So you want to live forever

 So you want to live forever

By Bobby Neal Winters

You can remember someone who is no longer living but whose life has had an effect on you. Their existence has continued after death. To me, this is just the plain truth.  I am sure there are those who are learned that could rip that logic apart, but I am just going to let them.

My mother’s family were town people.  They were small town people, but they were still town people.  My father’s family were not.  Town people come into contact with more people than country people do. Hence the name “town people.”  My mother’s family knew more of the little things that get you through the day.

My dad learned a lot of these things and he kept the ones he thought were smart.  My mother’s younger brother, Tommy, wore glasses.  He taught my dad that it’s not a good idea to put your glasses down lens first on any surface because they would get scratched.

My mother’s mother always said that when you are washing a sharp knife to never let it go.  You pick it up; hold it the whole time you are washing it; rinse it, again holding it the whole time.  You only put it down when you put it in the drainer.

Dad was fond of both my Uncle Tommy and my momma’s mother.  He learned those things, and whenever he taught them to me and my brother, he mentioned where he’d learned them.

Wearing glasses myself, I still lay them down face up religiously. On those rare occasions that I do dishes by hand [we will pause here for my wife to chuckle], I never let loose of a sharp knife. (I think that particular one could be raised to a higher level by a Mafia Don or some such, but let’s just let that one go.) 

But my point is what these people taught my dad still affects me. And, because I’ve shared this with you, they are still teaching.

This could be a point where I could digress into the value of teaching.  It would be handy to do because my Uncle Tommy was a grade school teacher who taught the Navajo in the Four-Corners region of New Mexico.  But my mom’s mom wasn’t, and in any case, Tommy didn’t tell my dad about how to handle glasses as a teacher but as a friend.

Dad learned from them because he liked them.

While as a teacher that is something I might like to keep in my mind, it is something everyone might do well to remember. It is not a crime to position yourself in such a way that people like you.  

And I don’t mean that you have to be a pushover. You can exercise kindness without letting people walk all over you.

There, I said the word: Kindness.

You can be kind.

You can be kind, but sometimes it’s quite an exercise.  Sometimes it requires capturing the flow of events and slowing them down so you can get a handle on them. There are times in conversations when you need to delay what you say so that you can understand what has just been said in order to edit what you are going to reply.  That was quite a long sentence; you might want to read it again.

And there are times when a good editor just marks a blue pencil through everything.

Kindness goes beyond niceness.  There are wicked, wicked people who are “nice.” Kindness has a spine of love in it.

Love: there, I’ve said it.

If you’ve only watched movies, you likely don’t know what love is.  Love is not a state you fall into.  Love is a choice. You can choose to love people.

We can’t always choose our feelings, but love is not a feeling. I was going to write that love is wanting the best for someone, but let me be more careful.  It is a consequence of love to want the best for someone. 

We are to love our neighbors; we are to love our enemies.  That is quite a spectrum there.

It was the love of my Uncle Tommy and my Grandma Byrd that caused them to want to teach my father these small things. He felt that love and returned it, so he was able to let himself learn from them and pass it on.

These were only two of the things he learned from them. There are other things we learn unconsciously.  We absorb things just by being with them.  And we pass them on as well.

We learn love; we pass on love; we live forever in love.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like'' the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube. )