What a sad dissertation on the value of life. Pierre what do you do to
occupy the time that you are not out saving the world, or feeding the
hungry? What do you say to the man who spends a day fishing, or surfing, or
the gal who spends a day shopping and comes home with nothing. Damn you
just wasted another day in your short life. Its not about the $2 switch,
Its about challenging the mind. Can I do this.

Sometimes I just sit on the front porch and watch the sun come up,
sometimes I hike to the top of the hill and watch the whole valley come to
life. Is that a waste of my time given here on earth? No its time doing
what I want to do. An old saying my dad has..."God has given each man here
so many days on earth, but he doesn't count the days he goes fishing." Now
you can substitute whatever you want for fishing but it still rings true.
You can't do 100% work and live a very good life. Take a bit of time to
just watch the grass grow, or fix a $2 switch, its OK.
lg
no neat sig line


"Pierre Bongo" wrote in message
news:b3LXb.39032$yE5.139130@attbi_s54...

1) I'm all for fixing stuff that is fixable and worth fixing - no sense
throwing away something valuable ...however

2) Having saiid that, one needs to keep constantly in mind that the single
most valuable thing one has is ones life, and that it is made up only of
time. It was a bit heartbreaking to hear how you fooled around with a
ceiling fan switch for most of a day, and at the end of it all, all you
had
was a ceiling fan switch. This was an entire day in your one-and-only
life...

3) Here's what I think is the problem:

a) Work is naturally made for a man and a man is made for work, but not
for
its own sake - useless work is an empty life.

b) The hardest work is not the labor itself, but rather the comprehensive
prioritizing of what to do in context of overall life goals, and then the
consistent follow-through on those priorities - all in consideration of
the
shortness of life and the limits of ones personal energy.

c) The reason so many men end up puttering in essentially useless projects
is because: they feel the need to work, but haven't done the hard work of
analyzing their overall objectives. An empty life gnaws at them, and the
"comfort-food" they seek in response is what amounts to essentially
meaningless activity as distraction. The result is that one decides to
waste
a day of ones one-and-only life to tear down and overhaul the $2 valve or
the $3 switch.

4) I'd say: do some heavy lifting what you want your life to account
for
in the end. You already know you need to do this, the indicator of which
is
that you "feel bad" in response to the innate knowledge that a day in your
life traded for a $3 switch was a tragic waste.

..Or maybe this is just obsessive-compulsive disorder that expresses
itself
in compulsive fixing and puttering......