Simply Me (continued)

Topic #1 - Philosophy (continued)

Chapter 2

“One man’s theology is another man’s belly laugh.” – Robert A. Heinlein

belief [bih-leef]   Noun:               1.  an opinion or conviction;
                                                             2.  confidence in the truth or existence of something 
                                                                   not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof;

                                                             3.  confidence; faith; trust;

                                                             4.  a religious tenet or tenets; religious creed or faith;

faith [feyth]   Noun:                      1.  confidence or trust in a person or thing;

                                                             2.  belief that is not based on proof;

                                                             3.  belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of 

                                                                  religion;

                                                             4. belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of 

                                                                  merit, etc.;

religion [ri-lij-uh n]   Noun:      1.  a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and 
                                                                  purpose of the universe, especially when 
                                                                  considered as the creation of a superhuman 
                                                                  agency or agencies, usually involving devotional 
                                                                  and ritual observances, and often containing a 
                                                                  moral code governing the conduct of human 
                                                                  affairs;

                                                             2.  a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices 

                                                                   generally agreed upon by a number of persons or 

                                                                   sects;

                                                             3.    the body of persons adhering to a particular set of 

                                                                   beliefs and practices; 

spirituality [spir-i-choo-al-i-tee]  Noun:  

                                                              1.  the quality or fact of relating to, or consisting of 

                                                                   spirit; incorporeal;

                                                              2.  incorporeal or immaterial nature;

                                                              3.  predominantly spiritual character as shown in 

                                                                    thought, life, etc.; spiritual tendency or tone;

theology [thee-ol-uh-jee]   Noun:  

                                                              1.  The field of study and analysis concerned with 
                                                                   God and God’s attributes and relations to the 
                                                                   Universe; the study of divine things or religious 
                                                                   truth; divinity;

When most erudite citizens of a cosmopolitan society of the twenty-first century think of “Religion,” they, are usually considering five inter-woven concepts under that one capital “R”: belief, faith, religion, spirituality, and theology. 

Looking at the dictionary definitions at the beginning of this post, you can see that, while ‘belief’ and ‘faith’ are synonyms, they aren’t exactly the same.  It is possible for one to have belief without faith, but not faith without belief.  In other words, you can have a belief in something whether or not you’ve seen evidence of its veracity; while ‘faith’ is believing in something without any sort of evidence, just because something inside you says, “This I Believe.” 

‘Spirituality,’ on the other hand, can be addressed by either faith or belief, as it is concerned with the concept of the immaterial Spirit or Soul.  It has even been applied to situations where there is an absence of belief or faith, i.e. when atheists use either “The Spirit of Man” or “The Human Spirit” to define one or more of the intangibles of the Human mind, such as: the drive to overcome and survive insurmountable odds, the ability to use intuitive reasoning to come to an accurate conclusion from what appears to be insufficient data, and the ability of the subconscious to complete a puzzle from a few disparate pieces.  Then there is the spirituality aspect of ‘religion,’ with a little “r.”

Small “r” religion is the application and practice of the various systems of belief and faith, once they’ve been codified, chronicled, and consecrated.  It is the collected trappings in which we enshroud our intangible beliefs; the “garment of faith,’ as it was defined by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  It can include something as large, old, and ritualized as the worship services of the Roman Catholic Church, or something as small, recent, and casual as the tradition a collegiate athletic team has of touching a specific item for luck before a game.  But, no matter the age, complexity, or size, many, if not all, religions have some sort of spiritual aspect or consideration, be it the one shot at Salvation of an Immortal Soul, the continued Reincarnation of a Soul in the Search for Enlightenment, or the temporary inhabitation of a ‘meat puppet’ by some Great Celestial Being.  There are, however, four hallmarks shared by all religions: that only certain beliefs and practices are sanctioned; that engaging in anything taboo results in the transgressor being chastened, often severely; that some, if not all, sanctioned practices are ceremonially engaged in at very specific places and times; and that all beliefs and practices, both prescribed and proscribed, are passed down to successive generations in such a way as to enshrine said beliefs and practices as necessary cultural habits, and ensure their accurate and faithful preservation and adherence. 

Finally, theology is a sub-category of Philosophy that is part Ethics and part Metaphysics.  It’s the study of the divinity and truth of religion in general, or of a specific religion.  As such, it can cover the belief and faith of the adherents of religion, any divinely required moral codes and their relationship to the spirit, how the tenets of religion correlate with Truth, how divinity figures into the creation and management of the Universe, and the nature and scope of divine revelation in a faith-based belief system.  As you can see, theology touches on all aspects of capital “R” Religion.

So, I imagine that, by now, if your eyes aren’t starting to glaze over, you’re asking yourself, “Where’s the conflict?  Where’s the heresy?  Where does he start a Jihad?”  Well, reach not for the new Bourne story (Spoiler Alert: David comes out of hiding and is forced to do violence on shadowy types in order to save someone close to him; the movie version will contain lots of car chases and shaky cameras.) nor grab the newest George R. R. Martin novel (Spoiler Alert: he kills off half of the main characters about three fifths of the way through the book.), because here’s where the discussion gets interesting.

Next time, we look at the God of Abraham.  Until then, Be Well...

© James P. Rice 2011, 2016

Simply Me (continued)

Topic #1 - Philosophy (continued)

"Philosophy is a walk on slippery rocks..." - Edie Brickell

      Hello again, friends and family!  As I mentioned last time, the topic of 'Philosophy' is much, much more than an individual’s Core Personal Philosophy.  In fact, it is such a voluminous subject that pretty much everything I plan to discuss about "Simply Me" fits into one of the three traditional branches of Philosophy: Natural Philosophy; Moral Philosophy; or Metaphysical Philosophy (or simply Metaphysics).

Natural Philosophy, or Natural Science, as it’s known these days, is the aggregate of the various sciences that deal with all the objects and processes in the Universe that can be observed, described, predicted, empirically tested, and understood.  The hallmark of these various fields of Natural Science is that accuracy, quality, and validity of the empirical evidence is confirmed by the repeatability of the findings.  This branch of Philosophy is further divided into two principle branches: life sciences and physical sciences; with life sciences comprising the fields that involve the study of living organisms (such as anatomy, botany, genetics, molecular biology, and zoology), and physical sciences comprising the fields that study non-living systems (such as astronomy, chemistry, earth sciences, and physics).  Human history is replete with men and women who applied their Human Reasoning to ascertain bits and pieces of the fundamentals of nature; intellectual heroes such as Leucippus, Pythagoras, Euclid, Aristotle, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Hypatia of Alexandria, Claudius Ptolemy, Jabir ibn Hayyan, Harun al-Rashid, Abu Nasr Mansur, Hildegard of Bingen, Thomas Aquinas, Galileo Galilei, Maria Winkelmann, Tyco Brahe, Maria Sybilla Merian, John Locke, Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, Joseph Priestley, Thomas Jefferson, Antoine Lavoisier, Caroline Herschel, Marie Sklodowska-Curie, Maria Mitchell, Arthur Rudolph, Lise Meitner, Otto Hahn, Inge Lehmann, Emmy Noether, Wernher von Braun, Alan Turing, Albert Einstein, Chien-Shiung Wu, Arthur C. Clarke, Tikvah Alper, Isaac Asimov, Marvin Minsky, John McCarthy, Virginia Gerstenfeld Heinlein, Jane Goodall, Steve Wozniak, Robert Metcalf, and Robert Jarvik.  This may seem like a series of ‘begats’ out of the Old Testament, but each of these individuals, and many more like them, should be mentioned, and often, for the contributions they each made to promote the advancement of Human Knowledge; oft times at the expense of their own lives as they shook up the hide-bound beliefs of their respective times. 

The second Branch of Philosophy is Moral Philosophy, more commonly known as Ethics.  It’s the Branch of Philosophy that focuses on codifying, defending, and recommending the concepts of Right and Wrong conduct; seeking to resolve questions of Human Morality by defining such concepts as Good and Evil, Right and Wrong, Virtue and Vice, and Justice and Crime.  The three major fields of Moral Philosophy are Applied Ethics (the study of an individual’s obligated actions in any given situation), Meta Ethics (the theoretical study of the meaning and reference points of a hypothesis of morality, and the relation of said hypothesis to Truth), and Normative Ethics (the study of how a person determines the moral course of action in any given situation encountered in that person’s daily life).  Like Natural Philosophy, Moral Philosophy has had great Human thinkers over the last three millennia: Ptahhotep, Vyasa, Hammurabi, Rishi Narayana, Rishabha Dev, Lao Tzu, Zarathustra, Kanada, Thales, Ezekiel, Siddhartha Gautama, Nahum, Cyrus the Great, Pythagoras, Leucippus, Euclid, Confucius, Plato, Boethius, Diogenes of Sinope, Aristotle, Mo Tzu, Epicurus, Han Fei, Archimedes, Marcus Tullius Cicero, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Philo of Alexandria, Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius, Augustine of Hippo, al-Kindi, Johannes Eriugena, Ibn Rushd, Ibn Khaldun, Anselm of Canterbury, William of Ockham, Thomas Aquinas, Niccolo Machiavelli, Desiderius Erasmus, Martin Luther, Francis Bacon, Rene` Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, Thomas Jefferson, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ayn Rand, and so many more.  Each of these Philosophers, within their various cultures, have tried to use their Reason to analyze and define the morality of every facet of everyday life, as well as the ethical ramifications of the practical application in the real world of the theoretical research of any of the fields of Natural Philosophy, often finding themselves opposing conventional wisdom.

The final branch of Philosophy is Metaphysics.  This particular branch of Philosophy is a bit more difficult to define as it deals with intangibles, concerned as it is with explaining the fundamental nature of Being and the various elements in the Universe that influence that Being; e.g., the dimensions of space and time, objects that occupy said space and time, cause and effect, possibility, uncertainty, and even existence itself.  The three principle categories of Metaphysical Philosophy are: Cosmology (the study of the origin, evolution, structure, dynamics, and eventual end of the physical and spiritual Universe); Epistemology (the study of the nature and scope of knowledge and justified belief, sometimes referred to as the “Theory of Knowledge”); and Ontology (the study of all the states and categories of Being and their relations, or, to put it more plainly, it basically deals with the what, how, and where of existence).  Unfortunately, because Metaphysics deals with so much that is intangible, the various metaphysical fields tend to be fraught with charlatans and grifters, preying on the desperate, the gullible, and the ignorant.  But, frauds aside, many of history’s great thinkers have tackled the Metaphysics of the Universe: Anselm of Canterbury, Thomas Aquinas, Bertrand Russell, Aristotle, Plato, Jean-Paul Sartre, Rene’ Descartes, Immanuel Kant, Leucippus, John Locke, Baruch Spinoza, Fyodor Dostoevsky, William of Ockham, Al-Ghazali, Friedrich Nietzsche, Werner Heisenberg, Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Albert Einstein, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Martin Heidegger, just to name a few.

You may have noticed that a number of the Great Philosophers are listed in more than one branch of Philosophy.  It’s because every field of Philosophy is intertwined; each field of study leading to questions in another.  The interdisciplinary overlap had (and still has) Astronomers studying Epistemology, Biologists looking into Ethics, Computer Programmers considering Ontology. 

As you can see from my little summary of the topic, to say, “Let’s talk Philosophy,” can mean just about anything.  Therefore, to help things along, I’m going to break up the subjects I discuss into chew-able bites.  Going forward, most of these subjects will be addressed within their respective sub-categories.  For now, as I continue to delve into ‘Philosophy’, I’ll be discussing two things: my own Core Personal Philosophy, and what, beyond Personal Philosophy, the Average Jane and Joe in our culture thinks of when he, or she, hears the “P” word; namely Belief, Faith, Religion, and Spirituality.  Yep, next time I’m going to jump right in and lay out my positions on the quartet of subjects that has alternately caused both, the greatest comfort, and the greatest misery, in the history of Humanity.

Until then, Be Well...

© James P. Rice 2011, 2016

Simply Me (continued)

In which out hero engages in some serious navel-gazing...

Topic #1 - Philosphy

“I yam what I yam and that’s all that I yam!” – Popeye the Sailor

philosophy [fi-los-uh-fee] Noun:   1.  the rational investigation of the truths 

                                                       and principles of being, knowledge, or 

                                                       conduct;

2.  a particular system of thought based on such study or investigation;

I promised some serious navel-gazing, so what better place to start our journey than in the Land of Navel-Gazing, Philosophy.

When looking at what makes a person what he, or she, is at the moment, this is a good place to start.  There really isn’t anything more personal than an individual’s personal philosophy.  It’s the summary of the Sum of all those myriad physical and metaphysical parts in the calculus statement of the Self that I mentioned in the previous post.

A person’s core philosophy is the foundation on which is built the structure of their Being.  In computer terms, it is to the individual what the Registry is to the Windows operating system: i.e. it contains all the configuration information that tells that person how to behave within certain parameters.  To use a business concept, it is their Mission Statement.  Even before you get into the meat and potatoes of someone’s core philosophy, just it’s general nature and structure can tell you quite a bit about that individual: is their philosophy ambiguous and unfocused, subject to a variety of interpretations or frequent revisions; or is it clear and concise, orderly, succinctly defined, and as difficult to modify as something engraved on a steel plate?  Without knowing any of the details of their personal philosophies, the first person I described would probably be viewed as capricious and flighty, possibly an air-head, and most likely prone to practicing ‘situational ethics’; while the second would most likely be viewed as focused, precise, maybe a little OCD (or CDO: those of us who have it understand), rigid and unyielding, most likely unwilling to compromise.

That, however, would be the epitome of ‘judging a book by its cover’.  Things aren’t always what they seem at first glance.  Look at it this way: the body of the car may have some dents, dings, and scratches in it.  There may even be a few patches of Bondo and primer.  But that doesn’t mean that, when you pop the hood, you won’t find a clean, carefully-maintained beauty of a supercharged V-8 purring like a kitten and ready to chew the rubber off the wheels when the throttle is opened up.  While your first impressions of Personal Philosophy 1 and Personal Philosophy 2 may be correct, the same two philosophies could be described by someone else thusly: the first person is open-minded and willing to embrace new cultures, experiences, and ideas; while the second person is concise, organized, and firm in their convictions.  In other words, the personal philosophy of the Observer often colors the lens through which the personal philosophy of the Observed is viewed.

So, where am I going with this?  Simple.  This is the introduction to me proffering my own personal philosophy for your perusal.  I briefly touched on some of it in the Prologue, but now, I’d like to provide to you my core programming.  So, without further ado, I present to you, dear reader, my Foundational Principles (in no particular order):

1.    I am a Christian in that I believe in YHWH, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Moses; and that the Lord came to Earth in the form of a mortal man; to live among the people and become the Sacrifice to seal a new Covenant with Humanity.  I’ve seen too many Wonders and Miracles in my life to not believe, particularly the two Miracles that were the births of my daughters.  We’ll get more into this later;

2.    I try my hardest to live my life by the Golden Rule: Treat others as you wish them to treat you, not necessarily as they actually treat you.  I don’t always succeed, but I do always try;

3.    I believe that Life is Sacred.  All Life.  Except cockroaches.  And spiders.  And mosquitos.  This may seem odd, even a bit hypocritical (except the creepy-crawly part), to those who know I support the Death Penalty and that I’m an unrepentant carnivore (okay, omnivore with carnivorous leanings).  I’ll also go into more detail in future posts regarding my stances on Life and Death;

4.    I love most people to some extent or another, but I have a completely Unconditional Love for my family and some very select, special friends.  I may not like some of the things they do, I may completely disagree with them politically, and I may even get angry with some of their actions from time to time, but it never diminishes my Unconditional Love for them.  You’ll notice I said “most people.”  This is because there are a handful of people sprinkled throughout my life who have earned my animosity.  This animosity has usually been rooted in feelings of pity and disappointment for that person, rather than hatred.  I have rarely felt true Hatred in my life, even though I have said, “I hate you!” in anger.  I must admit, though, that I have experienced a few times that burning, unbridled Hatred for another Human Being.  Thankfully, though, those instances have been extremely few and far between;

5.    My Loyalty is hard won, but even harder lost.  It’s been pointed out to me that I’m loyal to a fault; that I will often continue to stand by someone or something long past when I should have walked away;

6.    I believe that the primary thing that sets Human Beings apart from, and above, the animals on this planet is the gift of Free Will bestowed upon us by our Creator.  Free Will gives good ol’ H. Sapiens the ability to choose to act against his instinctual nature.  No matter how smart your favorite critter is, with the very few exceptions that prove the rule, animals cannot act against their instincts;

7.    I believe that we each have a Purpose in Life, and that it is our responsibility to discover it, set ourselves upon that path, and kick and scratch and claw to fulfill that Purpose.  As Aristotle put it, “where your talents and the needs of the world cross, there lies your vocation.” 

8.    I do not believe in predestination; that little Free Will thing makes it impossible.  But our Free Will means that we can actually choose to turn our backs upon our “First, Best Destiny,” as Mr. Spock put it, at any time and tread upon a different path;

9.    Again, because of Free Will, I believe that everyone, no matter how low they sink or how far down the path of Evil they go, experiences critical “pivot points” in their lives, to co-opt a term I first heard used in this way by Glenn Beck.  These are moments that present a person with choices they can make to turn their lives around, to grow and make themselves a better person, and to redeem themselves;

10.  I believe that, in addition to Free Will, we have another characteristic that differentiates us from the animals: the ability to Reason.  Our Creator granted us with the acumen to look at the Universe around us and gradually discern its inner workings;

11.  I believe in personal Honor; that an individual is only as good as his word.  I strive every day of my life to uphold this principle, so that those who have dealings with me know that they can count on me to always honor my commitments, even if those commitments leave me holding the short end of the stick.  People of ill will and intent can take away a person’s property, freedom, or even his life, but the only way a person can lose his integrity is to willingly surrender it;

12.  I believe that all people, but especially children, must live with the consequences of their actions; though the consequences can be somewhat mitigated for children.  Even if they apologize and are honestly contrite, everyone must learn that they can’t make the consequences of a poor choice just go away by saying, “I’m sorry”;

13.  I believe that Right is Right and Wrong is Wrong and never the twain shall meet.  Many people today place great stock in the concept of compromise in every situation; the philosophy that everything is shades of gray … that there are no absolutes of Right and Wrong.  There are two old adages that describe how I feel about the via media: “If you sit in the middle of the road, all that’ll happen is you’ll get run over;” and, “Anyone who won’t stand for something will fall for anything.”

14.  Further, I believe that it is just as important to do the Right Thing when no one is looking as it is to do it when being observed, maybe even more so;

15.  I also believe in the dichotomy of Good and Evil.  The Universe abhors a vacuum; for Good to exist, it must be balanced by Evil, and vice-versa.  The problem is that this is another area where our modern society has blurred the boundaries; painting every conflict in the gray shades of compromise, if not completely reversing the roles of these ancient adversaries.  Ayn Rand expressed it best when she wrote in Atlas Shrugged, “In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win.  In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.”

16.  I believe that most people are born with an equal propensity for Good and Evil, and that, with the exception of an extremely rare few, the environment in which a child is raised is what ultimately determines how Good or how Evil that child will become;

17.  I firmly believe in Soul Mates.  I should, I married mine.  I believe that, somewhere out there, in the big, wide world, there is a special someone for everyone.  A partner with whom you will create a special synergistic spark that, without your specific pairing, the world will lack; 

18.  I do not believe that marriage is a 50-50 endeavor.  I believe that it is a 100-100 endeavor.  Both parties in the marriage must give 100% to their partner.  Any marriage where both people are only half-way trying is doomed to failure;

19.  I also believe that, in addition to your Soul Mate, there are several people out there that I like to call, “Soul Buddies.”  These are people you meet with whom you have a special connection … people with whom, for no known reason, you just hit it off from the start.  After meeting, you may not even see your Soul Buddy for years at a time, but when you do, it’s as if no time at all has passed;

20.  I do not believe that the end ever justifies the means.  If something is morally or ethically wrong in one situation, then it is wrong in all situations.  Claiming a noble motive for ignoble actions is just an attempt to legitimize bad, lazy behavior;

21.  I believe that the United States of America, warts and all, is the best thing to ever happen to the Human Race.  We may have hit some bumps and taken some wrong turns along the way, but our Constitutional Republic has provided more Freedom and created more general prosperity than any other system of government in Human History.  I’ll get into how I came by this conviction in future posts;

      So, there you have it: me, in a very large nut shell.  Or is it?  We actually have quite a bit more to cover; this is just the Foundation of the Structure-That-is-Me.  Why, in the subject of Philosophy alone, we’ve barely scratched the surface.  It is much, much more than an individual’s Core Personal Philosophy.

      Next time, we'll start looking at the three traditional branches of Philosophy: Natural Philosophy; Moral Philosophy; or Metaphysical Philosophy (or simply Metaphysics).  Until then, Be Well...

© James P. Rice 2011, 2016

Rant Time! pt. 2

Good day, family and friends!  Let's jump in and see if I can finish this rant I started in May 2011 ...

·  Family (continued): 

My oldest daughter has been burdened with the lion’s share of our family’s medical issues.  Starting when she was in middle school, she has suffered from repeat, chronic UTI’s, migraines, and sinus infections that led to two surgeries.  When she hit high school, she continued to suffer from these things, but the migraines got worse and she ended up with Cancer (and more surgeries).  On top of this, her various maladies and their treatments led to her developing mental issues that ultimately led to a quack mixing the wrong medications within her and, as a result, she now has to deal with periodic seizures for the rest of her life. 

I love both of my daughters unconditionally.  However, I do not have to like the things they do.  For the most part, I have no problems with my youngest.  She is basically a ‘mini-Me.’  My oldest, however, is a huge source of stress for me.  The way she acts because of the mental issues she developed, added to her anarcho-liberal political philosophy, makes it impossible for her and me to live under the same roof.  We have actually had some serious, screaming fights that ended up with more than one door being slammed.  Some of these have been severe enough that I would find myself wishing that she was just completely out of my life.  Then I would sink into a deep depression, condemning myself for daring to think that about my own child.  Out of shame, I would inevitably back off and become passive around her which would inevitably lead to her treating me more and more poorly until I was nothing more than an indentured servant to her which would lead to me finally blowing up and having a serious, screaming fight.  It has been the epitome of a vicious circle.

So, there you are.  The primary points of stress that have fed my depression.  And, of course, all of these things have led to issues with my own health.

In late May 2010, I’d been feeling run down and noticed that, no matter how long I slept, I would wake up feeling as if I hadn’t slept at all,  So, I went to a doctor who sent me to a Neurologist who did tests and took scans and determined that I didn’t have any cancers or tumors, so he had me do a sleep study.  They determined that I had severe Sleep Apnea (I was actually waking up over 80 times per hour.  Basically, I was only sleeping for about 40 – 45 seconds at a time.  So, in July 2010, I began sleeping with a C-PAP machine.

It made quite a difference.  After the first 90 days, I was only waking up an average of 3 times per night, not per hour.  I was finally getting good REM sleep.  I started feeling better.  During this time I also finally found my “Happy Place.”

Everyone has a “Happy Place.”  For some, it is just a pleasant image in their imagination they use when they need to calm down.  For some, it was a place they visited once upon a time that provides them with warm, pleasant memories.  For a small, lucky percentage of the population, it is an actual place to which they can occasionally retreat to revive their bodies, minds, and spirits.  As I mentioned, I started taking the occasional acting gig in August 2008 to bring a few bucks into the household until I got a “real” job.  In May 2010, my wife and youngest daughter saw that the Texas Renaissance Festival was holding auditions for their Performance Company.  They talked me into auditioning.  At the time, I was under the impression that all the performers at all renaissance festivals supplied their own period costumes.  The only ‘garb’ I had was a set of black robes that could be used as either a wizard or medieval priest, depending on how it is accessorized.  So, I auditioned to be just a ‘roaming priest’ for TRF.  I was absolutely stunned when the Producer for TRF called me and offered me the role of ‘King of Germany.’  I cheerfully accepted, not knowing what I was really getting into.

From the first days of rehearsals at TRF, I had a feeling of ‘home.’  With the exception of the Drama Club in high school, I cannot remember any place or group that has so quickly made me feel such a sense of belonging down to the very core of my being.  By the end of the 2010 season at TRF, I knew I had well and truly found my “Happy Place.”  What does this have to do with my health, you may be wondering?  Well, I’ll tell you.

Working at the Texas Renaissance Festival is a labor of love.  Believe me, I ain’t doing it for the money!  My role at TRF and all of my Faire Family is basically a form of psychological therapy for me.  For 3½ months a year (rehearsals and performances), I am in a place whose very existence lifts my spirit, provides me with a basic physical workout, and keeps me outside, bringing joy to peoples’ lives.  Don’t get me wrong: it is hard work.  Short of lightning, floods, sleet, or fire, we are out there performing; in temperatures ranging from 113 Degrees to 25 Degrees Fahrenheit, in conditions from glaring sun to heavy rain, for up to 12 hours each day.  And I am sad every year when the Faire season ends.

Between my C-PAP and TRF, I was feeling better than I had for some time.  I still had my periodic “black days,” when what I now know is full-blown Depression hits the hardest (such as the day I started this Rant), By the end of my second Season at TRF (Dec 2011), I was 69 pounds lighter than I’d been on the day I originally auditioned.  However, by March 2012, I had regained 40 of those lost pounds.  I was starting to wake feeling unrested again.  I had my C-PAP checked out.  It was working properly and showed I was still only waking up 3 – 4 times per night.  Then, in April, a blood test showed that my Thyroid had decided to call it quits.  As one of my doctors put it, with my Thyroid MIA, I could go outside and eat nothing but grass and I’ll keep gaining weight.

So, I was placed on Thyroid Replacement Therapy: a little pill that I have to take at the same time every day for the rest of my life.  But, it will still be exponentially more difficult now for me to lose weight.  Add to that the problem that I have hit a plateau with my Apnea and my mental condition started to deteriorate.  The 2012 Faire season (Aug – Nov 2012) gave me a little lift, but I was still slipping into my “black days” more and more often.  The final straw was when I went through my records and determined that, as of 31 December 2012, I had submitted 1104 applications for employment, had only 39 primary interviews, 7 second interviews, and no ‘regular’ job.  In 4½ years, I have only been able to get the occasional acting gig, temp job, seasonal job, or short-term contract.  By the end of January 2013, I finally admitted that I could no longer handle this by myself.  So, I was put in contact with a Counselor through my wife’s employer’s Employee Assistance Program.

Through the EAP, each of us in the family are entitled to 8 no-cost Counseling sessions each year.  So, I began to speak with a Counselor who, after the third session, was sure I was suffering from Major Depression with Severe Anxiety.  She referred me to a psychiatrist who was finally able to see me at the end of April 2013.  He put me on a medication that would treat both my depression and my chronic pain.  It helped a little, but I always felt like I was being ‘numbed;’ that my physical and mental pain was just being held at bay and not being dealt with.  Everything finally came to a head in August of 2013.

My various doctors and I had determined that my mental state (most likely my Anxiety) was keeping me from getting a good, deep REM sleep at night, even with the C-PAP.  This was actually feeding the Depression and Anxiety.  Add to that the stress of having my oldest daughter and her son living under our roof again and a strange side effect of my anti-depression/pain medicine, and it all became too much (it appears that the medicine I was taking starts out by making the user a little drowsy [I felt like a zombie the first day], then flips its effects after 8 – 10 days and instead makes the user jittery.  After that first day, I started taking the medicine at night, just before bed.  Is it any wonder I wasn’t getting REM sleep?).  On 20 August 2013, I completely blew a gasket and make a vague threat about ending my life. 

Always before, my Depression had led me to just wish that all the pain … physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual … would just end.  It was what my counselor and my psychiatrist both called “passive terminal thoughts.”  That night, it was different.  For the first time in my existence, I went from saying, “I wish I’d just die,” to, “I should just kill myself.”  My wonderful wife was frightened.  She recognized that this was a major shift in my thinking.  So she stayed with me and helped me to calm down.  I ended up going to a local ER and told them what happened, spoke with one of their mental health counselors, and together with him and my wife, determined that I needed to spend a few days in a mental health facility.  I ended up spending a week there.

I’m not going to go into details other than to say that I was introduced to DBT therapy, which has helped me tremendously, and that whenever I would go over with any of the staff or other patients what I had been experiencing over the previous 4 – 5 years, every one of them said, “I would never have lasted as long as you did.  I would have ended up in here 2 years ago!”  Many people in my life over the last half-century have tried to tell me I’m something special.  I always pointed to my failures as proof that I wasn’t.  It was good to have people who did not love me or have any sort of vested interest in me telling me how special I am; telling me how tough and resilient I have been up until now, and telling me it’s okay if I let things affect me and wash through me, as long as I don’t let them keep me down.

Now, here I am.  It’s March 2014, two years and ten months since I began this Rant.  I found it to be just as relevant now as it was when I began it in May 2011, possibly even more so.  My stay in the hospital helped me to balance out and regulate all of my various medications and gave me tools to use with my mental health issues.  As of 1 January 2014, I am up to 1217 submitted applications, but no job.  After a 3-week hiatus, we have electricity again in our home, but our refrigerator gave up the ghost a bit over a year ago, and our HVAC system quit 3 years ago and needs to be completely replaced (lowest bid so far is $4200).  I am back to ‘putting on my brave face’ for most of the public.  If anyone discovers our home situation, I shrug and say, “Eh.  I’m a Survivor.”  Day by day, I pray for an end to our travails so that my wife won’t have to live like this any longer.  I continue to work with anyone I can find to see what I am doing wrong, to tweak my resume, to get advice on programs that might allow me to retrain for a new job.  I haven’t given up, not by a long shot.  I thank God that He has blessed me with special people in my life, from my Faire Family to a good friend who is letting me help him start a new business, and in return letting me get training on new business applications to make myself more marketable, who have all worked to help my family and me through this ‘rough patch.’  If you are one of those people and are reading this, “thank you” does not even begin to express the appreciation I feel for all you have done.  God bless you all.

Until next time, best regards...

© James P. Rice 2011, 2014

Rant Time!

Good evening, family and friends!

Well, it's been almost 3 years since my last post.  I actually found this rant that I'd started back in May 2011 and never finished, so I'd like to go ahead and post it now.  I don't have internet at home, but I'm going to try to get this thing going on at least a semi-regular basis again and tie up some loose ends.  So, from May 2011, here is a nice, big rant ...


I am Depressed.

I'm not "down" or "bummed" or "blue" or "feeling low." I am out-and-out depressed.

I was originally diagnosed as being "borderline clinically depressed" in 1993, though I believe I've been experiencing this level of depression off and on since at least 1978.

I'm part of one of the last generations to be told to "man up and tough it out." We weren't taught that we were blameless victims...that if we didn't make the effort to behave at school, it was because we needed a 'happy pill'. Instead, we were taught that life is full of ups and downs; that for every joy there is a sorrow, for every high there is a low; that there are certain standards of behavior that must be met in spite of our mood. We were taught that part of growing up and becoming an adult is learning how to move on and function in spite of feeling a bit melancholy. That is why talking about this is so hard for so many people my age. Hell, I may not even post this after I write it.

So, what has me so depressed? It isn't any one thing. Its a whole bunch of things that have been piling and piling up on top of me for quite some time now. Being a very philosophic and spiritual individual, I am constantly self-assessing to determine what I did to get into the situation in which I currently find myself. (Trust me...there is NO ONE more critical of me than me!) Time and time again I come to the conclusion that, short of violating my core principles and going over to the 'dark side,' there is nothing different I could have done to avoid being where I am now. I have even consulted with several different counselors...both financial and mental health...who, after reviewing our actions that led up to the present, have all concluded that we did everything right. What are some of these 'things' we did right? Let's look at a few...

Employment: I lost my most recent 'real' job in June 2008. I did not apply for unemployment until August 2008 because I did not think I would be out of work that long. Instead, while continuing to search for a full time position...or even multiple part time positions...I began taking acting gigs as a way to make a couple of dollars here and there. For 145 weeks, I applied for at least 3 jobs each week. Some weeks, 5 - 7 applications. A couple of weeks, as many as 10. But taking the low end, that is a minimum of 435 jobs I've applied for since I lost my job in 2008. I made sure I wasn't pricing myself out of a job; I made a point to ask for less than I'd been earning with my previous employer...25% less at first, then 30%, 33%, 40%, 45%, ending up with me asking for anything that pays at least $10 per hour...a reduction in pay of just less than 47%. Time and time again, I heard (when I did hear from companies to which I applied) various platitudes that all came down to the same thing: "Mr. Rice, we feel you are 'overqualified' for this position." My favorite, which is also the one I heard the most, was, "Mr. Rice, thank you for coming in, but we feel that you just wouldn't be happy in this position." What? Not happy being able to pay my bills and provide for my family?!?

I was even willing to perform manual labor. I applied to four construction companies and two landscaping/lawn mowing companies. Even though I was willing to take entry-level jobs for $2 per hour less than they were offering, I was told in all 6 instances that I was not qualified to either swing a hammer or dig a hole in the United States of America because I was not fluent in the Mexican dialect of Spanish and would not be able to communicate with the rest of the crew.

When I finally got a job offer in September 2010 as a contractor assigned to a certain large global computer company based here in Round Rock, performing the job I had last held with them, but making $24 per hour, I was ecstatic. Unfortunately, the California-based company who wanted to hire me filed for Bankruptcy and closed their doors before I could start.

Five months (and about 70 applications) later, I received another job offer as a temporary employee making $12 per hour for a certain large global computer company based here in Round Rock. I was relieved. Then that company started playing their 800-pound Gorilla games again, leaving all the new-hires hanging by pushing back the start date not once, not twice, but 6 different times. (Even now they are only saying the jobs will start "sometime in June".)

Fortunately, I had started looking again after the first delay, so that I was able to find another job by the middle of April. The only downside of this job is that it is Commission Only and...while my mentors and managers keep telling me I am doing a great job, that I'm doing everything right...I seem to keep finding all the tree weasels who just want to play "let's jerk the sales rep around." I actually had two commitments to purchase from me...one decided to back out and not return any of my calls, while the other actually signed the contracts, then 3 days later started claiming that I somehow 'tricked' him into signing and that I lied to him about everything. Fortunately, my District Manager was there with me to make certain I did everything correctly.

Finances: What can I say other than, "the economy sucks." A simplistic yet accurate summary of the times in which we live. Our issues, however, pre-date the current 'economic down-turn.'

In late 1999, my wife and I determined that our lives were finally stable enough to purchase our first home. We researched, weighed the pros and cons between buying an existing home and having one built, and decided to build. We researched, consulted financial advisors who advised us that we could afford a $225,000 home, then decided to have one built that was worth $125,000. We did the same thing when we decided it was time to purchase a new vehicle instead of an older used vehicle. Basically, we approached every financial decision we made cautiously after consulting the alleged 'experts' and chose to 'buy low' so that we would not over-extend ourselves.

In July 2002, a certain large global computer company based here in Round Rock...more specifically, an insecure, weaselly sales manager with a Napoleon Complex (his previous team called him "Lord Farquaad" behind his back!) at a certain large global computer company based here in Round Rock...decided to terminate me for being "unable to work within the dynamics of the team" I created. I did not make that up. What is in quotation marks is the actual reason for termination on my separation papers. The truth of the matter is that his job had been offered to...and turned down by...me three times before they put him in charge of our group. (I basically told the Powers-That-Be that I was infinitely more principled that the corporation, that one day my principles and the company's would come into conflict, that I would always choose to be honorable and true to my principles, and that my honor would not allow me to accept a position unless they understood and agreed that I could manage the group under my principles and not the company's. They declined. Three times.) Lord Farquaad never got over the fact that he was technically the fourth choice for the position (me being the other three!), that Directors and VP's would actually bypass him and come directly to me with their questions and requests because I was the principle Subject Matter Expert in that field within the corporation (he actually scolded a Director for doing that once, only to have the Director take him into a private conference room for a conversation. I don't know what the Director said to him, but when they came out, Lord Farquaad looked blushingly chastised and suddenly took an early lunch), and that I was so thorough in documenting everything that he made himself look foolish once when he tried to 'trip me up' by claiming I had dropped the ball on a project, only to discover that I could produce archived e-mails showing that not only had I kept him apprised along the way, but that he actually gave me his blessings on what I had been doing.

The reason this is in the Finance section is that this termination came on my second day back from vacation. It was the first time in my adult life that I'd taken the family on a 'traditional' two-week vacation. My Mother's side of the family had a large family reunion out in California in June 2002...the first big, comprehensive one since 1976...so my wife and I piled everyone into the mini-van, picked up my Mother in Oklahoma, and drove out there. I'd planned it out so that we could see some of the sights along Old Route 66 on the way out, visit with my brother, his fiancée, and his son in Las Vegas, and even stop at my Father's birthplace in Western Oklahoma and try to find the family cemetery. It was a wonderful but tiring trip. Before we decided to take this trip, my wife and I had sat down and gone over our finances with a fine-toothed comb to make certain once again we weren't over-extending ourselves.

Basically, we had both made economic mistakes in our youth and had worked diligently between 1995 and 2000 to overcome and correct those mistakes. We were determined to not repeat those mistakes. Ever. Plus, I grew up in a family where my Father was able to hold onto money the way a nail holds Jello to a wall. We determined that we had everything sufficiently under control so that we could afford to almost max out our credit cards on this trip, then be able to have them completely paid off within 8 months. So, off we went.

Obviously, being terminated my second day back threw a wrench into this plan. While I was looking for a new job, we eked by through cutting back on daily expenses and paying only the minimum due on the credit cards. The latter, of course, is a sure-fire path to economic oblivion.

Being as disgusted as I was by large corporate sales and sales support, my wife encouraged me to return to one of my original passions: the restaurant industry. I've always wanted to (and still do!) own my very own casual restaurant and inn...something along the lines of a modern student hostel meets the Prancing Pony Inn from The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I'd managed a couple of pizza places in my youth (late Teens/early 20's) but felt I needed more experience with every facet of a restaurant. So, with my wife's encouragement and blessings, I got a job as a waiter at Cheddar's.

Once again, we are still in Finance because this decision had a major impact on our household income...and our ability to repay all the debt we'd incurred on the family reunion trip. When we both worked for a certain large global computer company based here in Round Rock, our adjusted annual household income was right at $77K. Once I got back to work (I was hired in December 2002, but the restaurant didn't open until late January 2003), our household income hovered right around $41K...only 53% of what it had been.

When I interviewed for the wait staff position, I was up front about my desire to work my way up to management, and eventually own a place of my own. The management at Cheddars not only supported and encouraged this, but what they saw in me during my shifts led to me being promoted to Server Shift Lead and Server Trainer in less than three months. It was hard work, but I was really enjoying myself. The Executive Chef had even, as we say here in Texas, "taken a shine" to me and was teaching me some of the kitchen tricks. Things were tight but good.

Then, I re-injured my left knee. I wrapped it, tried working with a heavy-duty ribbed brace on, but I just couldn't perform the job any longer. I had to resign and find something else. This was October 2003. Needless to say, Christmas that year was a bit thin.

By March 2004, I had swallowed some of my angst regarding corporations and begin applying for customer service positions. I applied to Kelly Services for one of those jobs. They informed me that, while the job for which I'd applied had been filled, there was another one they thought I might be good for and asked if they could submit my name for that one. The next day, I received a call that Dun & Bradstreet wanted to interview me.

I started as a Kelly Temp at D&B April 2004. This took our annual household income back up to almost $52K...about 67.5% of what I'd been making in the Spring of 2002. D&B quickly recognized my capabilities and began giving me more and more responsibilities. They liked my work so much, that they actually flew me to the main facility in Bethlehem, PA to be part of a project team that was revising customer service policies and procedures to make it more streamlined for customers. By March 2006, they had hired me as a regular D&B employee, made me a group leader and department head of the Winning Culture initiative, had me training the new hires, and gave me a raise so that our annual household income was now just under $59K...about 77% of our Spring 2002 level. Then the Universe decided it hadn't dumped on me for awhile.

As part of my training on how to create DUNS Numbers and business files, I had created (at the instruction of the person training me) a dummy file for practice. Unfortunately, I'd used real information about my wife's home cosmetics/skin care business when creating this dummy file. D&B did...and still does...have an almost obsessive approach to data accuracy and integrity. I have no problem with this. It ensures that the data they supply to their customers is the most accurate and trustworthy possible. Part of this includes regular security reviews of the data to weed out bogus information and to make certain no D&B employee is colluding with a business owner to skew the report on that business. I unknowingly ran afoul of that obsession with data security.

To make it easier to manipulate my dummy file, I had placed myself in it as the President of the company. During one of the security reviews in late May 2008, a red flag went up when it was discovered that one of their customer service group leaders was listed as an executive in a business file he'd created and had been updating. When I explained this to my immediate manager and our Senior Manager, they were relieved that I was still as honorable as they thought I was, but sad that company policy required that they terminate me since part of D&B's obsession with data accuracy and integrity includes a Zero Tolerance Policy when it comes to even the appearance of impropriety. Fortunately, the Senior Manager had some leeway in the company's policies as to how I was to be terminated, so he put down that my official reason for termination was "Laid Off."

This brings us back to the present: almost 155 weeks since I was "Laid Off" from D&B. Between 2005 and Spring 2008, things were still tight but we'd made some headway with repairing our financial situation...even though we got zapped by several medical issues during that time. In 2008 alone, our out-of-pocket medical expenses exceeded $12K.

Part of the problem was that, when I lost my job at D&B, we were in the middle of a medical issue with my wife. She had been diagnosed with her issue and surgery was scheduled while I was still employed. Even after I lost my job, I'd managed to confirm that my medical insurance was paid up and good through the end of the month. At the last minute, the hospital rescheduled my wife's procedure due to a scheduling conflict with one of the surgery team members. Since everything had been diagnosed and approved while my insurance was still in force, it didn't dawn on me that I needed to re-confirm with the insurance company. In August, about 6 weeks after the procedure, we were informed that, because the procedure was performed the week after my insurance expired, it was not covered and we would have to pay for the entire thing out of pocket.

This led to another blow in our financial situation. After conferring with a financial advisor to whom we'd been referred by our credit union, we completed and filed forms that were supposed to allow us to take a medically-based emergency early disbursement from my wife's 401K with no tax liability or penalties. In March 2010, we discovered this was not true. Apparently, we had received some very bad advice from this so-called 'financial advisor.' The IRS decided we owed them approximately $4200 in past-due taxes, interest, and penalties for this early disbursement. We tried to find the person who had advised us about this, but he seems to have vanished from the face of the Earth. Neither the credit union nor a professional organization for financial advisors have been able to determine this person's whereabouts. In the meantime, the IRS began to garnish my wife's wages, convinced that we could live on only $769 per month...in spite of the fact that we showed them documentation that our bare minimum monthly expenditure on our mortgage and utilities was $2200. Oh, and by the way, for every quarter we did not pay this tax debt in full, the IRS added additional fines and interest that amounted to about 22% of the outstanding balance. By October 2010, this tax liability was still over $4000, even though the IRS had been taking about 58% of our monthly income and applying it to the debt.

They weren't finished with us, though. They decided that we hadn't filed our tax returns for tax years 2002 through 2006 and decided to file them for us for those five years...at the highest tax rate available. By the time they were finished with us, the IRS had decided we owe over $90K in back taxes, interest, and penalties.

Regrettably, I am not an accountant, nor am I naturally organized. My filing system is rather simple: I keep things in boxes with other things from around the same time period. When this time period is 3 years old, I move the box or boxes out into the garage where I forget about them. This is why I haven't been able to find all 5 returns for the years in question. Additionally, I had thrown out some boxes that had been ruined by cats two or three years ago, and I am afraid that the 2005 and 2006 records were included in one or more of those boxes. Because of this, I am now having to manually recreate my returns for those two years.

In the meantime, everything caught up to us early this year. Wells Fargo decided to file for foreclosure of our home loan, so, on February 28th of this year (2011), we were forced to retain an attorney and file for Bankruptcy Chapter 13. We've managed to work out a budget and repayment schedule with the Bankruptcy court, but it was contingent upon me starting that $12 per hour job with a certain large global computer company based here in Round Rock by the end of March 2011, so we are back to struggling on ridiculously small amounts of money again.

Oh, I forgot to mention that, when October 2010 started, we had 3 vehicles in the family...nothing fancy, all 3 had over 100K miles on them, and one had an overheating issue, but we at least had basic transportation that got between 24 & 30 miles per gallon. In the middle of October, the one with over-heating issues finally gave up the ghost. I got $200 for it from a scrap yard. In February, my daughter's car was impounded when she was arrested for a traffic violation. For numerous reasons, she just let them have it and never tried to get it back.

So, we were down to a single vehicle. By this time, we were putting about 2400 miles on it per month. It had just started to make a knocking sound and I had stopped in at a repair shop to see if they could diagnose the problem. They couldn't get to me until 2 that afternoon, so I said I just need to run one errand, then I will have the van back to the shop. It never made it. The engine froze up on the way to the errand. I actually got $500 from the scrap yard for this one.

This left us vehicle-less. We managed to scrape together $500 dollars, and I began talking to the used car lots, looking for basic transportation and someone who would work with us. The only lot who would was Drive Time, and the only vehicle they had that we could get for a $500 total drive-off was a 2008 mini-van that gets only 19 miles per gallon. Now that we have a single vehicle doing what 3 used to do, and now that I have a job that has me visiting customer sites all over Travis and southern Williamson Counties, we are putting almost 4000 miles on the van per month...that's $700 - $800 per month in gas! (Right now, it is sitting on an eighth of a tank, our checking account is almost $500 over drawn, and between us we have all of 37 cents.)

And, on top of everything else, we've spent over $3000 bailing our daughter out of jail several times since 2009.

No...there's no financial stress in our family. 8^P

Family: This brings me to the third category of the stress in my life...my family. As I mentioned in the Finance section, nearly all of us have been dealing with medical issues of one sort or another.

My wife's issue that led to surgery in the Summer of 2008 is much, much better since that surgery. Other than that, she is mostly dealing with the seasonal allergies that have plagued her most of her life and a hereditary problem with high blood pressure.

My youngest daughter continues to suffer from undiagnosable chest pains. These pains began about 7 1/2 years ago...early in 4th grade. It started as a minor but sharp pain, accompanied by a shortness of breath. It quickly grew until it was mimicking the symptoms of a heart attack. Over the last 7 1/2 years, we have taken her to a Pediatrician, two Pediatric Cardiologists, one General Cardiologist, a Thoracic Surgeon, a Psychologist, a Psychiatrist (these two in case it was psychosomatic), and an Osteopath. Not a single one of them has been able to identify what is causing these pains...in spite of the fact that she was hooked up to portable EKG machines for 30 days at a time on two separate occasions. So far, while they have been unable to say what it is, they have conclusively determined that it is not her heart, the musculature wall around her rib cage, or in her mind. The Osteopath is currently treating it as a possible lung/respiratory issue. In the meantime, my baby is subjected several times a week to crushing pains in her chest that are often bad enough to drive her to her knees. Her only option is to basically "just let it pass." We have standing instructions that, if she experiences a pain that is worse or different than usual, we are to immediately take her to the ER so they can at least make certain she is not having a heart attack. We have been in ER's a total of 3 times in 2011 alone (so far).

to be continued

Until then, best regards...



© James P. Rice 2011, 2014

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