Ray’s Daily
April 17, 2018
He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul’s estate.
Henry David Thoreau
I am off this morning to the hear Doctor where I will also get a cardic echo check on my leaky heart valve. Since I am running behind I am sending you another reprint.
Ray’s Daily first published on April 17, 2008
It is another of those runaway days. With Kiwanis, a Salvation Army volunteer appreciation luncheon, an Arthritis seminar and a Immigration seminar there are only a few hours left. I am in the process of reducing the daily level of activity but these commitments where made some time ago and have to be honored. So what I am going to do is give you something I saved some time ago. I decided to send it to you because one of my friends has been carrying too heavy a load and when I said she should take a vacation she told me all the reasons why she could not. I disagreed with her but could not convince her so I am dedicating the following to her and all the rest of you who just can’t stop.
Work, Rest and Play!
According to the world ethic, happiness is not natural – happiness is a pay-packet you earn for putting in the hours. There are, in particular, four erroneous, fearful beliefs about happiness that help make up the work ethic, and they are,
Happiness has to be deserved
Happiness has to be worked for
Happiness has to be earned
Happiness has to be paid for
The work ethic is all about labor: birth is labor, life is labor, love is labor, happiness is labor, work is labor, death is rest. We labor, not for the joy of it, but because we have learned to believe we must. The purpose of the work ethic is to work hard so as to atone for your guilt and unworthiness and thereby “deserve happiness” once more.
“Workaholism” is endemic, and for many of us our life is governed entirely by work. Once upon a time, we worked to live; now, we live to work. Any “life” we do have is merely recovery from work. We work, recover from work, and then work again. We go to the office to work.
After work, we bring home some work with us. For rest, we go to the gym for a work-out. Totally exhausted, we go to therapy to work through our problems – “I’ve done a lot of work on myself,” we say. After all that, there’s the house-work! Finally, we hit the sack, too tired to be happy, but our mind is still working and we cannot sleep. No problem! Insomnia is a wonderful chance to get more work done!
The work ethic is motivated by the belief that anything worthwhile requires great work, effort and labour. According to the work ethic: creativity is not inspiration; it’s perspiration; love is a labour, not a joy; success is a fight, it never comes easily; health is about a “no pain, no gain” attitude; salvation is hardest of all – it is a wrestling match with the angels – just ask Jacob. Nothing comes easily according to the work ethic.
We are too busy working to be happy, to be happy. In the last ten years, the average working week has increased by over ten hours to nearly 50 hours a week; the lunch break faces extinction; 6 out of 10 men and 4 out of 10 women work Saturdays; Sundays are now a workday for many. To cap it all, when we dare leave the office at 5pm, there is always one sad, brainless colleague who shouts out, “Part timer”, or, “Only doing a half day?” Guilt ensues.
As a society we spend more and more time as a human doing and less and less time as a human being. Indeed, the work ethic despises rest and play. We hardly ever go out to play anymore; instead we go for cardiovascular workouts, business lunches and corporate away days. According to the work ethic, rest is “downtime” – nothing useful is happening. Too much rest and you lose your edge!
Kick the work ethic into touch! When you are relaxed and happy, you perform brilliantly. Remember the old saying: “you do not stop playing because you grow old, you grow old because you stop playing”. Work is an attitude. So too is play. Go out to play!
Extracted from Happiness NOW , article by Robert Holden
~~~
If you are losing your leisure, look out; you may be losing your soul.
Logan P. Smith
~~~
SEUSS COMPUTES
If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
And the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
And the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
Then the socket packet pocket has an error to report!
If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash,
And the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash,
And your data is corrupted ’cause the index doesn’t hash,
Then your situation’s hopeless, and your system’s gonna crash!
If the label on the cable on the table at your house,
Says the network is connected to the button on your mouse,
But your packets want to tunnel on another protocol,
That’s repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall.
And your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss
So your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse,
Then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang,
‘Cause as sure as I’m a poet, the sucker’s gonna hang!
When the copy of your floppy’s getting sloppy on the disk,
And the microcode instructions cause unnecessary risk,
Then you have to flash your memory
and you’ll want to RAM your ROM.
Quickly turn off the computer and be sure to tell your mom!
~~~
Take interest in your future. It’s where you’re going to spend the rest of your life.
~~~
A 50-ish man is driving on a slow highway in the middle of the night. He has a flat tire. He gets out of his car and is changing his tire, when out of the blue, another car pulls up behind him.
He thinks “That’s nice. Someone is stopping to help me.”
The guy gets out of his car, walks to the front of the other car and lifts the hood.
The owner says: “What the hell are you doing?”
The other guy replies: “Well, I see you’re stealing the tires, so I’m taking the damn battery!”
~~~
“If you don’t make mistakes it means you’re not really trying… and you’re probably boring too.”
~~~
Pastor Dave Charlton tells us, “After a worship service at First Baptist Church in Newcastle, Kentucky, a mother with a fidgety seven-year old boy told me how she finally got her son to sit still and be quiet. About halfway through the sermon, she leaned over and whispered, ‘If you don’t be quiet, Pastor Charlton is going to lose his place and will have to start his sermon all over again!’ It worked.”
~~~
Friendship is what binds the world together in peace, may we all become friends.
~~~
“I was walking the streets of Glasgow the other week and I saw this sign: ‘This door is alarmed.’ I said to myself: ‘How do you think I feel?'”
Arnold Brown
~~~
Come, gentle Spring; ethereal Mildness, come!
James Thomson
~~~
Ray Mitchell
Indianapolis, Indiana
Management is not responsible for duplicates from previous dailies. The editor is somewhat senile.
Ray’s Daily has been sent for more than fifteen years to people who want to start their day on an upbeat. If you have system overload because of our daily clutter, let me know and I will send you the information via mental telepathy. If you have not been getting our daily you can request to be added by e-mailing me at raykiwsp@gmail.com. Back issues are posted at http://rays-daily,com/ currently there are more than 2000 readers from around the world.
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