Year-end reflections

Since year's end is widely considered a period for reflection and understanding, here are a few of mine.

I do believe everything over a lifetime happens for a reason and sometimes the reason is because we often tend to make bad choices.

Considering every move we take is based on a choice, from rolling out of bed in the morning until laying our head on the pillow, the wiser heads among us will realize how much discomfort and pressure we bring on ourselves by decisions made out of emotion, rather than good common sense.

In the process we often create situations for ourselves that prove difficult should we choose to exit for our own well-being. Time invariably changes everything. Mom used to say those in relationships are either growing closer or further apart. But they are never standing still, which means a choice made last year could feel and seem far different today.

The lesson from bad choices is obvious to me. Think before acting out of pure emotion and connecting yourself to anything that clearly has serious potential to wind up more negative (and as a restriction on your life's potential) than positive. Then, for your own sake, have the courage and will to change as circumstances change around you.

I've always found it interesting that we humans tend to gravitate to those circumstances in life over which we seemingly can maintain the most favorable control for the moment.

It comes natural to want to be as comfortable and productive as we possibly can be with those things that matter most by controlling the variables that surround us.

What's that old adage about the person who cares the most in a relationship is at the greatest disadvantage because they naturally will have greater vulnerability and thus lesser control over how things play out? Makes perfect sense to me.

The best way to achieve comfort and satisfaction is to be the person in control of the time and nature of our associations and events. The tricky part comes when two adults with free will are involved.

Can't say as I blame anyone for seeking control, including myself, especially in this frenetic world we've created and condoned that too often allows stuff to slip through our grasp. And we run the risk of awakening one morning to discover the time we were allotted here has been used up mostly striving for control. Seems rather self-defeating in an ironic way, doncha agree? Yet another observation today in a demanding season where the matter of control seems especially relevant to each of us.

Then there is the issue of expectations and how they seem to set the agenda for so much of daily existence. I doubt many of us realize that we are continually setting expectations in others and they in us, through our words and actions, or lack of either.

Having one's expectations dashed is a sure-fire way to generate frustration, disappointment and anger.

If a person calls another every Thursday evening for two weeks then stops, you can bet the one on the receiving end is having expectation issues.

If my child expects 20 gifts on Christmas but gets six, get ready for the lower lip of dashed expectation.

During my editing years, I had some reporters who produced three stories a day while others were hard-pressed to churn out that many in a week. If the expected biggest producer suddenly dropped to one a day, I knew something was amiss.

This extends across virtually every interaction we share. If a normally smiling person isn't one day, we know something is up. If a husband showers his wife with flowers then stops for some time, you can bet she's wondering why.

So it's best I remember that whatever I do and say, the odds are great that I'm inadvertently setting benchmarks others will expect me to maintain. And the same goes with me toward them.

Shifting into fourth gear, I couldn't let the events involving Sony Pictures initially caving in to threats by pulling its comedy about two goobers assigned to kill the North Korean dictator pass without a thought.

The Interview was pulled following terror threats by computer hackers, who had already released embarrassing information about the execs and various doings within that corporation. Sony eventually decided to open the film anyway in a limited number of theaters on Christmas Day.

The company's predicament caused me to realize how vulnerable so many of our major corporations are to blackmail and extortion from such attacks. Just who in the corporate world and beyond is safe today, especially since the Sony incident has shown just how effective such attacks can be?

Those responsible for such destructive attacks need not get their own hands dirty. They don't even have to know how to plug in a computer. All they need is enough cash to hire the very best hackers money can buy.

And an oops: In Tuesday's column, I wrote that Castle Rogue's Manor in Beaver overlooks Lake Taneycomo. It's actually Table Rock Lake.

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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected].

Editorial on 12/27/2014

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