When did we become such consumers? When I was growing up, no matter what was going on in the world, good times, bad times, I saw women wearing makeup. It was a sure bet that they would give up everything else, but they wouldn’t give up their makeup. During World War II, when nylon stockings couldn’t be found, women painted a line up the back of their legs to make it look like they were wearing stockings. In those days, …
I keep running across articles that talk about our current age as being equal to twenty or thirty years younger, e.g., today’s 65 is yesterday’s 45, or today’s college graduate is yesterday’s freshman high school student. We keep hearing about baby boomers and millennials being immature and dissatisfied with their lot in life. Millennials are also depicted as narcissists, and I wonder if the reason they are perceived that way is because they haven’t found a cause to embrace that’s …
Can you imagine seeing your sex life documented on a spreadsheet? How would you react to seeing a record kept by your spouse that you had turned him down twenty-seven times over the last couple of months, only allowing him in your bed three times? Apparently, a frustrated 26-year-old man felt he had no other recourse than to communicate his dissatisfaction with his sex life than to document how many times his wife turned him down for sex over a …
This may sound like a strange question but, since we don’t go around taking our happiness temperature every day, many people don’t know whether they are happy or not. Many people know when they are unhappy, but they often don’t know when they are depressed. And, no, unhappiness doesn’t always cause depression and depression doesn’t always accompany unhappiness, even though it may seem impossible to separate the two. If you ask someone if he is happy, the response is often, …
I wonder if a large part of the Christmas spirit isn’t the anticipation of the gifts they will be buying and receiving. For some, it’s the anticipation of giving gifts to loved ones and to people they will never meet, the recipients of charity. For others, it’s the anticipation of receiving something they have been wanting. If this feeling of anticipation is responsible for lifting the mood of people at Christmas, why couldn’t we use that same strategy for the …
When I was young and looking for a way to earn some money, I was approached by a company to do surveys for their products. It sounded easy and it also sounded like a good way to meet people in my new neighborhood. They started me on something easy. The product tasted good, didn’t produce any ill effects (I always tried everything out on me first), and it didn’t take up much room in the refrigerator. I’m pointing out how …