Just Let Me -- G -- Indoctrinate You!

Monday, September 24, 2012

It's a Day to Marvel at the Little Things

Dear America,

I believe.

Do you believe?

allow me to begin this morning, and thereby start the week, stealing a thought from a book by Gerald L. Schroeder -- just a guy and MIT-trained physicist and author of The Science of God, The Hidden Face of God, Genesis and the Big Bang and God According to God -- the last one taking all the credit for offering this glimpse of inspiration, going something wonderful like this:

"We grow up embedded within the marvel of existence.  By the time we are old enough to consider the wonder of nature, nature is already 'old hat' to us.  We've been experiencing it from the day we are born.  Our constant familiarity with existence throws a cloak over the wonder and makes it appear mundane."

Not only is this common within Life itself, but by bringing this notion into a more narrower view, we may begin to characterize the very existence of life in America today.  "Our constant familiarity with existence [in America] throws a cloak over the wonder [of America] and makes it appear mundane [in and around America]."

We grow jaded.  We cease the ability to see the wonder in the wonderful.  Who wants to even try to make it anymore, right? -- the rich only get richer; there are no new ideas; corporations ruin everything; there is the 1%... and then there is the rest of us; we wake up, go to work and then go home...only to wake up tomorrow and do it all over again...and then we die.  Shall we go on?

We've grown into a certain familiarity with the mundane, and sadly, all the while have grown so accustomed to the things remarkable and mind-blowing and crazy good we don't even appreciate them anymore.   By taking for granted the very existence of all that has come before us, we lose the very ability to marvel. The new iPhone5 is out.  yay.

Oh yes. We have been down this road before, a kaleidescope of days in the life in America have carried this theme.   There was the Giving Tree day -- it is some of my earlier work, dating back to 2009; reading it again is a little weird for me, for I find the day a little all over the place.  But then again, what else is new right?  There was another day -- the one about the little girl who grew up in a beautiful house on a hill and had everything she ever wanted...I would find it for you, but that one caused quite the family ruckus -- when in fact the family resemblance was not the point at all.  Needless to say, the unintended consequences came back to bite me.  Anywho, we will leave that one to the archives.

Ho Hum.

Common is what common does. Little old G could probably pontificate of the taking for granted part of American life for days on end, from end to end, with no end, until the end....And that's all I'm gonna say about that.

Let's get back to the extraordinarily mundane world we live in...

We have grown a certain familiarity, haven't we though?   The act of marveling of existence has grown tired.  Now that we have come through the age of pioneering and homesteading, from farming to blacksmiths, town grocers to bankers; now that we have grown fully into our industry -- building the roads and bridges, railway to highway, low tech to high tech in what seems like a nano-second in the great scheme of life -- it's all pretty much no big deal.  We are all too familiar with it these days.

It is easy to look upon the abundance we are surrounded with and think nothing of it.

Of course! I can just get into my car and drive to the grocers and find nearly any thing my heart desires.

Matter of fact, for $3.99 I can get a frozen wood fired pizza made in Italy (that would be from Trader Joes -- which just so happens to be one of my favorite places to hang out on the face of this planet, and mention them whenever I can).  But just how in the world do they do it?

For me, this kind of thing just blows me away.  Add into the creation-equation that nearly everything they sell, they are really clever about it; like if it's a package of Pad Thai Noodles (yes, made in Thailand) it comes in a typical Asian take-out container, changing the label to "Trader Ming's".  It's like I wish I thought of this, you know?

I marvel at Trader Joes every single time I walk through their door.  SO much so, I want to go back, the sooner the better -- anticipating great things to come.

It's a business worth billions.  Privately held [hey, that's not fair!  wahhhh....kidding...].  Its first store is still open today -- in Pasadena (been there, done that).  A guy named Dan Bane is in charge these days; as well, he's 'the country-boy-next-door-voice' on the company's radio commercials.

What does Dan and Trader Joes do for America?   Besides provide over 10,000 jobs -- T.J's provides healthy, yummy, adventurous, international and American fare at a price more than fair.

I don't care what Dan makes each year -- even though I tried to find out.  Whatever it is, it's worth it. I would bet he makes a lot more than the average hourly employee.  Just guessing.  Still, it doesn't matter.

I marvel at what they do and how they do it.

I marvel at how they bring the ordinary and the extraordinary to market with their own flare.

I marvel at how they bring the ordinary and the extraordinary to market at such a reasonable price.

I marvel at how they bring the ordinary and the extraordinary to market with the friendliest of employees, every day (and rumor has it, they even like working there, too).

I marvel at how they bring the ordinary and the extraordinary to market for everyone to enjoy,  rich or poor.

I marvel at how they bring the ordinary and the extraordinary to market, catering to the seasons and needs of the community at large.

If we put this all together, we can quickly find ourselves marveling at the culmination of creation meeting up with industry answering to the age-old question of the mundane.   This is what happens in America every day.  Ordinary people advance the mundane in our every day and make it available to all of us.

Trader  Joes -- founded by Joe Coulombe in 1958 -- is a success in every way because they continue to take the time to marvel at the marketplace and rise up to the challenge of creating something extraordinary within the world of an everyday, mundane task.   Who ever would have thought grocery shopping could be so fun?

And yes, Dan Bane is handling the issues of the not so good in the every day, too -- as in the current news, recalling peanut butter for contamination of salmonella. 

Will this ruin the reputation of Trader Joes?  Will TJ's suddenly go down with the memory of what it was, leaving thousands of employees jobless at a time like this?

No.  They are on it.  They will protect the public, take the item off the shelves, and will investigate thoroughly, so that if at all possible, something like this doesn't happen again.  And because Trader Joes has grown such a following -- having built up their karmic good will with a long chain of customers -- the customer will continue to trust them with their life, literally.

My car battery died Saturday morning.  But with my AAA membership, within 20 minutes a guy had checked the bells and whistles and told me I needed a new one.  Another 20 minutes later it was installed and he was on his way to the next emergency and I was on my way to Trader Joes.  Now isn't that a beautiful world.

It's not a question.

I see it.

I believe it.

I witness it in the everyday.

When someone comes to our aid to 'save the day' -- how in the world can we come up with a fair market value for that?

I marvel at how little it costs us to live a pretty wonderful life in America --  perhaps the Occupiers should live in Cairo for awhile, maybe the Walmart picketers of last weekend (here in San Diego) should try going to market in Benghazi for a day or two, perhaps talk to the community about what it's like living and working and raising a family in crazy town.  They will probably never get a chance to open a Trader Joes in their neighborhood, all things considered.

We have roughly forty days and nights before the next election.

It is between a guy who loves loves loves the free market and all that it's about -- the opportunity for everyone to make it or break it, the freedom to do whatever it is that makes you tick, the liberty to think and grow rich in the process of bringing wonderful things to the marketplace.

For when it comes to this guy -- it is hardly commonplace.

I believe he marvels at it.  He lives, eats, breathes it, and then at the end of the day, he shares his good blessings, giving back millions of dollars.

And then there's the other guy.  A guy who has never really worked a day in his life in the private sector -- a guy who loathes the disparity between rich and poor for all the wrong reasons -- a guy who campaigns not upon the merits of his first term, but upon engineering tactics driving class warfare, racial divide, and raising the rhetoric to levels obscene.

If the 'giving tree' is America -- it's awfully hard to imagine that these two guys came from the same vine.

For kicks and giggles, let's compare what the two are selling in the general store, shall we?

Obama stands for the government super store -- the big box store -- the one that pops up in the middle of the night virtually out of thin air and creeps into our private lives.  Walmart has got nothing on the "Big O."

And Romney -- oh, he's the Trader Mitt type, by golly.   He's the guy who just wants to open the door and welcome everyone to the bounty.  There's no special membership card; there's no points to collect; and like their latest commercial says, "there's no special handshake."   It's a simple operation -- just offering good things at a fair price to one and all indiscriminately. 

This is America at her best.  If we lose this kind of marketplace, we lose everything.  And it starts when we lose our ability to marvel at the little things, and it ends with an all but manifest destiny do-over when we stop protecting, honoring, respecting the big things.


Last word -- you might as well hang it over the door before you enter --

"FOUR THINGS YOU CAN'T RECOVER:
the stone after the throw,
the word after it's said,
the occasion after it's missed,
the time after it's gone."

and one more -- 'the Republic after it's destroyed.'    It's a pretty big deal.

Make it a Good Day, G

"so he has time for Whoopie Goldberg but not for any world leaders?" 
That was Chris Wallace to Robert Gibbs, Fox News Sunday.
The president will be on The View, but somehow, some way, he cannot find the time in his schedule to meet with Netanyahu, and the like? According to Gibbs, he can just pick up the phone and talk to these guys. . .that was easy (go Staples). But Ahmadinejad just said this.

Speaking of being a little 'out of touch' -- I heard a delicious rumor the other day.  If the president gets re-elected, he's going to "phone-in" his leadership from his new 35 million dollar estate in Hawaii.  He doesn't even plan on staying in the White House!  Ever!  But again, I just heard it in the bread aisle, I'm sure there is nothing to it.

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