so you do it.  You overcome your uncertainty and you don’t think about the risk, and in return you gain a skill and the feeling deep inside your soul that you can do anything you set your mind to accomplish. And that is one of life’s most valuable lessons.

Another great example is the two month trip I took to Europe with a friend back in 1979.  We bought a VW Diesel Rabbit and took delivery at the airport in Brussels, Belgium, the day we arrived on our flight from Atlanta.  We signed the papers in the airport’s parking garage, loaded our bags and headed out without any reservations for hotels, or even a fixed itinerary for where we would spend the next 60 days. The result of that uncertainty and risk was the most wonderful trip of my life.  Experiences I will never forget as we did things that tourist never get to do.  We never had a reservation, but always found a delightful and interesting place to sleep each night.
Our cheapest hotel room was at the Hotel Iran in Madrid, Spain, just a block from Plaza Mayor for only $7.50 per night.  That’s only $3.75 each.  It was in Madrid that I saw my first and only bullfight.  Our last night in Monte Carlo we gambled at the casino with the last of our French Francs and almost didn’t have enough to pay our bill to the nice French lady at the B & B before heading off to Italy.  In Rome we wanted to find a place near the Spanish Steps area, but have you ever driven yourself into Rome?  We hadn’t either, but we made it, and found a parking garage just a block away where we stored our car while we toured Rome for five days on foot.

When everything in your life is certain it shuts down your thinking and creativity.  And it is thinking new thoughts, asking new questions, and meeting new people, that allow you to create the new experiences that add to the richness of the days of your life.
These two quotes explain why you also need some risk in your life.  From Anais Nin, “And the day comes when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to bloom.”  And from Eudora Welty, “How can you go out on a limb if you don’t know your own tree?”

What Matters Most…….Never fear uncertainty and risk in your life.  Learn to deal with it and in the doing you will discover a most wonderful adventure.
© 2012 #2  Jim High can be reached at P. O. Box 467, Tupelo, MS 38802-0467


Thursday, January 12, 2012

THINK / What's Next

What Matters Most…Commentary by Jim High

Right after I graduated from Mississippi State University several of my college fraternity buddies were hired by IBM.  I went home to take over the operation of our family’s insurance agency due to my Father’s illness.  But my friends and I shared one thing in common, IBM’s famous one word slogan – THINK.
I truly thought it was the best slogan I had ever heard, and in those early days of television everyone heard, or rather saw, the single word, THINK, at the end of every IBM commercial.  Only one word, but it said volumes about what IBM as a company was all about.  And for me it helped me to stay on track to accomplish the enormous task in front of me.  Twenty two years old, my Father with cancer and unable to get out of bed, trying to learn, operate, manage and maintain a customer base that included the City of Tupelo, both the city and county school systems, the largest bank in town at that time, as well as the insurance program for the North Mississippi Medical Center.
After the death of my Father, I also became the provider for my family that consisted of my Mother, Grandmother, brother and sister, as well as the two ladies, and several sub-agents that worked for the agency, so you can understand how important that word –THINK – became to me.  I even cut it out of magazine ads and taped it up in my office.
You see most every problem or challenge you have in life can be handled if you allow yourself to THINK, because it is acting without thinking that causes all the problems.  It worked.  The agency grew and prospered, and so did IBM.  I always wondered why they dropped that slogan.  I’ve never dropped thinking about solutions.
Not too long ago one of the top rated TV shows was West Wing staring Martin Sheen as President Bartlett.  It was on for several years and I watched every episode.  President Bartlett was a President we could all rally around and he must have followed the slogan – THINK – because he always did the right thing, which I’ll admit is easy if you are just following a script, but at least the script writer was thinking.
President Bartlett had a famous phrase he said at least once every episode – “What’s Next.”   I always thought it was a great way to live your life, to accomplish your goals, to get things done.  “What’s Next” – says I’m finished with that, let’s move on.  It was the moving on to “What’s Next” that made the show exciting.  They solved the problems of the country and then moved on.  They never sat and rest on their laurels.  They never worried over the past, or worse lived there.  “What’s Next” says let’s go forward.  So I would suggest that you think about what’s next in your life, your business, your religious beliefs, your family, your health, and every other area of your life. 
Let me apply some of this philosophy to some of Tupelo’s most pressing problems at the current moment realizing that if we – THINK – about them, we can solve them all, and then asking “What’s Next” moves our city forward.
Let’s be realistic and honest when we think about how the Tupelo Public School System lost its excellence.  Let’s fix the problems where ever they are, inside or outside of the school system, and then ask what’s next, so we can continue to improve because nothing is ever perfect.
Does the Major Thoroughfare Program have its eyes set on what’s next?
As wonderful as it is, the new Toyota plant at Blue Springs is almost at full employment of 2,000, and will soon be making 600 Corollas a day.  CDF, What’s Next?
We have, after six years, gotten the results of the railroad study.  We still have the problem, and it is getting worse.  What’s Next?
Soon Tupelo will have a new up-to-date modern Aquatic Center.  What’s Next?
What Matters Most…..….you get the idea!  If we just THINK, all problems are solvable, and if we always ask, “What’s Next,” we will always be moving forward and not backwards.  You might want to write these two ideas down as words to live by and post them on your refrigerator or bathroom mirror, or where ever you post things you never want to forget.
THINK / What’s Next
© 2012 #1  Jim High can be reached at P. O. Box 467, Tupelo, MS 38802-0467