I am constantly reminded of my age by one of the darlings of my team. She loves bristling my nerves by reminders of things I know that few others around me do. Music, historical events and cartoons among them.
Whilst I am aging, I'm not that old yet, and to be truthful, I feel sorry to the millennials who do not have the internal memory platform from whence our older minds run and draw our knowledge.
It's one thing to be able to look things up on the web, Google it or Shazam a sound, and pretend to be smart, it's something else to be able to draw upon events throughout your life in an instance and have real time data to support your age, remember the lyrics of a song you have not heard in a decade, pick an historic date out of mid-air or to recollect a significant event like it were yesterday.
I may be aging and some things take time to recall, but recall I can.
My father was a historical nut on all things World War II to the point that it drove my mother furious. But I learnt through reading his newspapers and magazines depths of knowledge few can research online if they did for a week at a time.
Not everyone needs World War II knowledge every waking hour of every day though. It's just one of those things that nice to be able to know about. Faces, important dates and historical places help when watching the daily world news also.
Of things I appreciate about age though, are the cartoons.
Back then (I will not admit the years), watching Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd fight it out, it was funny, harmless and filled in the afternoons between returning from school and venturing back outside to play with the others in the street.
Wiley E .Coyote and the Roadrunner, Daffy Duck and Yosemite Sam, Sylvester chasing Tweety and Tom and Jerry. All much about the same, good versus bad.
But the cartoon that truly strikes me daily, even today as being very close to home is Sam and Ralph.
I can relate to it and see the interaction at many workplaces.
For those too young to have enjoyed Sam and Ralph cartoons by Looney Tunes let me fill you in.
Made by Looney Tunes, Merry Melodies, the context of the series is built around the idea that both Ralph ( a wolf) and Sam ( a sheepdog watching over his flock of sheep) are just doing their jobs. Most of the cartoons begin at the beginning of the workday, in which they both arrive at a sheep-grazing meadow, exchange pleasant chitchat, and punch into the same time clock. Work having officially begun, Ralph repeatedly tries very hard to abduct the helpless sheep and invariably fails, either through his own ineptitude or the minimal efforts of Sam, who always brutally punishes Ralph for the attempt.
It is the start of the cartoons that makes me laugh the most.
The two characters are essentially normal people outside of work.
But at the beginning of each day they punch into the same clock and then begin working against each other. But before doing that, they always chat nicely, "Good morning Sam, hey Good Morning Ralph", the two characters smile, sign in and then the battle begins until the end of the workday.
They shake hands, clock out and go off home together.
The stupidity of the cartoon was funny when I was a child.
It still is, but sadly this is visible across numerous workplaces in every country on every continent still today.
Normal people arrive, change, exchange pleasantries and then go off to do battle, in their varying senior positions.
In large buildings and properties seeing your colleagues is sometimes not a question, today the battles are electronic and of an email nature. Some colleagues you may not actually see all day again until the day is done, meeting up again in the locker room, ignoring the unpleasantness of emails traded between each other during the past ten hours and then off home they go , waving and smiling to each other that they will see each other tomorrow.
Humans are a complex and funny bunch. But sometimes the humor is not that funny at all.
Recent events in Paris and seemingly continuing around the globe on a monthly basis would suggest to me that we simply do not learn from history.
We repeat the same stupidity toward each other every single day, month, year and decade.
Sometimes we forget or the fighting slows for a time, but eventually it rears its ugly head once again and having learnt nothing from the losses of the past we continue in our same stupid manner.
I've raised the subject of the Sam and Ralph cartoons a few times to others, but I'm the only one that seems to have ever watched them.
With age comes wisdom and with that wisdom it is our duty to impart the knowledge learnt so as to try and make better the future for a different generation.
We should be nicer to each other. We should not allow ethnical and religious divides to divide us as people at all.
Sure it can divide our thinking and beliefs, our decisions and our ways of life, but why can we not all live together despite our differences in peace and harmony?
Why does one jackal feel it must impose its visciousness upon others just to try and make it feel like it is the king of the woods?
Perhaps it is as simple as beginning with pleasantries at work, and in the locker room, that are true and heart felt and carrying those with us throughout the day and then extending that to our daily lives. being nice to one another could spread globally.
Of a religious nature there is the saying, "treat others as you would have them treat you".
An eye for an eye just makes two blind people, not a better seeing world
And that's really the point; we have to forgive the lesser people and move forward to a future for humanity that has forgiveness and understanding in it's heart and mind, only then peace will reign around the world.
Perhaps these people are angry and horrid themselves because of their own inadequacies, there poor upbringing, their lack of self-worth, their bad lot in life, perhaps they just have no joy at home, childless, no pets to relieve their frustrations or fill their hearts with love, or perhaps they are just lonely.
Ours is to not to judge, not to lower ourselves to the depths of their misery but to see the world for the amazing lot that we, the happy people, have in ours.
For some people, Oscar Wilde's words ring so true, "where there is no love, there is no understanding!"
Sam the sheep dog, was protecting his sheep, but he never smiled or did much. At the opposite side of the coin was Ralph the wolf who was animated in character as well as in emotions, worked hard and fast and yet never won.
Instead of battling together, perhaps they both could have tried to understand each others position a little better and let the other alone.
Perhaps Sam's life away from the sheep was a complex miserable life, perhaps Ralph the Wolf could have found another food source.
What it comes down to is "understanding!"
Understanding each other.
Understanding the root cause and understanding each others position, and then working from there to understand the bigger picture, the past, present and future and working toward a better future for us all.
Understanding has become as alien to us as the cartoons of my youth, both lost to a crazy world of political correctness.
Attending managerial level leadership classes and motivational speakers, one rarely hears the words, "Understand". It seems we are scared to try and understand each other any more- it's too personal and therefore bad from a legal perspective to suggest we understand or try to understand one another.
Instead we head to work and battle for supremacy or simply to survive another work day beneath them.
What I have learnt from history and from being the age that I am, is this.
Those that battle for supremacy usually come undone if not sooner, then later.
Karma really can be a bitch.
Those who battle to survive, usually win and do so deservingly.
Better yet, those who strive to understand, can truly change the world.
In the words of RICHARD DAWKINS,(writer 1941-)
Whilst I am aging, I'm not that old yet, and to be truthful, I feel sorry to the millennials who do not have the internal memory platform from whence our older minds run and draw our knowledge.
It's one thing to be able to look things up on the web, Google it or Shazam a sound, and pretend to be smart, it's something else to be able to draw upon events throughout your life in an instance and have real time data to support your age, remember the lyrics of a song you have not heard in a decade, pick an historic date out of mid-air or to recollect a significant event like it were yesterday.
I may be aging and some things take time to recall, but recall I can.
My father was a historical nut on all things World War II to the point that it drove my mother furious. But I learnt through reading his newspapers and magazines depths of knowledge few can research online if they did for a week at a time.
Not everyone needs World War II knowledge every waking hour of every day though. It's just one of those things that nice to be able to know about. Faces, important dates and historical places help when watching the daily world news also.
Of things I appreciate about age though, are the cartoons.
Back then (I will not admit the years), watching Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd fight it out, it was funny, harmless and filled in the afternoons between returning from school and venturing back outside to play with the others in the street.
Wiley E .Coyote and the Roadrunner, Daffy Duck and Yosemite Sam, Sylvester chasing Tweety and Tom and Jerry. All much about the same, good versus bad.
But the cartoon that truly strikes me daily, even today as being very close to home is Sam and Ralph.
I can relate to it and see the interaction at many workplaces.
 |
| Good Morning Sam, Good Morning Ralph. |
Made by Looney Tunes, Merry Melodies, the context of the series is built around the idea that both Ralph ( a wolf) and Sam ( a sheepdog watching over his flock of sheep) are just doing their jobs. Most of the cartoons begin at the beginning of the workday, in which they both arrive at a sheep-grazing meadow, exchange pleasant chitchat, and punch into the same time clock. Work having officially begun, Ralph repeatedly tries very hard to abduct the helpless sheep and invariably fails, either through his own ineptitude or the minimal efforts of Sam, who always brutally punishes Ralph for the attempt.
It is the start of the cartoons that makes me laugh the most.
The two characters are essentially normal people outside of work.
But at the beginning of each day they punch into the same clock and then begin working against each other. But before doing that, they always chat nicely, "Good morning Sam, hey Good Morning Ralph", the two characters smile, sign in and then the battle begins until the end of the workday.
They shake hands, clock out and go off home together.
The stupidity of the cartoon was funny when I was a child.
It still is, but sadly this is visible across numerous workplaces in every country on every continent still today.
Normal people arrive, change, exchange pleasantries and then go off to do battle, in their varying senior positions.
In large buildings and properties seeing your colleagues is sometimes not a question, today the battles are electronic and of an email nature. Some colleagues you may not actually see all day again until the day is done, meeting up again in the locker room, ignoring the unpleasantness of emails traded between each other during the past ten hours and then off home they go , waving and smiling to each other that they will see each other tomorrow.
Humans are a complex and funny bunch. But sometimes the humor is not that funny at all.
Recent events in Paris and seemingly continuing around the globe on a monthly basis would suggest to me that we simply do not learn from history.
We repeat the same stupidity toward each other every single day, month, year and decade.
Sometimes we forget or the fighting slows for a time, but eventually it rears its ugly head once again and having learnt nothing from the losses of the past we continue in our same stupid manner.
I've raised the subject of the Sam and Ralph cartoons a few times to others, but I'm the only one that seems to have ever watched them.
With age comes wisdom and with that wisdom it is our duty to impart the knowledge learnt so as to try and make better the future for a different generation.
We should be nicer to each other. We should not allow ethnical and religious divides to divide us as people at all.
Sure it can divide our thinking and beliefs, our decisions and our ways of life, but why can we not all live together despite our differences in peace and harmony?
Why does one jackal feel it must impose its visciousness upon others just to try and make it feel like it is the king of the woods?
Perhaps it is as simple as beginning with pleasantries at work, and in the locker room, that are true and heart felt and carrying those with us throughout the day and then extending that to our daily lives. being nice to one another could spread globally.
Of a religious nature there is the saying, "treat others as you would have them treat you".
An eye for an eye just makes two blind people, not a better seeing world
And that's really the point; we have to forgive the lesser people and move forward to a future for humanity that has forgiveness and understanding in it's heart and mind, only then peace will reign around the world.
Perhaps these people are angry and horrid themselves because of their own inadequacies, there poor upbringing, their lack of self-worth, their bad lot in life, perhaps they just have no joy at home, childless, no pets to relieve their frustrations or fill their hearts with love, or perhaps they are just lonely.
Ours is to not to judge, not to lower ourselves to the depths of their misery but to see the world for the amazing lot that we, the happy people, have in ours.
For some people, Oscar Wilde's words ring so true, "where there is no love, there is no understanding!"
Sam the sheep dog, was protecting his sheep, but he never smiled or did much. At the opposite side of the coin was Ralph the wolf who was animated in character as well as in emotions, worked hard and fast and yet never won.
Instead of battling together, perhaps they both could have tried to understand each others position a little better and let the other alone.
Perhaps Sam's life away from the sheep was a complex miserable life, perhaps Ralph the Wolf could have found another food source.
What it comes down to is "understanding!"
Understanding each other.
Understanding the root cause and understanding each others position, and then working from there to understand the bigger picture, the past, present and future and working toward a better future for us all.
Understanding has become as alien to us as the cartoons of my youth, both lost to a crazy world of political correctness.
Attending managerial level leadership classes and motivational speakers, one rarely hears the words, "Understand". It seems we are scared to try and understand each other any more- it's too personal and therefore bad from a legal perspective to suggest we understand or try to understand one another.
Instead we head to work and battle for supremacy or simply to survive another work day beneath them.
What I have learnt from history and from being the age that I am, is this.
Those that battle for supremacy usually come undone if not sooner, then later.
Karma really can be a bitch.
Those who battle to survive, usually win and do so deservingly.
Better yet, those who strive to understand, can truly change the world.
In the words of RICHARD DAWKINS,(writer 1941-)
"I think the world's always a better place if people are filled with understanding."
 |
| Good Night Ralph, Good Night Sam. |
