(via thinknorth)

“There are things I would less rather do than follow up a wounded lion into thick brush, but none come to mind immediately.  I’ve done it nine times and I certainly hope it never comes to ten.”

-Peter Hathaway Capstick

“A ship in port is safe, but that is not what ships are for.”

-Grace Murray Hopper

“There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing it is not fish they are after”

-Henry David Thoreau

The love of the chase is deeply imbedded in man’s nature. During the untold centuries of his savage condition he followed it out of necessity.  We now revert to our primitive employment for our pleasure and recreation, pursuing with ardor, sports which often involve much bodily fatigue and always require skill and training.  An impulse, often irresistible it seems, leads a man away from civilization, from its artificial pleasures and its mechanical life, to the forests, the fields and the waters, where he may have that freedom and peace which civilization denies him.  If this not be so, then why is it that the man of affairs as well as the man of leisure feels again the joy of his youth as he bids farewell to his office or to his club, and seeks the solitudes of the woods and the plains?  He will meet there some old familiar face in a guide, or fellow-sportsman, and welcome it with the ardor of good fellowship.  He will undergo all sorts of bodily discomforts, -coarse food and rough bed, the wet and the cold,- and yet be happy, because for a little spell he is free; in other words, he has, for the time, become a civilized savage.  If, with gun and rod, he goes into the recesses of the great woods, and lives there for weeks or months, or mounts his horse and traverses the western plains and mountain passes, relying on his rifle for his subsistence, he is made to realize that there are many things to be learned outside of cities and away from his usual occupations.  He will find food for philosophy in the behavior of his hunting companions; he will see who is manly and unselfish, who endowed with pluck and self-reliance; for three weeks’ association with a friend in the wilderness will reveal more of his real character than a dozen years’ with him amid the safe retreats and soothing comforts of civilized life.  He will learn how few are the real wants of a happy life in the midst of uncivilized nature.  His troubles, if he carried any with him, will vanish; time will seem of as little value to him as to the savage, and like all true sportsmen and honest anglers, he will return to his home with a calmed spirit and a contented mind.

Sport with Gun and Rod
Preface
Copyright 1883
Alfred M. Mayer

There is always talk about the benefits of riding your bike to work (exercise, save gas, no pollution, etc…) 

Lately I’ve noticed another bi-product of riding a bike to work: you’re able to interact with people along the way.  Riding a bike opens up a whole new realm of neighborly friendliness than doesn’t exist when you drive. 

There is more to being an upstanding young man than knowing how to perform tasks. 

Here marks the beginning of a series of words and phrases that I want to train myself to use more regularly:

“on second thought…”

There are multiple reasons for using the phrase on second thought.  Most obviously it suggests that you are putting some thought into the things that are coming out of your mouth.  While elementary in theory… it is a practice that could always use more attention.  This statement not only encourages forethought but reflection as well.

Secondly, on second thought suggests a certain level of humility.  There is value in being able to admit when we are wrong or get to the end of a sentence and be able to admit we don’t actually believe the jumble of words that just dribbled from our lips.

So, baring some second thought, I’m committing to on second though as the first vocabulary enhancer.

Still not convinced?
Take good counsel and accept correction— that’s the way to live wisely and well.
Proverbs 19:20

Trying to learn how to be a 20th Century Man in the 21st Century

Recently, I realized my Dad knows how to make, fix, do and create a lot more things than I do… a fact I’ve known all my life but never questioned until recently.

Shortly after that epiphany, I realized my Grandpa knows how to repair, build, prepare and create even more things than my Dad does.  This lead me to the simple conclusion that as each generation passes, we are getting decreasingly self-sufficient and increasingly uninteresting.  As it turns out, my Grandpa has never heard of Fantasy Football… and he’s a much more interesting person to talk to because of it.

Hence, my new journey to break free of the tendency to follow the same beaten path of dependency and comfort that defines my generation and learn to do things “the-old-fashioned way”