BEFORE, NOW AND NEVER

The glorious phases of discovery are truly inspiring at times. First comes the NOW part. That is when you see the blundering consequences from the poorly plan strategies that were drafted BEFORE. It is the time of delusion and stupidity when you naively think that some plan will actually work according to whatever absurd theory you have devised.

When it fails naturally there comes the “adequate measure of acceptance” or the shoulder shrug of “darn I blew it, but I’ll find somebody to blame.” This is followed by the NEVER vow. Those are the ones you make to prevent any epidemic of guilt from knowing how stupid you really were in the past or the even more painful reality that you haven’t got a clue on a way to keep from making the same mistake again.

All of this is called “life” where I live. At least by me. Maybe not by anyone who is still more comfortable in the “tomorrow will be different” state of denial.

As for me, well I do enjoy such state of denial. The more a person lies to himself the less it puts pressure on me to do the same. So call it being lazy, but I certainly enjoy when I don’t have to think as hard about what lie to say because you’ve already done that part for me.

Which is part of the joy of my job as a Mayor and career politician. This like so many things for me is a game. I love second guessing if a person has fumble the ball in terms of their thinking and are looking for a reason to excuse it.

The funny thing is that in my town two groups that might otherwise have nothing in common as a rule both are the most prone to this type of behavior. First of all there are the businessmen. Normally the ones who sort of reside in the gray area of the law in terms of business practices. They love trying to stretch the envelope in terms of seeing how far they can go without getting into trouble for violating some kind of law. So they have every reason to want to conjure up some winning strategy in hopes it will yield them a great profit. Taking risks is no big deal as long as they don’t get caught doing something stupid, which is the difficult part at times. And believe me when they get involved in some shady deal and in happens in my city sooner or late the reality becomes a stream of data that ends up flowing into my office. So we end up having a meeting. Depending on their answers I can be either sympathetic or punitive. It mainly depends on whether there is a profit in it for me. At least I can understand this group since it is all about dollars and sense.

It is the bible thumpers that give me the headaches. When they blunder you can forget them mentioning it or ever in any way trying to do things different. But you know there are times they too cross over the line in terms of the law. Only they blame it on God and generally aren’t the type to want to deal in terms of bucks. So it makes dealing with them on the blunders knowing it isn’t going to enrich my pocket.

It is all life in my city and I’m sure it will be from the “before” times to the “now” and it will never change. That is one nice thing, you can depend upon the stupidity to always be there whether you want it to or not.