Philosophy

[fbhjr]

I like the stuff over at www.despair.com.
One of my friends questioned that the other day. Asked if I was looking
for despair and failure.
It’s a valid question and worth a longer answer than a reply a dozen down
in a post on something else.
My favorite is their “mistakes” one.
http://images.despair.com/products/demotivators/mistakes.jpg
Not for any gloom or doom reason. Not to laugh at the poor person who lost
that ship.
But because I can look at it on days when everything in my life has gone to
shit; work, home, world and say “there may be a purpose for all that.”
That makes me feel better about it.
Mistakes can be learned from. I can learn from my own. And, if I’m good
and lucky in the right combination, I can learn from other people’s too.
(More often I end going through the same thing and having them say “didn’t
that suck?” But, camaraderie can be good too.)
Sometimes I need to be reminded of that. Some times it helps me to say
“you don’t have to feel that pain yourself if you can see what that person
did wrong.”

Things like that, and humor in general, is good for getting me to think
different ways about things. Look at things in a different light. Not
always a good light, but different.
And, there are times I need to look at things differently.

That’s one of the things I try and do with this LJ is get different ways of
looking at things from people. Things have gone very wrong for me. I
don’t know where. I don’t know when. I don’t know how.
When faced with an engineering problem, I tend to sit down with my boss
define the problem and just throw ideas out. One of the reasons I really
like my current boss is that he has a very different training and
background than I do. So, he thinks of things differently and comes up
with stuff I wouldn’t. And, I come up with stuff he wouldn’t.
Most of the ideas we throw out won’t work, aren’t practical, would cost too
much or break the laws of physics. But, it gets us thinking about the
problem in new ways, considering ideas we may not have, etc.

That’s what I’m really looking for. Different ways to look at things.

Comments

[fbhjr.livejournal.com]

I love taking roads I don't know.
But, I also love trying to figure out where they will come out. That's half the fun.
"If this road goes north, it must hit that east-west cross road up there..."
Often it does. Sometimes it does not.
Driving my MIL home the other day I took a road I didn't know. She knew it.
I said "I think this will come out at (intersection)."
"It won't," she said.
She was right. It didn't. But, it still came out on the road I wanted. Near a candy store even...