Mistakes Will Be Made.

"Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life." ~Sophia Loren

I leaned over the side of the boat to wash the fish slime off my hands only to be greeted with “Kerplunk!” My Ray Bans slipped from their perch on the brim of my hat and traveled directly to the bottom of South Manistee Lake. Ohw! That hurt, on so many levels. That undersize largemouth bass I had released moments before was the last thing on my mind.

I felt sick even though I was trying to tell myself that they were just a dumb pair of sunglasses. But my relentlessly unforgiving brain kept up taunting me. “Yeah, just sunglasses. $300 sunglasses. Prescription sunglasses. Only 6 months old. How dumb can you be to place them on top of the brim of your hat to be able to get the hook out of the fish? See, you do so need the bifocals the eye doctor was pushing you to consider. And why no safety strap?”

No, that last thought was a gently echoing message that my wife and fishing partner had moments before delivered to me to consider. In fact it was her bass I had just released that got my hands slimy.

“Why didn’t you have a strap on them like mine have?” she said, “You put this one on my sunglasses for me.”

She was of course right about that. I had spent time rigging a strap for her sunglasses so that just this sort of thing would not happen to her while she was fishing or kayaking. Did I somehow think I was immune to this happening to me?

My point of all this came to me later. After the mosquito repellant dissolving part of my kayak seat later, which after seeing what OFF does to plastic I am having a troubling time thinking about ever spraying it on my skin again. That point is that I am always going to be a victim to doing dumb things. It seems to be a profound part of my nature. Thus far they have not been overly damaging but have been nonetheless annoyingly frequent. Not happening more frequently but kind of consistently constant. Something I am going to have to budget for. Part of the household budget. Mitch’s stupid blunders line item.

Visions Limits

“Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world.” –Arthur Schopenhauer

Tunnel vision. Narrow vision. No vision. Broad Vision. Television. I often wonder what the world around me truly looks like. I know what I see, but is it what others see. I know it isn’t color blind like I see. Red/green colors cause me problems personally so I know the spectrum varies. Maybe to not be red/green color blind is the defect? So the rest of you who see red/green colors are abnormal.

But do people see the same thing when they look at it or do they use their eyes and mind to form the shape, color and movement of the existence they dwell in. Does the mind decide whether it likes something or not, then allow the picture to reflect that prejudice?
The quote from Schopenhauer is actually talking about a different definition of vision. That definition (in my humble opinion) is more in how far or how little we can stretch our minds around new technologies, new ideologies and new futures. And these are amazing leaps of vision that are driving us forward. Often times they are dragging me forward against my will.

I probably look at the time before computers took over the world (yes, they have) and remember the simpler life. Much like my parents remember the time before television. My grandparents generation would have reflected on the time before the telephone, the horseless carriage and expressways.

I try to embrace the new, regardless of how it often makes my skin itch and crawl. At the same time I long for what I grew comfortable with. I wish I could look under the hood of a car and recognize some of the parts. The dipstick for the oil is about the only thing that hasn’t changed in about 50 years.

So I hold onto the simple things that don’t have to be updated by Microsoft and doesn’t require a mouse click or a touch screen. I adapt and utilize those modern technologies and other mechanical things but they don’t give me comfort. Not like my old lawn tractor, acoustic guitar or the pencil that I first wrote this blog with.