If you want to change the working model a store uses, buy the store and change it. What you’re experiencing here is getting older and hating change, which is fine, but you’ll not stop progress. The self checkout as it is presented today is part of a process, where a need is discovered and a new process implemented. The next step will happen when technology and common sense revises it to the point that it truly is more convenient. The old style gas pumps were complicated, and the push back just recently ended in the last hold out state, yet here we are not thinking a thing about pumping our own gas. Things change and we have to adapt. Technology has always killed jobs. It provides them too, it’s a trade off, ask any wheelwright or typesetter. Understand that a significant portion of our children in school today are going to take jobs doing things that don’t even exist yet. Instead of pushing back at grocery store models because of technology and change, get behind schools teaching our children how to learn new things, instead of living in the past, help plan for our children’s future.

I don’t have to believe, trust, or enable you to love you. There are no conditions to my loving you no matter what your flaws, or mine are. You might equate unconditional love with some pinnacle of a perfect relationship, it is not. It means that no matter how toxic or wrong headed I find you to be in the moment, I will love you anyway. I might not trust you enough to let you stand behind me, but that doesn’t ever mean that I don’t love you or have your best interests in my heart. Unconditional love is a rare gift, as hard to find as it is to recognize when you’ve found it. I thank and bless the memory of my grandmother every day for the unconditional love she gifted us with. It changed my life.

We teach the basics. We build the foundation that the specific information we will need can be built from. We teach history so that we learn that learning from the mistakes others made is less painful than making those mistakes for ourselves. We teach civics and the rules of diplomacy so that we can discuss our problems and the things we disagree about without anger and hostility. The base of knowledge we teach must be formidable so that we can move forward with confidence, rather than the arrogance of ignorance that holds us back so effectively today.

It is of interest to note that my faith comforts me, and provides the confidence and discipline I need to move forward without the need to compel others to believe as I do or ridicule them when they do not. I would posit that while I see my faith as a tool, I have never found my faith to be a weaponized tool to be wielded against my surroundings, but rather a cushion that blunts the blows cast by living in a harsh and uncaring world. My faith reminds me that my battle is not to be better than those people around me, that it is enough to be better than I was yesterday, and to compare myself tomorrow not to my friends or my enemies, but to who I was today. I’m human so I sometimes do stupid shit. My faith asks of me to be as forgiving of myself when I do stupid shit as it asks of me to forgive others when they do human things too. I understand that all of the things I attribute to my faith are completely possible without the tool and crutch I call my faith, and use to codify and help me remember how I should be. I use mnemonics too, and any other tool I can access that helps get me through the day. The tools you use to get you by are not mine, nor should they be. All I ask is that you be a little gentler in your criticism of what are the worst aspects of the tool known as faith when misused by the unscrupulous, because in the hands and eyes of those of us with scruples, it blunts and heals the cruelty and hatred humans can unleash on each other.

Once you have established a bad thing as illegal, you have pretty much exhausted the law’s ability to deter that thing from happening. If that thing, now illegal, is still happening you need to move beyond the thinking that you need more laws making that thing even more illegal, and learn what is motivating people to do an illegal thing. Address that motivation and you will find that your one law is sufficient.

We have allowed ourselves to be governed by people that think that if you throw enough money at it, you can fix any problem. Problem is that their problems aren’t our problems. Where their problems begin and end with ways to acquire more wealth, our problems are more down to earth. Really down to earth, as in we want to heal our planet and help each other to strike a balance where all of us are doing well and healthy, not just the top few percent. I propose we do what they are doing, kinda. We take our government back and throw their money at our problems. See if that fixes it.

Understand that if you do wake up, you are going to see and hear things that run counter to your core beliefs. Your cognitive dissonance is going to be challenged and you are not going to be comfortable with the truth about what you have been ignoring. I’m not saying this to hurt you, I’m just warning you that waking up will demand of you a re-evaluation of things you want to be true, but are not. If you refuse to confront those beliefs, and do not change your opinions based on the reality that your waking provides you, then there is no point in your waking at all. It’s going to be emotionally painful, and it’s going to take work to awaken. The real bitch is, after you go through all that, the real work starts. You will realize that the job of waking others and fixing the problems our slumber allowed to occur falls squarely on you. Civilization is hard, and it takes real work to achieve and maintain. Try not to be too harsh with the ones that want to remain asleep. Doing the right thing isn’t for everyone.

Do you suppose it occurs to Republican voters that the battle going on over the debt ceiling was manufactured by their Republican representatives in congress? They’re the ones that put the cost of wars and tax breaks for their rich donors in a budget that couldn’t afford it. That the battle going on is about their Republican representatives demanding the cost of their spending be placed on the poor, the sick, the elderly, and the people in our nation least likely to be able to afford it? If we stopped bombing the appointed enemies of the corporate oil barons, and reducing their taxes to less than zero it wouldn’t be necessary to fight this fight every time there’s a Democrat in the White House trying to balance our budget.

When I’m gone, and you find yourself thinking about me, look for me. You will find little pieces of me in the hearts and minds of the people my life influenced. A little of me exists in each of my friends, you can see me in them if you look. As long as they live and the stories of my life are told and retold there will be a little bit of me in this world. You can find me there.

Also know that while I live you can find in me bits and pieces of those I have known that no longer walk this world. I too have been influenced by, and carry in my heart the lives and memories of those that went before me. We live beyond our years in the stories that are told about us. Judged by generations that never knew us. What stories will be told about you?