Author: Bev

Neighbors, whether we’re next door, in the same block, across the road, down the street, upstairs or downstairs, will most likely not share the same perspective on every matter.  In fact, couples, co-workers, committee members, let’s just say, none of us, will always see things the same way.

It’s my opinion that most neighbors experience either literal or figurative boundary issues from time to time.  However, most of us do not escalate to a real nineteenth century Hatfield and McCoy situation.

It might just be human nature to mark your territory, defend and protect it.  Your “place” may be a humble piece of the earth or maybe it’s grand as grand can be.  But it’s yours and you want the people around you to know it’s yours.

I’ve offended my neighbors and my neighbors have offended me.  The awesome thing about “neighborliness” is that in time, we all chose to drop the offense and get on with life.

Because most tiffs just don’t matter that much in the scheme of things, we agreed to disagree on this issue or that, where we don’t see eye to eye.   We still don’t see some things through the same lens, but we’ve agreed to overlook the offense of it and adopt an “it is what it is,” stance toward some things.

Speaking of not seeing eye to eye, there are terms in local ordinances, such as “annoys,” “offends decency,” or “offends senses,” which would seem difficult to legislate to a 21^st century general population, in my estimation.  I mean, something that annoys you, I may be able to overlook in favor of a personally more important sensibility.  Something that I see as “common decency,” may be a cultural quirk of your subculture, and considered normal for you and yours.

I don’t speak lawyer-ese, nor am I trained to interpret the law but I am a half-decent cultural observer.  It seems to me that the “common good,” of democracy where the majority rules, has been truly supplanted in this century by our republic’s concept of neighborliness.

What then, is neighborliness?  Let me start with the biblical suggestion that one should “love your neighbor as yourself.”  Even the disciples to whom Jesus directed this precept, asked “who is my neighbor?”

Basically, our neighbor is everybody.  And, how do we love them as we love ourselves?

Well, you see, the Bible’s wisdom literature, which is loosely pretty much all of it, has an understanding of human nature well beyond most of our understanding.  To love others as we love ourselves places us right where the rubber meets the road; at our own doorstep.

We fundamentally, base all of our understandings of others on how we think, feel, live and love.  So, if you and I aren’t much alike, we’ll probably disagree with each other commensurate with how different we are.  Therefore, the Golden Rule, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” is the best arbiter of how to treat others, and it demonstrates neighborliness.

Are you kind?  Do you go out of your way to do something for someone else, unasked?  Do you automatically help people?  Can you respect someone else’s differences?  Must your neighbor do things the way you do them, in order for you to consider them acceptable human beings?

“Your dog…no your dog…no your dog…”.  Must little aggravations escalate?  Do you really have room in your life to argue, fuss, and feud over this and that offense?  Are your sensibilities so piqued that you can’t take a breath and concentrate on something else in your life for five minutes?

Is it necessary to take every offense to a lawyer or cite the ordinances that defend your offense, rather than move on and take care of your own life.  Do you really have time to fight everything that doesn’t go your way?

If there isn’t a “grandfather clause” built into the ordinance by which you wish to defend your sensibilities, let’s pretend there is.  Some of us lived with a bit looser interpretation of “what’s right,” way before the new ordinances came into existence. 

We were freer.  We were more casual.  Fewer people cared about every jot and tittle.  We left our neighbors be.  We respected their right to live how they saw fit, keeping themselves to themselves.  People were left to care for their “place” to the best of their ability, given the complications of their lives, which the rest of us may have known nothing about.

So, in the 1940s there was a Looney Tunes cartoon featuring the line, “that’s mighty neighborly of you.”  I don’t know from whence I heard the saying, but apparently it stuck with me.  I’m not that old.   However, it is my sincere hope that we didn’t abandon neighborliness to history and instead, pick up the tone of it in the 2020s and beyond.

In between then and now, there was a pretty heinous cultural tone which may have been intended to defend one’s individual rights, but it served instead to promote selfishness, and the self-centered assertion of self above others.  It was, “look out for number one.”

That assertion seems just plain icky to me, just reading it.  Neighborliness, on the other hand is a much more genial show of friendly, kind, considerate, gracious and cordial character, worth emulating into the 21^st century, don’t you think?

What is peace of mind?  I think it might be the absence of agitation, or fear or worry.  We don’t walk around pondering if we have peace of mind, or do we?

This may seem silly to some people.  But there are moments, usually in the middle of the night, when I get a fleeting feeling of what I sense as happiness.  It’s not ha-ha happiness, but more a sense of contentment, well-being, peace, wholeness or “all is well.”

For example, while I was playing a game on my phone late one night, I startled myself by thinking, “I’m full of joy.”  Have you ever noticed that you can be thinking something, and working on something else, all with the same mind?  I wonder sometimes if one of those functions is one’s spirit, and the other one is one’s mind or brain.

In this instance, I wasn’t thinking about anything, I was just challenged by the game.  I wasn’t particularly happy or joyful nor unhappy or melancholy.  I wondered if maybe it was my spirit reminding me what peace of mind is, and I’m full of it.

Some folks are ha-ha happy.  You can hear or see them laughing all the time, it seems.  They wear happiness on their sleeves and are laugh-out-loud poster children.  Why am I skeptical?

These guys are foreigners to those of us who are happy inside.  We giggle once in a while but rarely roar with laughter, or laugh until we cry.

My mom and my father-in-law were models of this sort of silent happiness that creeps up on you privately.  Although we can be the subtly sarcastic life of the party usually with a self-deprecating amusing story, we’re more likely standing outside of the center of attention, observing others.

I’ve come to treasure those sorts of rare nocturnal confessions of “I’m happy.”  There is no discernible physical pain to speak of.  The weather isn’t expected to be extreme.  No decisions must be made, right now.  I have no impending hassles to think about.  I might have accomplished a thing or two, the previous day.  There’s no immediate due date unhandled.  All of my relationships are in peaceful pause.  I’ve got creative thoughts, if not sleep.  I’m happy.

Maybe I’m not using the right word to elucidate that feeling of wholeness, nothing broken, nothing missing, or “discernibly and eerily okay.”  In fact, one definition of Shalom, is complete peace, including all aspects of wholeness. 

The Hebrew greeting, Shalom Aleichem, in English means, “Peace to you.”  To continue the polite greeting chain of events, you may respond, Aleichem Shalom, “to you, be Peace.”

When I hold my grand-baby while he naps, I usually pray that when he awakens, he will do so in peace.  I’ve experienced the opposite with him, and it’s heartbreaking.

I relate the disoriented, panicky or unhappy awakening from a nap to my own occasional experience.  Have you ever taken an afternoon nap, having been worn to a frazzle?  I have, and sometimes when I awaken after sound slumber, I have no idea what day or time of day it is.  I look for signs to help myself orient, like is it daylight or dark, what are the sounds in the house, and so on.  It’s really quite freaky.

As recorded in the book of Mark, Jesus once commanded a storm to settle down, with three words, “peace be still.”  Settle down, “peace out.”

The phrase, “peace out” was used by hippies, anti-war, or anti-establishment folks in the sixties.  “Peace” meant to get out of the war in Vietnam; combined with “out” which was the radio communication for signaling “the end.”

To re-appropriate a word is to use it again after it has been relegated to disrepute by certain groups.  I’d like to re-appropriate the phrase, “peace out.”  Why couldn’t the phrase become an everyday greeting, or wish for wholeness, completion, and every good and perfect thing, offered to another along your path.

Since I’m not Hebrew, I feel a little funny saying Shalom, to others; maybe even misappropriating the Hebrew culture.  But I’m of an age that I can probably get away with saying, “peace out,” and get away with it.

Mind you, not every time that I’m awake in the wee hours of the night, am I getting those messages of peace, along with Bob Marley singing to me, “every little thing is gonna be alright.”  More often than not, I’m thinking a thousand thoughts about what and how I’m going to do this that and the other thing tomorrow rather than, engaging in “peace be still,” tonight.  That’s why it’s startling when peace so clearly announces itself.

So, please have yourself some peace of mind, even if it comes around when you’re busy thinking of other things.  Apparently, we are capable of entertaining all kinds of thoughts all at the same time.  I hope that one of those thoughts is “I’m at peace, or full of joy, or happy or ….”

What’s wrong?  What doesn’t belong?

When I was a child at school, we were presented with pictures, say of a nest, a ball, and a bird.  What doesn’t go? 

Am I a hypochondriac if I notice something ‘s not quite right with my body?  Something’s wrong.

Maybe I’m not right about what’s wrong, but I’m not wrong that something doesn’t belong.  In this case, hindsight is not all that helpful.

I’m pretty sure that I learned sometime along the line that I should trust my instincts.  I should recognize signals and listen beyond the obvious.

It’s always on a weekend, usually a Sunday.  Or, it’s late at night, when you can’t call your doctor’s office to get a last-minute appointment.

This wasn’t an accident.  There was no blood gushing from any wound or orifice.  I didn’t arrive with lights flashing or sirens blaring.

I was kind of sure by the time I arrived, all the symptoms would have disappeared.  That’s how it goes.  Even though I looked a bit worse for the wear, I didn’t look bad for going to Walmart late at night, or to the ER.

Almost everybody who has a need to visit an ER for yourself or to accompany a loved one, knows you’re in for a long wait the moment you step through the hospital’s automatic doors.  The question is, will I feel a fool for having done this.

If I tend to blow something out of proportion, my husband has been known to say, “it’s not a crisis.”  Well, I’m of the mind that “crisis” is relative to the beholder.  Maybe it’s not a crisis to you, but it’s my body that’s not quite right.

However, whether something is a crisis, or ER-worthy, is best known only in hindsight.  In other words, you never know.

This story is a composite of the experiences of several folks from whom I’ve heard or seen, regarding their ER sagas.  So, the pronouns “I” and “me” are used not as personal pronouns but as an “anybody.”

I had been startled a couple of hours prior, with a sudden, toothache-like pain on the left side of my torso.  Added to degenerative disc pain on my left lower back that had been troubling that week, it was scary but it subsided.  I took a shower and chilled out in front of the television.

Then it happened again while I was laying on a heating pad on the sofa.  It was so acute that I shot up to a seated position and hobbled to the bathroom.  A wave of nausea hovered over me and I spit up salty clear liquid, and dry heaved for a few seconds.  I took my temperature and it was a low-grade fever.

A couple of weeks prior, I had been experiencing some abdominal symptoms for which I had been prescribed a course of two antibiotics.  I was unimaginable that another infection could have crossed that antibiotic barrier.

Could it be a “silent heart attack,” that women can experience as back pain and fatigue.  I had been working for weeks on a cleaning project that required lifting, climbing stairs up and down dozens of times, and exertion beyond the usual daily walks that I take for my heart-health.  Fatigue was a normal reaction, I thought.  But, what if?

So many symptoms can be nothing or they can be something, either simple and routine, or sadly age-related typical, or they can be serious.  How do you know? 

One weighs, if it’s not absolutely acute, if you should just “ride it out.”  Or, when it’s after doctor’s office hours, in these parts, you go to the ER, or you don’t.  I did.

There were people in the waiting room but it was very quiet.  I headed to the intake window and was handed a clipboard and asked to fill out a form.  So off to the waiting room, and here we go.

Along with three or four other pairs of folks who were in varying degrees of misery, I waited to be seen.  I coveted that little boy’s blanket, covering his head.

A woman came in and asked me quite publicly, with absolutely no gesture of privacy, for my name and date of birth.  I would have objected to the blatant lack of patient confidentiality had I not felt so utterly out of sorts.  But I obliged and she put a wristband on my pale, clammy arm.  My husband then joined me in the club of people trying to be polite with one another but not really wanting to socialize.

At a rate of about one patient admitted through the double automatic doors to treatment rooms per half hour on what was a relatively silent week-night ER, we began to hear feel uncomfortable with the cell-phone over-sharing of our compatriots.

Not having additional acute pain since our arrival, I began questioning why we came.  We took a walk and I visited the rest room and settled in another, more isolated waiting area.

Upon hearing another trope from some other people about intimate health conundrums, my less pained body and more alert mind, got irritated and I decided to go home.  I was willing to risk that I had overreacted.

We went to the window and interrupted a nurse munching on party mix, talking with the intake woman.  It felt like an intrusion on their evening plans.  But I said, “I’m leaving.”

She took my name and declined to remove my wristband saying I could have it.  It was public information anyway at this point.

Emergency care, this was not.  This hospital emergency department seemed reminiscent of the television shows I’ve seen of underfunded, overworked NHS A&E departments in the U.K.; not what I expected from “our ER” in rural Pennsylvania.

Urgency to help hurting and or scared people was nowhere to be found.  When people are more willing to leave and risk life and limb rather than wait for hours to be seen on what appeared to be a slow night in the department, something’s wrong.

It occurred to me that staff shouldn’t be seen to be snacking with their mates instead of attending to patients, it’s off-putting and unprofessional to say the least.  This atmosphere announces that this hospital doesn’t care about patients.

I realize that this was not a trauma requiring the word, “stat.”  And it probably wasn’t a crisis, with the operative word being “probably.”  But you never know and I’m just saying, “what’s wrong with this picture?

I began this column thinking about Jesus’ Parable of the Good Samaritan from the Bible’s book of Luke.  Pretty much everybody knows the gist of this moral story about loving your neighbor.

There is no question that the Samaritan demonstrated kindness toward a person not of his or her own group.  The two were strangers, truly “others,” from groups historically hostile toward one another.

One might think of these two individuals as symbolic of left versus right political groups, for instance.  The story doesn’t say much about the thieves who attacked the one needing help.

Sociologically, when a culture has a clear outside enemy such as in times of war, their petty squabbling amongst themselves becomes diminished.  They have someone or something to band together against.

I want to consider the thieves as well as the one who was helped.  Let’s, for a moment forget about the Good Samaritan, the Jewish priest who crossed the street, and the Levite from yet another tribe who also crossed the road to avoid the nearly dead man who needed someone’s help.

Why aren’t we mad at the thieves who created the whole mess of the beaten-up man?  We’re a little angry at the Jewish priest and the Levite because they walked away without helping.

I want to know what happened to the one who needed help.  Once he/she was helped, their wounds healed, and back to their usual, everyday routine, what kind of person did they become?

Another related Scripture from the book of Luke, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” might be the enlightened philosophy of “the one helped.”  I say, enlightened, because we tend to really “get it” when it happens to us.

Many years ago, a man, not necessarily considered a good man by some, or many people, anonymously gave something to our family, that we really needed, when we really needed it.  It was anonymous, but we knew who gave the gift.

Not many people knew our need.  We didn’t advertise it.

Not only did that act of generosity and kindness meet a concrete need, it instilled a “pay it forward” attitude and a ripple effect in us, “the ones helped.”  Now, many years hence, I try to do similar acts of kindness, commensurate with my abilities, to others, as unembellished as possible.

The effects of acts of kindness can last forever, throughout generations.  Kindness can be your legacy.

I wonder if people who have never had an unmet need will have the same understanding of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” as “the one helped.”  None of this precludes the existence of thieves (John 10) who are here to “kill, steal, and destroy.”

Given the vagaries of human nature, often a kindness extended won’t be returned like for like, in a direct exchange.  In fact, that same person who met our need so long ago, turned on us with a nasty exchange later on.

However, nothing can erase the original act of kindness.  It’s out there.

Don’t regret a spurned act of kindness.  It will return to you some other time by some other person or circumstance.  There are simply universal laws of return which will be demonstrated sooner or later.  Just wait for it.

My husband is the king of options.  I’m the opposite, queen of quick decisions and quite okay with option number one.

I typically know right off the bat what I like and what I can live with.  My husband, on the other hand, has to explore multiple options, ad infinitum.  He does research (did I mention that he has a PhD.) until I’m literally sickened by the detail circus he’s produced.

This man makes me crazy on a daily basis with his options.  He really should assign that lovable “crazy” emoji to my name in his phone contacts, for exchanging text messages and phone calls.  Instead, he uses the “love blowing a kiss” one; and the chorus said, “Awh.”

I’ve made plenty of wrong choices and hasty decisions in my life, but none of them have been outrageously disastrous.  But my right decisions have far outweighed the wrong ones.  I married the right man, didn’t I?

Is it better to have multiple options?  Or are we better off with limited choices to weigh?

Then there’s second guessing yourself.  “Darn it, I chose option B when I might have been better off with option C.”  Rarely, do I harbor feelings of regret over the choices I’ve made.

How can you know which choice would have been, could have been, better?  Is hindsight the same thing as experience?  And do we learn from both?

Can you learn to live well with your choices?  Decorating or landscaping choices are never a problem in our household.  It’s our philosophy that one can always repaint, move the furniture, or find a new place for a shrub if our first selection doesn’t sit well with us in the long run.

However, I’m sort of famous in my family for not being happy with my menu choices.  I often look longingly and mouthwateringly at my table partner’s food choices and regret what I chose.  But there have also been some winners.

So, what’s on the menu?  I wrestle with options.  I guess that’s why nine out of ten of my dreams are situated in restaurants, where I am a patron.

Choices.  I’m just happier with fewer of them.

With clothing, I consider myself fortunate that most of the time I’m happy with my purchases.  But there were a notable few times when I asked myself, “what were you thinking, woman?”

It’s usually with the most expensive clothing purchases that I’ll get home and question my choice.  More than once an item has gone unworn to the donation bin three months after I was sure I’d love it and it’s too late to return it.  That one pair of black shoes lasted a year.

True story – I once found the cutest animal print dress in a store, forty miles from home.  I debated and debated whether to buy it.  It was a tad on the expensive side so I declined, until I got home.

I called the store and asked them to hold it for me, made a special trip back to the store, and bought it.  It still hangs in my closet unworn, with the tags on it.

I’ve yet to find the occasion to wear that dress.  I think it may have been a bad choice.  Time will tell, I guess.

If you ever see me wearing a rather form fitting animal print dress, you’ll know that it worked out in the end.  Sometimes you just don’t know if your choices were good, until the end.

I couldn’t be happier with my choice of spouse, he with his unending options and me with my quick decisions.  And yet he still drives me to distraction with his options.  I’m certain that we will remain together until the end, the only option worth considering for the both of us.

 

“Is it really cold in here, or is it just me?  A generalization refers to a point of view, assumed to be nearly universally held, common to most, or usual, without considering specifics.  “Does everybody like this music, because I really don’t.”

“Is it just me,” is maybe a rhetorical question, where you don’t expect an answer.  But it’s more likely a statement of belonging to a certain group of people who think alike.  The generalization of the question, “is it just me,” is that you assume that the answer is no.

We all need to feel a part of some group, whether it’s family, community, country, an organization, professional or work group, or social club.  Even if your group is a bunch of introverts, you belong to a group of somebodies.

As an essayist, it’s probably common that I think mostly in generalizations.  For example, if I think a certain way, about a certain thing, I might assume that “most” people think that way too.  Clearly, I don’t think it’s just me who thinks that way or has experienced a particular circumstance, or I wouldn’t be sharing my opinion widely.

However, I am fully aware that generalizations can be dangerous.  They can lead to hatred toward an individual because they belong to a group that you don’t like.

When referring to people, perhaps we should err on the side of sensitivity and not generalize, but stick to specifics. People are too multi-faceted to generalize about them.  They might surprise you.  I hope they do.

When I think that some of us or even most of us have gone through the same thing or feel the same way, I realize that not ALL of us have.  If you read or hear someone generalizing about a group you belong to, and you don’t fit the description, don’t take offense, turn the page, flip the channel, click “NEXT.”

On the contrary, if I think that everybody agrees with me, or should agree with me, about something, I’m naïve, narcissistic, and self-centered.  Or, not as generously, perhaps I’m a bigoted arse, as the English say.

I don’t care what one says, there will always be someone, if not a bunch of people who don’t get it, see it, or even know what you’re talking about.  This is a case of, if it doesn’t apply to you, move on.

I’m aware that one should not assume that everybody agrees with what I think.  For example, because as a woman, I think a certain way does not mean that all women think that way.  If I’m a certain age and feel a certain way, doesn’t mean that all people of the same age feel the same way.  My husband does a certain thing, it doesn’t mean that all husbands do that.

Most things can be generalized, as long as we’re aware that there are always exceptions.  For example, most people will be unhappy with torrential rain.  Also, most people will probably prefer a sunny day over an overcast day.  Most people will agree that puffy white clouds against a blue sky are cheerful and a gray sky is ominous.

This reminds me of my college social science statistics course.  My biggest takeaway from that class was the difference between cause and effect, and correlation.  In a way, most of our generalizations are based on cause and effect thinking. 

For example, if I was caught outdoors in a rainstorm and got soaking wet and when I settled down at home a few hours later and I began sneezing, had a runny nose, and felt altogether miserable, I might conclude that getting soaked gave me a cold.  That’s cause and effect thinking.

What we didn’t consider in the rainstorm-to-cold conclusion are the other variables besides the rainstorm that may have caused my cold.  I forgot that I didn’t wash my hands or “sanitize” after handling forty different items in the grocery store that had already been handled by a go-zillion other folks who hadn’t washed their hands and wiped their noses with those same hands – didn’t your mother ever say, “you don’t know where those hands have been…”

Germs cause colds, not rainstorms.  Start thinking along the lines of correlations instead of cause and effect, which is often just plain wrong because it’s too general.

Correlational thinking goes like this, shark attacks are strongly related to the sale of ice cream. Nobody would reasonably claim that ice cream consumption causes shark attacks.  These two phenomena are correlated but one doesn’t cause the other.  Another variable, summer throngs of people at beaches, is the more likely cause of the rise in both shark attacks and increased sales of ice cream.

A sensible “out” if you want to use generalities is to use the word, “usually.”  It’s just sensible in interactions with other humans, to never use the word always, preceded by the word you.   Also don’t say, “you never…”.  Use general words which apply to once in a while, sometimes, or occasionally.

Sometimes it might be, “just me.”  But it usually applies to more of us, some of us, or perhaps most of us.  The word, usually pretty much explains generalization.  I think we should give massive accolades to the Depressed Persian Tow Truck Man from MADtv, who said most wisely that something can happen usually, but “never always.”

If you like words or trivia or intellectual nonsense, let’s talk games.  Are you game?

The tune that played through my head while pondering this subject was Game of Love, the 1965 American version by Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders.  However, upon further examining the lyrics, the only thing I found useful was “…Let’s play.”

I wonder what might make love, a game.  Love doesn’t seem so much a thing that you play at, if playfulness is key to the game of love.

I guess if you’re one who perceives that “love is a battlefield,” with “no promises and no demands,” (Pat Benatar 1983), it might be that love is a war game.  But is this love?  Or, is it playing games?

With love, I believe that if it’s a game, it has to be a win-win or lose-lose.  Love as a game certainly is not a game of chance.  Come to think about it, the game of love might not be a spontaneous game but one of strategy.  Premeditation and planning are required for the win-win goal of this game.

There is some skill involved in the game of love.  Just ask anybody who has partnered with another for many years.

They’ve learned some things about juggling; about tolerance of differences; how to obey the sixth (kill) and ninth (lie) commandments – well all of them help out in long-term relationships; they’ve mastered the balance beam; how to be angry and sin not; they’ve learned their history lessons, household economy, and the temporariness but vitality of the five-year-plan.

I’m of the mind that love is a thing that grows out of challenges borne together over time, rather than a thing that culminates one time a year with dinner out, strawberries dipped in chocolate, champagne, and flowers.

Some people like to play games others don’t – what’s the difference?  I question this both literally and figuratively.  Some folks bow out of playing board games, card games, solving puzzles, video games, and electronic games.  Are games too trivial for some, or childish?

I believe some people literally avoid games because their temperament is too competitive or maybe not competitive enough.  We’ve all been there in a game of sport or even a board game, when folks who make a mistake get angry, seemingly way out of proportion to the spirit of a game.

I guess since I mentioned games of sport, I should surmise that “game animals,” the wild kind, hunted for their meat, are treasured in particular for the sport of the catch.  Hunting is a game of sport.

I mean, people who act deceitful or manipulative in a relationship are said to be “playing games”.  In this scenario there has to be a winner and a loser in the game.

Long-term relationships might be compared to the Olympic Games where only the most dedicated athletes make it to the podium.  Or some might compare their love relationships to the Invictus Games where although wounded, they can still win amongst their peers.

Card games involve both skill and luck.  For example, you have to work with the hand you’ve been dealt.  Some folks have the ability to win the game in spite of a few “bad” hands dealt to them.

What does one get out of watching a game show on television?  Do such folks consider it a personal game of skill to have picked the winner, thus considering themselves winners?

War games, I suppose are the epitome of games of strategy.  “Game theory” is a branch of mathematics that postulates a scenario. The scenario is played out and analyzed against other possibilities and outcomes.  Then another scenario is put onto the table.  I think that theory, analysis, and strategies, of war games would be potentially fun for certain minds.

Since you were so very gracious to follow me down the rabbit-hole of my thoughts about the concept of games, what do you say we go forward as “game changers?”  Maybe we could completely change some upcoming situations with new ideas or decisive plays that will make somebody’s world develop better than expected.