The Rules

It came to my attention recently that there are some unwritten rules to marriage that should be common knowledge, but are not.  When you embark on the journey called marriage, there are certain expectations that we all have.  However, it is entirely likely that the person you married may not be the same person years later.  In fact, you can count on it.  People change.  Interests change.  Lifestyles change.  The people who grow and change together are really lucky.  The rest of us are not as lucky.  We have to go through conflict after conflict, with no seeming end in sight.  Egos get in the way, health suffers, and things that you never thought would happen, do.  The question here is does a point of no return in a marriage exist, or is it just an endless series of b.s. that becomes clear on some level?  Just how supportive do you have to be when your significant other is self-absorbed and turns to someone other than his partner for guidance?  Shouldn't there be a rule of some kind about that?  Since there are no written rules to guide us, I thought I would put a few down in case someone other than me needs a lift.  So here are what I think should be the rules for marriage.

1.  Remember that the person you married is not the same person 30 years later.  We all get older and having the same expectations at 50 that you had at 20 is just unrealistic and patently unfair.  The world has changed around you, so change with it or be left behind.  Sorry if that's a bit blunt, but it is what it is.

2.  If it doesn't fit the marriage, get rid of it.  That goes for all outside relationships.  The marriage should reign higher than any other relationship with the possible exception of the parent-child relationship.  Children require a different kind of attention, but once their needs are attended to, the marriage comes next above any other.

3.  Be kind to your mate.  As your children are growing up, you are growing older, and your mate is growing older as well.  It's a whole series of frustrations that you didn't necessarily expect or want.  Health begins to decline and I guarantee that your spouse is not going to want to hang from chandeliers in her golden years, so have a heart that includes kindness and realism.

4.  Pull your own weight.  No one deserves to have to shoulder the load for everyone else.  It's okay to say no to someone else's baggage.

5.  Listen to your mate without your ego present.  That means listening with an open mind and open heart.  It's never easy to tell someone you care about that they are making a mistake and it will cost them dearly later on.  So put your ego on hold, or you may find one day that your ego is the only thing you have left and it will not have been worth the struggle.

6.  Pick your battles carefully.  I can't say this enough.  Sometimes the little things add up until they spontaneously combust, but let them go when you can.  Save the fireworks for the big things.

7.  Learn to have hope.  Hope is supreme, especially when the hard times come, as they inevitably do.  When you constantly knock someone's hope to the ground, you have killed a part of their spirit.  Hope is a mainstay and MUST be nurtured.  The spirit shrinks away with every chink you put in their hope, so put a big white light around hope and never let it fade away.

8.  Learn when to walk away.  There are no do-overs.  There are some things that just can't be fixed.  Let them go.

Sounds fairly easy, doesn't it?  I lied.  It's not easy.  In fact, it's damn hard.  But if your years together mean anything to you and if you want your life to make sense, consider the fact that not only is your spouse not perfect, but neither are you.  Maybe we all need a reminder of that now and then.  Just remember that you are partners and your partner's life matters to her as much as your own does to you.  And if all else fails, re-read the rules until you can recite them under anesthesia.     

Nazdrowie'

Paczki Puta

The Things We've Seen

     I was watching a local news program this evening, when I heard a story about the very first satellite, that was put into orbit 50 years ago today.  I, incorrectly, guessed that it was Sputnik.  It was not.  It was Telstar, which televised a press conference that included President John F. Kennedy, and was viewed in the (then) Soviet Union.  I decided to do a little research on everything that has happened since the day I was born.

     Dwight D. Eisenhower was president in the year I was born, 1955.  The AFL and CIO unions merged.  UHF television was developed, and Albert Einstein died.  Sugar Ray Robinson won the world boxing championship, and Disneyland opened in Anaheim, California.  Marty, The Seven Year Itch, and The Rose Tattoo topped the box office, while Rock Around the Clock topped the charts along with The Yellow Rose of Texas and Love Is a Many Splendored Thing. 

     In the years that followed, polio was eradicated by a vaccine invented by Dr. Albert Sabin, the first transatlantic telephone cable was launched and Elvis Presley was King.  Grace Kelly became royalty, and the interstate highway system was authorized, thus spurring expansion into the suburbs for the first time.  In 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik (HAH!  I was right!) and the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles.  In 1958, national crazes included the "Cha Cha", Barbie dolls and hula hoops. 

     In 1959, Alaska and Hawaii became states, the St. Lawrence Seaway was completed, and Playboy magazine debuted with Marilyn Monroe as the first centerfold.  Wham-O introduced the Frisbee and New York City considered lobbying for statehood.  In 1960, John F. Kennedy was elected President, black students organized a sit-in at lunch cafeteria in North Carolina and Clark Gable died.

     In 1961, President Kennedy established the Peace Corps, the Berlin Wall was constructed and the Dick Van Dyke Show debuted on television.  In 1962, missile bases were discovered in Cuba, John Glenn becomes the first American to achieve orbit and Marilyn Monroe died. 

     1963 ushered in a very turbulent time when two world leaders died.  John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, and Pope John XXIII died in Rome.  Civil war protests continue and Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech, riveting the nation.  The artificial heart was first used in surgery, and the first successful liver transplant was performed.  Audio cassettes were first introduced, and songs like Go Away Little Girl, It's My Party and Blue Velvet topped the charts.

     In 1964, we saw the Beatles debut on the Ed Sullivan Show, as did Gilligan's Island and three civil rights workers were murdered in Mississippi during "Freedom Summer".  The average cost of a house in 1965 was $13,600 and the average income was $6,450.  Gasoline cost 31 cents per gallon and bread was 21 cents per loaf. 

     Succeeding years saw the first successful moon walk, advances in science and medicine, and the birth of the computer and internet.  We have seen runaway inflation, inability to control the government to the point of the government being unable to control itself, and trends in music that went from the energetic to the unthinkable.  We have seen that America is no longer the land of dreams, where immigrants come to begin a new life free of tyranny.  We have seen our civil liberties pushed to the edge and we are starting to see some start to push back.  How long will it be before this country implodes with gasoline upwards of $3.50 per gallon and price gouging?  When did the "freedom" become lost in the Land of the Free?  We were really great once.  I look at this country and see that it is no longer the land that my great-grandparents fought so hard to come to.  It is now a place to run away from.  My family may be next.  When a family can't make it on a very fixed income and all goods and services keep going up, what's a family to do?  I say we go north to a place where we can once again raise our own food on our own land, hunt and fish, and have our own land to do it on.  Where's the "free" in Freedom now? 

     I love my country.  But I am willing to leave it to find something better.  After all, isn't that what my great-grandparents did?  Isn't a better life what we all want?  I, for one, am pondering.

Nazdrowie'

Paczki Puta

The Things We Aren't... Anymore

     Yesterday, I was blessed to be contacted by an old friend from childhood. This friend was not someone I knew very well, but she knew me well enough to remind me of our childhoods, with both of our fathers working for NCR (National Cash Register) and our respective families going to company picnics and other gatherings. It made me think of all we have lost as a country and how desperately we need to get some of those things back.

     For example, our company held picnics at a local forest preserve, not at a resort or at someone's house. They were unpretentious, as everyone was in the same circumstances and understood that this was a privilege, not an entitlement. We looked forward to those picnics, with unlimited ice cream, hot dogs and cracker jacks, and the games that inevitably followed for both adults and children. Children, of course, won prizes, and I think the adults did too, if memory serves. Adults did things like sack races, egg toss, water balloon toss and horseshoes. We all brought lawn chairs and settled in for a long day of fun. My father's boss, Gene Chalet, would take it upon himself to clean the outhouses the day before the picnic. He said it wasn't beneath him to make sure the outhouses were clean for his employees, and I'm sure he wanted to show that. He always led by example, and I never heard my father or anyone else say a cross word about him. We knew his wife and family, and they knew us.

     My grandparents' companies also treated them well. My grandfather spent his years working for U.S. Steel, and my grandmother worked at American Specialties. Those companies not only held picnics and Christmas parties, but made baseball teams and bowling leagues a part of their employees' existence. It was a way of giving people a life in return for all the employees did for their labor. They understood the sacrifice that employees make when they spend their lifetime dedicated to perhaps the only job they were qualified to do. When my grandfather retired from U.S. Steel, he was given a retirement party, and an award with his 40th year of service. How different that is from today's world.

     Today, I do not see employers appreciating employees as in the past. I see them being brow-beaten and driven to exhaustion with no end in sight. I see pay cuts and health benefits taken away, which was not unheard of in my grandparents' day, but was certainly rare, and pay cuts were done as a reflection of performance. Now it is done as a matter of fact. I see our elders being squeezed out of jobs they have held for a lifetime in favor of new graduates who would work for a lower wage or just to increase profits.  Because they possessed old world values, they never even considered a different job because it would be deemed disloyal. As a result of employers' greed and disregard for the lives of their employees, employees are now reduced to chattel, driven by the verbal whip, and made to feel as if they and their efforts don't matter. No one should ever be made to feel that way. It is an insult to humanity to drive employees to exhaustion while flaunting their personal wealth at their employees' expense.

     So what to do about it? If I had a company, I would most certainly be the exception rather than the rule. Yes, profits are important, but so are people. They are the very legs you stand upon and must be rewarded, not abused. I spent eight years as a department head at the local opera company, and the women who worked for me were well-rewarded. I took on the most difficult performers, i.e., the ones with the biggest egos and kept that stress away from my team. After each closing night, I gave my team a thank you party at a local pub, where all the food and beer were on my dime. There was even a time when I refused a pay increase and asked that the increase be split among "my girls". When I left the opera company, the ladies only stayed around for one season. Having caught up with one of them later on, I asked the reason they didn't stay on and was told, "It wasn't fun anymore without you there." What a wonderful compliment. I guess I did it right.

     There's a lesson here for you, corporate America. You complain that your employees are not loyal to you and yet you give them no reason to be. You take from them without giving in return. You say that having a job should be its own reward, and in a way, you are right. However, if that job does not benefit the employee in his spirit, he will move on to one that does. Let's see you hold onto employees for an entire lifetime. Henry Ford understood what was required when he gave his employees a 40-hour work week instead of working them to death. He knew what it was to come from nothing and make something of his life, and he treated his people well. In return, his employees loved him for it and gave them their trust. Let's see you hold to that standard. I will bet that most of you turn a blind eye to the past, and that is your prerogative. However, remember the old adage that if we do not learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it. We are repeating it now. Are you learning?

Nazdrowie'

Paczki Puta