John Y’s Musings from the Middle: Clever Insights

When something you think is interesting isn’t really interesting to someone who tells you it is interesting. (Or things I learned today that I wasn’t expecting to learn)

Today I realized that when you explain what you believe is a uniquely clever and impressive insight and then eagerly wait for the response and your listener responds with only “That is very interesting. I had never thought about it that way before” the listener doesn’t really literally mean he thinks your supposed clever comment is, in fact, interesting.

He also doesn’t regret not having “thought of it that way before.” That is just a polite way to dismiss your imagined clever comment in the same way someone might say to you after you describe what you believe is a unique meal you just ate by saying, “I’d never thought about eating four day old succotash with sardines and ice cream before. That is very interesting.”

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An unhealthy desire to be affiliated with the Ivy League.

When you learn there is a Yale hospital when you are 50 years old and your first thought is “I wonder if I get sick if I could get in?”

And your next thought is, “I bet I could. Finally, a way into the Ivy League for me.”

But when your third thought is to post about it on Facebook, you are reminded that not everyone was meant for the Ivy League. Including you.

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What will happen next?

A friend who is concerned about our nation’s political stand-off and assumes I know a great deal more about politics than I do asked me if I thought things “Would get better soon?”

I wasn’t going to fully answer at first ….but after giving it more thought, will share what will happen.

Yes, it will get better. Only a little at first…but then, in due time, it will getnoticeably better.

Then it will get worse again.

And then after a short while things will briefly improve again –and then get much worse.

Then things will get really, really good. I mean awesome. Just… fantastic.

But then when we are starting to get used to really, really good times, it will all of a sudden get really, really, really, really bad. It will not be as bad as some will be saying but will be seriously bad for awhile. I don’t know the exact date when this really bad part will start….but trust me on this. Bad.

And then it will get better. Not good, mind you. Just better but it will seem like it got good because things will have been bad for so long.

They will stay that way for awhile and then really will get good. But just barely .

Then bad again. And then pretty good again and then very good.

And then we will die.

But stuff will keep getting good and bad; better and worse. But the specifics, to me anyway, start to get murky at this point.

Hope this helps.