Good Morning Digital Neighbors! Happy Tuesday ADD Irregulars, Friends & Refugees, Phamily & Dawn Patrol, Triggeratti & Beautiful Bigots, Seekers of Civility & Sanity, Common Sensers and Liberty Lovers!

How about a quote or two and some commentary? Ageless Wisdom: A Treasury of Quotes to Motivate & Inspire is a good collection of quotes with many familiar quotes on subjects and a fair selection of lesser known ones. I like the book a lot with one little quibbling, I often think that the collator, J. S., Felt, wanted to quote himself a lot in the book. I appreciate his quotes so if he wants to quote himself, I can live with it. It is far more bearable than the members of the Cabal who talk about themselves endlessly and can never pry their inflated egos from the mirror of self-adoration. On to the quotes!

SELF-CONTROL

Until you learn to control your emotions, you will never control your life. - J.S. Felts

A great beginning quote by Mr. Felts. If you make your feelings your reality you will never be a self-possessed person. If you ignore your feelings you will never known yourself or your interior reality. Some people seem to be on a static station in their interior state, something we mention from time to time at Coffee Talk. In the media, the Enemedia, we see endless examples of people whose primary engagement with life is to begin EVERY freaking statement with I feel. . . which is a way of telegraphing for most people that they are finished with growing/changing their mind and all about expressing their opinion. Everyone has an opinions just like an anus, and opinions and anuses share other similarities as well. Momma Peggy had a more crass way of saying it, but I can hear her voice whenever opinions become a topic.

Self-mastery is a difficult thing to maintain, to pay enough attention to your emotions without letting they run the conversation to the determent of reason, data or other facts is difficult. I think good self-depreciating humor helps as well as acknowledging even more that your most treasure opinions and ideas ought to be subject to growth, change or revision. While that sounds like a given it is not, I suspect that many are not as open to growth or changing their mind as they say. Change - conceptually appealing, personally unlikely. Changing, especially if you have a reversal of opinion, runs the risk of losing your connection with people who once shared your same attitude and opinion. Most change and growth intellectually or personally takes courage. While we might be happy to see someone take greater stewardship of their health we are not often happy to see someone move away from opinions/thoughts/attitudes we still advocate or possess. Family & friendship should be able to withstand actually divergent and diverse opinions as long as they are not exclusive or contradictory.

The lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master. - Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

This quote comes to mind with the WEF meeting in Davos, the gathering of the Smugs, deciding what is best for the "little people." The WEF wants to find ways to provide the minimal amount of comfort for the greatest amount of compliance and silence. The WEF is not alone in that, anyone is positions of irresponsible of authority looks for ways to control the masses. Comfort is not evil, but as Gibran states the guest soon becomes the master and we listen to the master all too readily. The love of comfort above all else will lead to a life of compromise, and more often than not the greying of a once vibrant engagement with the world. The loss of risk, the settling for enough, the temptation to rest in comfort, will revert us to infants at the breast happy to be held and fed but not looking for much more out of life. While that is a great state for infants and a dreadful state for adults.

Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it. -Thomas Jefferson, letter to Mrs. Cosway, 12 October 1786

Great quote by one of my favorite founders and presidents. Not a perfect person, but no one is. This quote is one of the things I really enjoy about this collection of quotes, I think Mr. Felts does a great job finding some of the more uncommon ones that help prime the mental pump. If you don't think pleasure comes with a hook, look at the landscape before us as we see the result in lives damaged by excessive pleasure and overindulgence. Yesterday I saw the tripled obesity graph all over twitter. That is fair warning with all of the self-inflicted damage that comes from obesity. Obesity is not something to celebrate, it is a warning that something is out of control. If not out of control, obesity is a sign of eating & exercise suffering from profound neglect. Too much comfort eat and too little exercise self-therapy. Now sign up for Padre's Get off your @ss work-out and table push-aways for a better tomorrow! Happy Tuesday my friends and neighbors!