The Stoics, the "brand evangelist", and Marjorie's Taper-Breen's vacation snapshots.

I was looking through my index of new podcasts, and came across one entitled, "they may not all like you".

I thought, "this is old hat; I quit working there years ago".  But what lies, and my mother told me everyone would just love me, that they would simply eat me up.  So I don't have to listen to these radicals and heretics.

Or do I?  I'm not a brand, so I'm not interested in opinion-based surveys or what-have-you, "user experience".  Lol.

It was a Stoic philosopher who was accosted by a man and told he didn't like him.  So the Stoic asked why, and the angry man told him why.

The response was that the angry man had overlooked far more of the philosopher's bad traits; indeed, there were plenty of reasons to dislike him.  But how strong are we when we have every reason to condemn, every reason to dislike, but do not indulge?

Sometimes even to be neutral seems an almost unbearable burden when things are tugging at us.  That was the milieu of the Stoic, to remain unflapped in the face of so many enticements.  And just today, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary had the word writ large as an "observable lack of emotion", but that's not necessarily the thing.

Heck, even Solomon spat about a time for all things, even emotional indulgence, but the Stoic must practice being somewhat ready for outcomes, not to ignore them, but to blunt the sting somewhat by imagining sometimes the worst outcomes, and even often imagining also the positive outcomes.

A bit of mental preparation.

"Calling your shot." As it were, I'm going to yell and scream about this.  "Not like me?"  Sure you got the right reason?  I mean, I can be a jerk, a souse, an indulgent little pudding, at times, but you haven't seen that, so are you sure you dislike me under the right pretenses, when I have plenty of other very real bad traits that people may dislike.

Won't ALL like me?  But I moved out of that town.  In Rockingham, I was sure, despite being told otherwise, that I was one of those they loved to hate, or at least, loved to make me the butt of a joke.  But of course, one must not dwell on those things, but tend his own row, and it was occasionally one of those things I would mark bemusedly.  I even once spoke to the open air, "I love you too", or "I think we feel the same way about each other", this city near the edge of forever.  That "I feel the same way" was intended a bit more ominously than it reads.

Has Liz talked to them?

Slothfully, I destroyed 90 minutes this morning, and then rebounded by a longish power walk.  You should have seen me during the ninety minutes, just standing there like a dim wit, inwardly plotting various pleasurable things, but outwardly seeming indolent.  An active mental life, though, can sometimes be marked by an outward wasteland of a lack of physical activity.  I decided I needed to break a sweat, and I did, I felt my legs tiring, minute after minute of power walking, and then I did a "walker's stretch" of the calves and quadriceps, right in the middle of the country road.

What about most of the mothers and children out there?  Is the mother not the child's most enthusiastic brand evangelist?  Is she not usually the dead opposite of a Marjorie Taper Breen?  Do they not some, have to produce pictures to prove that a political opponent, in fact, has sex organs, and what of private property?  When is it expedient?  Paul even spoke of expediency, but threading the needle, cheap points don't land hard, and sometimes the one holding the flame thrower might find he has largely incinerated himself rather than his object.

Walk around with what was private property, and to pop up with "encrypted messages", dubiously, this "oppo-research" for the broadcast journalism major who barely knows how to read, the Fcomplaint box News Channel, the dubious coarsening of the dialogue, hoping to get anyone's attention, but also hopelessly yelling at the their own choir members, and steadily slip-sliding down the hill, lost in their own mudpies and dollar loaves.

What else is going on around America, and further still, the rest of the world?

But then, too, when one is about one's own business, one is less apt to obsess about the private pictures of others, indeed, "civilians".  And what recompense for all, save that all too shall come to pass?