10-4 Good Buddy and Self-Centeredness

10-4 Good buddy.  Does anyone remember CB radios.  If you do, you are old.  I remember sitting in my motor home when I was 8 years old with my younger sister primarily huddled around the CB while my dad drove.  We were thrilled if a trucker would talk to us. We all had handles/code names.  I think mine was Raider Rick.   This was in the olden days in the 70s, far before cell phones.  It was prehistoric.  We used have codes that meant something in order to keep communication brief.  Here were the main ones:

10-1: Receiving poorly.

10-2: Receiving well.

10-3: Stop transmitting.

10-4: Message received.

10-5: Relay message.

10-6: Busy, stand by.

10-7: Out of service.

10-8: In service.

10-9: Repeat message.

10-10: Transmission completed.

10-13: Weather and road conditions.

10-20: What is your location?

10-33: Emergency traffic at this station.

10-37: Wrecker needed at...

10-38: Ambulance needed at...

10-42: Traffic accident at...

10-62: Unable to copy, use phone.

10-100: Bathroom break.

Those were the main ones. Really the truckers used it primarily to fight the loneliness of the open road and to also warn each other of policeman giving tickets.  They called policeman Smokies.  Think of Smokey and the Bandit the Burt Reynolds films of the 70s.  

 It sure was/is a different world.  I did have another good day because I had my girls to distract me from my loneliness again.  I loved having a family, and I loved being loved.  But I need to adjust and that is a process. I don’t want to adjust but the choice is no longer my own.  I just have to trust God continually that this is all part of His plan.  “His ways are not my ways, His plans are not my plans for His ways are higher than my ways and His plans higher than my plans.    I was thinking about why it was so difficult for me to be alone when millions around the world are lonely.  I had a mini-epiphany.  Whenever I’ve gotten myself the most in trouble in life is why I make self-centered decisions.  Those decisions usually never end well for me.  Instead I get the most amount of peace and contentment in life when I put other people’s needs ahead of my own.  I think that is why children are a gift from God.  Because of their needy disposition it’s natural for parents to put their children’s needs (normally speaking) ahead of their own needs.  That to me just seems like the recipe for good mental health. Herein lies my dilemma.  If I am now living alone most of the time, how can I regularly put other people’s needs ahead of my own?  The fact that I’m alone naturally forces me to be more self-centered.  Maybe I need to volunteer more, or become more involved with groups. Right now I work a 40 hour week and work another 10-20 hours are a second job, so there isn’t a ton of time left over.    I don’t like being so self-centered in the in between times.  I know I can take my children to their soccer practices, appointments and more and I’ve been doing that.  I’m learning to enjoy it.  But I don’t want this self-centeredness to be my rule rather than my exception.  

I think I must get this state of mind from my late father.  It’s weird to say that now, Late father.  Growing up I can’t remember him ever putting his own needs ahead of the needs of his family.  He worked hard but never at the expense of us.  Looking back, I’m not even sure what his needs were as he kept them so private.  I think his needs must have been the occasional afternoon nap or laying in the sun for hours on end. I know he all needed us to go to church and was always frustrated when my mother and sisters made us late.  I’ll always remember him marching through the house with his hands in the air “Lets Go, Lets Go, Lets Go he would plead dozens of times each Sunday morning.   My father always did love a hot tub. I think because he grew up without a lot of hot water.  Think about that in Pennsylvania where its gets to be frigid, Hot Water was a luxury.  We are so spoiled today.  He also told me in gym class he had to swim in the pool during the dead of winter.  They didn’t heat the pools back then.  Yes it was indoors, but still the water must have been in the 60s.  He thought if they kicked in the water the motion would heat the pool up.  I/we are so spoiled today.   He modeled what it meant to be self-less.  I think Christ modeled that for us as well.  When in the gospels did it ever show Christ making a self-centered decision. Maybe when he overthrew the tables of the money changers in the temple but that was righteous anger.  You can be angry and not sin as Jesus exhorted us to do.    Not that all self-centeredness is sinful.  Remember they advise parents to put on their own oxygen mask before they put the mask on their children.  That is just logical in case the children might not have the wherewithal to affix your mask if you pass out.  So that’s where Im at.  This new reality of having to be self-centered, and I don’t like it.  I suppose I could put my students needs ahead of my own and I sometimes do that.  This is the process I’m still getting used to doing.  

Today was the first scheduled day of our Funniest Person in the Triangle contest.  The problem is no one showed up. We need a better marketing plan.   These things usually take a while to build up.  Once we get a few people attending they become regulars and then the energy just builds upon itself leading to growth.  This is the fourth iteration that I’ve done with this contest.  I’ve run it in San Francisco, Bahrain, Raleigh, and the second season in Raleigh. I had a couple of broadcasters want to run the show on network TV in Bahrain and Dubai but the deals fell apart.   It’s still a lot of fun.  It’s like “Whose Line Is It Anyways” with me playing the role of Drew Carey.  Because I’ve been doing it so long I’ve been able to come up with several thousand different improv scenarios, some of them are really good.  So with no one showing up, I had a choice to make.  Either I just pack it in and leave, or I make the most of it with my girls.  I chose the latter.  For a good 60 minutes my middle and youngest would act out various improv scenarios with me and we all had a blast.  My youngest is becoming quite the giggler.  A family should laugh a lot together.  It’s been a while since I’ve been in that frame of mind to laugh with my girls.  It sure felt good even if we were the only ones there.