...light overcomes darkenss. A tiny match can illuminate the darkest room. As long as there is some light somewhere in the universe, [darkness] can b… - Dave Barry

I can stop wasting the dwindling minutes of the only life I'll ever have obsessing over past events I can't do anything about, and future events that might never happen. I can teach myself to focus on the only time that matters, which is this moment right now, and use this precious time to appreciate, to cherish, the people I love.

A few years ago I got into a heated argument with the 18-year-old son of a friend of mine. Actually, it wasn't so much an argument as it was me getting angry at him for something he said. What he said, basically, was that he wished there was a war like Vietnam going on right then, so that the members of his generation would have something big, something exciting, in their lives. I told him that this was a reprehensible thing to say; I told him he should not want people to die to keep his generation amused. But in retrospect- although I obviously don't want another Vietnam- I see what he meant. He didn't want people to die; he wanted there to be something to give his life significance, something to mark his formative era that would be more meaningful than whatever TV sitcoms were popular at the time. We Boomers had that; we had a lot going on, maybe too much.

My theory is that there is a finite amount of intelligence in a family, and you're supposed to gradually transfer it to your children over a period of many years. This is why your parents started to get so stupid just at the time in your life when you were getting really smart.