Who or What owns you?

By Dan Barber

I have heard people say, “I’m a slave to my work.” “Why?” I might ask… is it because you hate your job? Is it because you don’t make enough money doing it, or is it because you earn too much? Or is it something else.

Perhaps in your youth you or your parents paid a huge ransom to a college for an education that was required for the job you now have. Are you a slave to your work because you have to pay back student loans? Or do you continue to work at your job out of guilt for the amount of money your parents paid for your education?

I believe that we have to be really careful in our life’s choices to prevent loosing our freedom of choice and even free will.

Right out of high school I got a job that offered a free education, free medical for me and my family. It offered a generous pension payable immediately after just 20 years of service, adventurous world travel and the job even offered the opportunity for my family and I to live in an exclusive gated community… it was called the United States Navy. The trade off was that I took an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, both foreign and domestic. I also had to pledge to follow the orders of those appointed over me, which when I took my first oath, meant just about everyone in the military. By taking this oath I was put under the legal jurisdiction of the Uniformed Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) which meant that I gave up my freedom of speech to a certain extent. I was not allowed the freedom of assembly with unsavory groups which included any political party while in uniform. I guess that also made me a slave to my job, because if I didn’t show up at work everyday, I could have received severe punishment.

My service had a cost that I didn’t fore-see, homesickness and guilt. This job did in fact allow me adventurous world travel to Hawaii and Alaska and many other locations in the continental United States, Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Caribbean. But because of that I was away from my family and friends “back home” most of the 20 years causing my homesickness. However, I was very fortunate to have my wife and children with me most of that time and I was lucky because I was never sent to a battlefield, and after 20 years I received my retirement check every month as promised, and  low cost “space-available” medical care for my wife and I.

Yes, I spent 20-years being homesick for my family and friends back home, so after I completed my 20-years of service I figured that I could move back home to cure my homesickness. I was wrong, home is not a place it is a state of mind. The trade-off of losing frequent contact with childhood friends and family can cause an unseen distance that can sometimes be insurmountable… and cause personal guilt. My children were estranged from grandparents, some uncles, aunts and cousins. My childhood friends had moved on with families and careers and interests different then my own. Some even forgot that I even existed at all. I become envious of others who have had life-long friendships who enjoy sharing memories of years past. I then feel guilty about feeling that envy, because it was my choice of being gone from home. It was my fault for not trying harder to stay in touch with friends and family.

Even with all the negatives about military service the experience taught me self-discipline and gave me more freedom to enjoy my life and enjoy living. The camaraderie I feel with my shipmates or just about anyone who wore or wears a military uniform is very comforting.

I guess my youthful exuberance for adventure and the choices I made own me.

What gives us peace of mind?

By Dan Barber

I just re-discovered the joy of simply reading a book. It has been a long time since I actually read a book for fun. As part of my job for many years I read millions of words, but in the form of news stories, commentaries or features in newspapers, magazines and online blogs.

My mornings usually started off with scanning the Washington Post then the Washington Examiner, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Navy/Marine/Federal Times, San Bernardino Sun, Desert Sun and on publishing days the Hi-Desert Star and the Desert Trail. Then for good or bad measure I would scan the online versions of CNN and Fox News. What I was always searching for were stories pertaining to politics, the military or medicine that I thought my co-workers and leaders in the Navy might find an interest in. It also sometimes gave me an idea of what I could develop into a story for my own newspaper, The Examiner, a health education and health promotion paper that I published for the staff and patients of the Navy hospital where I worked. This research each day culminated in clips in the form of what I called the Public Affairs Reader File.

Since I retired from the government, for the last time this year, I have cut back on my “news” reading to limit myself to just the Los Angeles Times and the online versions of CNN and Fox News along with my local media sources… just to keep up with current affairs. This casual reading sometimes allows me to critic something in the comment section of the newspaper that, in my opinion, a clueless journalist wrote. When I was a government employee I had to keep my opinions to myself… it was the law! During my working life it was also prudent to keep my opinions “close hold” government public affairs speak for “keep it to yourself.” Now that I’m no longer subject to the censure of an employer it is very refreshing to be able to exercise my freedom of speech and opinion that has been bottled up for so long. For many years people would ask me what my political leanings were. I would explain they depended on the issue and leave it there… I cannot confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons was a standard military response years ago when a reporter would ask, “Does your command have nuclear weapons?”  My political leaning still hinges on the issues but I can assure everyone that I have no patience for extreme right-wing or left-wing bigots who try to hurt someone with words or actions because they won’t blindly sign on to the cause those morons are pushing. Sometimes people just don’t know any better because they are just trying to be chic for calling CNN “Communist News Network” or Fox News “Faux News.” I will just smile at these people while thinking to myself, “what an ignorant ass.” I could attempt to correct the individual and try to explain why they were wrong, but it would just take up to much of my time.

Right after I retired from active duty with the Navy in 1989 I was hired by a very liberal weekly newspaper in Los Angeles as the production manager. The publisher thought that, as a former military man, I could bring some discipline to the production staff. Many of the staffers only took the job at the paper until they could get their “big break” in Hollywood. The art director did not believe in wearing shoes anywhere, unless he was being interviewed on TV about the legalization of marijuana. Our young film critic on the editorial staff was a recent graduate of the USC Film School who was waiting for someone to offer him a film to direct. Many, if not all of the graphic artists were “really” actors, actresses, models or musicians. When I showed up they all viewed me as a cockroach that just walked through the door from the dirty alley behind the newspaper offices. I explained to them that I served in the U.S. Navy so they could have the opportunity to do whatever they wished to do. But with the publisher paying them to do what the publisher paid them to do, they would have to follow my direction at this job. After having to fire a couple of them and the art director quitting and moving off to Amsterdam so he could partake in marijuana legally everyone got down to the business of putting out a weekly liberal newspaper, that for the most part espoused big business in LA. 

I can recall when I first read an entire book from cover to cover just because I wanted to. I was a freshman in high school and one day I walked into the library because I didn’t have anything better to do. The book that I picked off the shelf with no notice of the title just happened to be about auto racing and the technical aspect of building race cars. I was fascinated with the book. However, that reading experience didn’t make me want to become a race car driver or builder of race cars because I found many other interesting things in my universe at the time.

I also did not wish to dedicate my life to the pursuit of any particular occupation. I knew that I did not want to waste my parent’s money on college, because I was not mature enough or smart enough or dedicated enough to succeed. I discovered theater arts in high school and enjoyed escaping from my own introverted personality while performing on stage, but even that grew tiring after many years of community theater auditions, rehearsals and performance schedules.

Maybe peace of mind comes from the act of trying to keep from getting bored in the retirement years.

What do we have in store for us?

By Dan Barber

I often think about this question. What I believe is what my father told me in a dream about two weeks after he died.  My brothers and I had to ask the staff of the hospital where he was on life support to end that support because he was never going to recover  and we knew he did not want to continue living that way.

That decision really bothered me until my father came to me in that dream. I asked him if we did right by removing his life support. He assured me it was the best thing because in his Heaven he was able to relive every joyous moment in his life over and over again as if for the first time.

I posed the title of this blog with the question “what’s in store for us” because my wife just found out his morning that her youngest brother, Bobby, had just died. We are sad that we won’t be able to see him anymore, but we are joyous that he will always be with us in our hearts. I remember Bobby as being a young child, because of my service I was separated from family for very long periods of time. We missed visiting some of our family members because geographic distance as well as the years that eventually came to separate us.

Bobby was the youngest of seven children. He was born prematurely by a very risky c-section delivery with no guarantees that he would survive for very long. The emergency c-section only gave Bobby a very slim chance at survival because his mother was dying from Leukemia. She was only able to hold her baby for a very brief time before she passed.

I believe that Bobby’s mother and father will welcome him to his Heaven and he will get to know them and he will get to relive his joys and share them with all his loved ones in Heaven.

It is very important that you “own” your family and friends… which means if you “disown” them you will have lost some very important memories and joyous moments in your Heaven.

What time is it?

By Dan Barber

What time is it... a simple question but with many answers. When I was a child and my Mom would tell be to get up out of bed and get ready for school, I might have been prompted to sleepily ask… “What time is it? She would respond, “It’s time for you to get your butt out of bed!”

Time is very important in our lives because we have a time when we are born, a time when we live, and a time when we die. Time itself may be eternal, or maybe not. The experts say that everything will end one day, but no one will be around to witness it. We weren’t around when time began, and I agree with the experts we won’t be around when the giant clock of space stops running.

I live in the desert and believe that the longer one lives in the desert the easier it is to be entertained, probably because there aren’t as many distractions out here as there are in a city.  I can sit in the shade for long times watching lizards do pushups on a hot rock. I can also stare at a huge granite boulder and wonder if it looked the same a couple of hundred years ago and will it look the same two hundred years into the future… when a giant boulder out here split in half a few years ago it was big news… at least to us here in the desert.

We have some of the cleanest air in Southern California and the night skies are light-pollution free, so I can stare off into space at night and wonder how small and insignificant we all are. When all is done and the grand ticking of our universal clock ceases the human existence will only have lasted for a fraction of a second… hopefully we will have left our mark by understanding and appreciating the time we’ve spent travelling through life, space and time.

Many philosophers in our history have sat and pondered the meaning of a lot of stuff, time being just one of the subjects. When I sit around pondering and enjoying stuff like hearing the laughter of my grandchildren playing, a clean blue sky or the antics of a desert lizard, some might think that I am just wasting my time… I don’t agree, I think that I’m enjoying my precious time because one day none of us will have any of it left.

What will they think of next?

By Dan Barber

I just discovered a new invention… a smart trash can!

Diane and I just went to the Commissary to pick up a few things we needed for our dinner tonight. For those who don’t know what a Commissary is, it’s a grocery store for military people. Anyway, Diane also needed to go to the “7-Day store”… military jargon for a convenience store that is open 7-Days a week… I am going to have to learn to speak and write using regular English when I retire next year… Sorry, I’m old and tend to be easily distracted which can cause me to ramble.

Anyway back to the new invention…I parked in a spot where Diane bumped into a cement trash can last year which caused very expensive damage to her computer operated vehicle (pick-up truck)… she is damn lucky the very expensive airbags didn’t deploy. I was able to wire her plastic bumper up to keep it from falling off and her hood wired shut so it wouldn't fly off while she was driving down the highway. The cement trash can didn’t suffer any damage.

The person in the 7-Day store who Diane reported the accident to said “Don’t worry we are going to replace those trash cans with “smart trash cans.” When Diane related that story to me today, I asked, “What in the hell is a smart trash can?” She said “it beeps when it’s full of trash.” I asked, “Can’t somebody who works at the 7-Day store like a “trash retrieval specialist” (janitor) just look in the trash can to see if it needs to be dumped?” This is an example of our conversations these days… Diane usually tells me something incredulous, and it might take me awhile to catch on.

A couple of years ago Diane bought a trash can that we don’t even have to touch to open. It has a sensor when you wave your hand over it, it opens. I explained to my younger grandchildren that the trash can in the pantry likes to eat little kids… and demonstrated it to them by waving their little hands over the lid of the trash can so it "could smell them." The demonstration scared the crap out of them and helped to keep them out of the pantry until they got a little bit older and discovered that grandpa is full of BS, rambling again, sorry.

I don’t think that I will purchase a “smart trash can” until they teach it to separate the regular garbage from the recyclable garbage, automatically roll out to the street without prodding on trash day so the “Trash Retrieval” truck driver can crush the smart trash can with a claw while he or she dumps it in the back of his or her truck.  Heck, the garbage can even stay in the can for a week as it won’t even stink… because I can line the trash can with the newly invented odor eliminating trash can liners!

I think the smart thing for the 7-Day store to do, would be to keep the cement trash cans so people can’t knock their expensive plastic “smart trash cans” out of the way so they can drive through the store… they would have to change the store’s name to a “Proceed Through the 7-Day Store”… in civilian speak “Drive-Through Convenience Store,” open 7-days a week.

Living Life One Day at a Time

By Dan Barber

The countdown has started. In the past few years I have tried to slow down and enjoy every day as it came. At times in the past I marked off days on the calendar like a mad man until a set goal or event was achieved. I finally realized by doing that I didn’t enjoy each of those days as I should have, they represented just another day.

Have you ever come to realize that chasing a goal was a lot more fun then actually reaching the goal?  Later in life I realized that if you find the greener grass on the other side of the hill you may have to mow it.

Sometimes my goals were well worth achieving. It might have been getting married, the end of a tour of duty with the Navy, it could have been graduating from a school, or the birth of a child… now it is the end of a career.  I will be retiring from the Navy for a second time on the final work day of September 2013… the first time I retired from the Navy was in July 1989 after serving 20-years on active duty. This time I will be retiring from the Navy after marking off another 20-year career, but this time as a civilian employee… in May of next year I will be getting a 40-year federal length of service pin, which will probably end up in the “junk” drawer with the rest of my career memorabilia… what is important to me is the fact that regardless of the consternation of some politicians I will start collecting 3 federal government pension checks, Navy, Civil Service and Social Security.

I look back on the days of my life thinking they have gone by in a flash… maybe I regret not taking the time each of those days to enjoy them as I might have at the time.  There are the memories of special moments in those days that I have saved in my mind that I hope won’t fade away.  For example one of those special moments I experienced was on an airliner as I was headed home from Vietnam, we were flying over the Pacific Ocean at night, and I swore to myself that I would not forget the reflection in the plane’s window at that time because it meant that I was headed home and it was one of the happy times in my life.

Maybe the days aren’t as important as the memorable moments are… the special moments we will always remember… it’s possible we won’t remember the date, time of day or even the year, but the moment will stay with us forever… when we met our spouse, (July 8, 1968… the same day I originally joined the Navy), the day when I first got to hold one of my children or one of my grandchildren.

There are the sad moments of course, but hopefully the millions of happy moments will outweigh the sad ones.  I mentioned in an earlier post that perhaps our experience in Heaven will be the ability to relive the wonderful moments of our lives as if it were the first time.  My father told me this in a dream about two weeks after he passed away… my Dad never lied to me.

That idea of Heaven sort of makes sense to me of having an eternal life without sorrow or worry, but only happiness.

When I start on my retirement career next year I may not have to mark off each day on the calendar, or even know what day of the week it is… hopefully on purpose. But I will strive every day to collect as many memorable moments that I can so one day… you know, experience them as many times as I want in my future ‘after-life.’ And in the meantime, I’m going to enjoy every working day that I have left.

What have I accomplished?

By Dan Barber

I believe that personal accomplishments come in many ways. When born we are an immediate accomplishment… of our Creator, we are also an accomplished dream of our parents and of those who will love us during our life-time.

I watch my grandchildren’s accomplishments continuously, when they learn new skills or use their imagination to entertain themselves or others. I am very proud to watch my granddaughter’s exceptional athletic accomplishments while playing fast-pitch softball… not only for her fielding or hitting skills but most importantly for the sportsmanship and kindness she shows to her teammates and rivals from other teams. All of my grandchildren are accomplished in their own way as individuals.

Other family members have accomplished skills that I can only envy… but in a way that makes me proud to be related to them.

I enjoy celebrating the accomplishments of my family, friends and co-workers. I am filled with pride when I see the young Officers and Sailors where I work when they receive recognition for their accomplishments while serving our country.  I feel a special privilege by being able to take photos of the awards ceremony to share with all.

In an earlier blog I might have mentioned that some people measure their life’s accomplishments with money or possessions. No one has figured out how to take their material wealth to the afterlife.  But we can be a bit immortal if we leave behind good memories of a life well-lived.  Will you be remembered for your kindness? I hold dear the kindness and joy my loved ones share with me, I would even say that they are richly accomplished because of that generosity of sharing with me. I can only hope that I can be remembered by my family and friends for having those same generous attributes.

Accomplishments are in us all.