Happy Birthday Mom

a.k.a. What Mom Taught Me.

Well today is my Mother's birthday. While it has been said that with age comes wisdom, I've always felt my mother has had some strong wisdom, words that she pounded into me and that still resound through the fiber of my being when the situation arises. These pieces of advice have made my Mother one of the strongest influences on my character. As I now reach the beginning of my 26^th year, I find these lessons to be more relevant than ever and am pleased to share them here.

Don't Judge a Book by its Cover: An extremely difficult rule to implement in your life. The tendency to make snap judgments on anything or anyone based on the way they look is so natural to us that we can hardly ignore it. Time and time again, my snap judgments, which I kept private for obvious reasons, turned out to be wrong and I was sorry I made them. Even a good friend of mine was shocked to find that one of their judgments on a certain media person was wrong and that they enjoyed them more than they thought. Actually this applies to a few people.

Don't Stoop to Their Level: If you consider yourself to be a mature, responsible adult, than this is the rule for you. Sure you have had something bad done to you and nothing would make you happier than to do the same thing or worse back. This retaliation is only to make you feel better, nothing more, if anything it makes you look as bad or worse than them. With no doubt I can say that you will regret it later on in life. This has always been my argument in the Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib stories. Yes these people, or someone connected to them, did terrible things to us. But by treating them in a poor fashion, or at least allowing the world to think so, and something bad must have happened somewhere for it to get this much publicity, we cannot distinguish ourselves from the evil we fight. We need to stand above them, and the world will support us. Politicians can learn from this too. Just because someone runs a smear campaign against you doesn't mean you should do even worse back to them. There must be a more mature way; you guys are smart think about it for a while. And the public might even just perhaps respect you more.

Pick you Battles: A famous old saying says you can make some of the people happy all of the time and all of the people happy some of the time, but all of the people all of the time is an impossibility. This is up there with that. You can possibly win ever battle presented to you in life. Sometimes you have to concede in order to win the more important fights. That's why I don't fight every time I have a problem at work, and why I usually get what I want when I ask for it. The Democrats should follow this advice. At the moment they are fighting and losing every battle. It's time to concede a few. Cut their loses and get ready for a more important battle, whatever that might be to them. But attacking everything Bush and the Republicans try to do is counter-productive to the country. The Right may be working in some ways to keep the political scene partisan, the Left isn't helping!

Brush Your Teeth Twice a Day: Pretty much a given, but I've never had a serious tooth problem, good genes or good advice? You decide.

Don't Lie, Take Responsibility: Possibly the most difficult thing you could ever do in your life. From small things like: you knocked over the coffee cup, or, who gave the dog chocolate, all the way to who revealed a CIA operative's name, or, did you have a affair with your intern and then lie about it under oath, you should always take responsibility for what you do. I've only seen one politician in recent times ever come close to saying that he made some mistakes and he wanted to make up for it, and he's a fictional character. I'm voting for David Palmer!

A lot of wisdom in only a few sentences. Thanks for everything Mom. Nothing I could write here truly sums up how grateful I am. I love you very much. Have a very Happy Birthday.

Wisdom of the Day: What you need more???!!!?!?!?!