​How long could you sit in a library and study? I think that’s an intriguing question for anyone who is a non-student at their current stage of life.
 
Try it out. Stroll down to your local library. Leave you cell phone at home. No distractions. Browse around. Find some magazines. Pull out a book. Read. See if you can last four hours.

Will boredom set in? Will you get antsy? Do you start daydreaming? Do you find yourself thinking about all the chores back home you need to get done or all the errands you should run?
 
Most likely, those thoughts will rip through your head because your concentration only lasts so long reading the book or magazine. You’ll put what you are reading down and start thinking about something else.
 
Our ability to focus on reading or spending significant time doing an in-depth analysis on a project is something that seems to be going away. Our attention spans have shrunk from reading newspapers to reading shorter stories like those in USA TODAY, to watching snippets of images on TV to tweeting and snap chatting pictures and phrases. Brevity abounds. Lengthy concentration ceases to exist.
 
A by-product is that we don’t look as deeply into the world as we used to. We give an object, issue, project or problem a brief moment of attention, then move onto what’s next. We don’t solve or resolve anything that way. Shorter attention spans mean we raise our ire, then never figure out how to get rid of that feeling. We’re left irritated and angry on a regular basis.
 
Who wants to read Sartre or Nietzsche when they can read Dave Simon? I provide bubble gum for the mind. Sartre and Nietzsche provide an expertly cooked seven course meal, with dessert, that requires all your taste buds. My writing is something you can chew and spit out.
 
It’s not to say figuring things out quickly or sometimes immediately discarding a piece of non-pertinent information isn’t worthwhile. We have to rid our brains of some data some we can absorb the new.
 
No, the issue to me is more about our collective loss (or perhaps it’s lack of desire) of looking more deeply into issues to find solutions. We don’t allocate extra time to concentrate, and quite frankly, as a species, we have a strong laziness gene. If we can do it easier, we take that path.
 
I do it all the time. Just witness situations where you could walk or ride your bike somewhere, but you choose to use your car. That’s not always laziness, but sometimes it is. You could argue it’s about convenience or speed. Regardless, it’s a shortcut, and we often take the shortcuts.
 
Another part of the equation other than laziness, I believe, is our lack of curiosity. We don’t care to really know what is going on. We’d rather eat Doritos and watch the Dallas Cowboys game on television than learn why quantum mechanics helps explain our very existence or if a time machine is built, it most likely will not allow travel back past the time the machine was invented (a theory recently advanced by physicists).
 
Those are complicated issues requiring a brain investment and we’d rather turn our minds off than turn them on and plug them in. We are just animals. We’re looking for a quality meal, security and soft, hungry lips to kiss.
 
Now head to the library. Find a cubicle and a good book. See how long you can read it before you fall asleep.

​It would seem that many of the problems we face in the U.S. are based in reality not meeting our expectations. For example, there is a strong belief that one can hit the lottery, find the pot of gold, land the big one. This attitude infects many people.
 
There is a hope, desire and fantasy that one huge break will change our lives. In almost all cases, this proves false. The brass ring is missed when you reach for it from the merry-go-round.

Contrast that concept with one of incremental change: You work hard. You train. You develop. You take it step by step. Finally, after many years of effort, you see the fruits of your labor, your personal investment taking hold and demonstrating the type of results you sought. That is far more likely to occur.
 
At some point in my life (I don’t remember how many years ago), I began using a phrase about climbing stairs: “You start at the bottom. Take the first step. To get to the third step, you must ascend the second. You can’t skip steps.”

We all want to take those leaps, and jump two or three rungs higher quickly. Sometimes this is possible for the supremely talented (physically, mentally, creatively or emotionally), but not for most of us, nor in most cases. Michael Jordan, for example, though he can play high quality golf, had no chance of ever making the pro tour. Nor would he ever ascend to the major leagues in baseball.
 
When fortunate, we are able to move up in jobs or athletics a couple of stairs at a time, rather than one. That’s a good sign. It means you’re heading down a path that fits your talents. Keep at it.
 
In 2004, I took a job in the security industry. As part of my position, I handled public relations for a non-profit working on alarm management issues. The problems faced by the security industry in this area were not going to be resolved overnight. They took years forming. They would take years to improve in a significant way. We could make a dent, but I advised our top people that the task to get the industry and other stakeholders thinking and acting differently was probably 3-5 years down the road. We’d have to stick with it.
 
We saw results in the timeframe I suggested. Incremental change created positive outcomes.
 
As a former high school and college basketball referee, I wanted to officiate the big games. Like other men and women (not “all” by any means), I wanted to jump to the visible, highly contested matchups without putting in the time necessary to prove I could do all the lower levels successfully. Most of us do things like this in similar circumstances. It’s hard not to because you want something badly. You must postpone gratification and look beyond yourself.

It seems to me we’ve continued to lose that willingness to sacrifice for something beneficial down the road. We see this in politics, careers, our fitness regimes and our love lives. We don’t want to put the time in, but we think there should be big results.
 
The pot of gold battles incremental change. Our egos dominate our work ethic. That’s not a good thing. If we’re going to solve some of the major problems facing this country (and the world for that matter), this conflict is one of our biggest obstacles.

Stop pointing fingers. Stop blaming. Roll up your sleeves. Get it done. I’m eagerly waiting to see who chooses to come forward and work hard for others for the collective good of our country in the months ahead. 

​We all have selective memories. There’s an ongoing joke in our family about a Chinese movie. I don’t know if our concept of a Chinese movie is accurate, but in our lore, we heard that stories get told from multiple perspectives with each person remembering things very differently.
 
There is a lot of humor in this. One person’s memory of a car jumping a curb and hitting a lamp post becomes another person’s memory of a bus crashing into a fire hydrant. Time will make vivid events dissipate. We forget details. Things become fuzzy. Everyone who was there has something different to say or add. Hence, Chinese movie.
 
The selective nature of what we remember makes things like high school or college reunions more important. We gather to share stories. We forget details. Friends fill us in. It’s great fun and we can lie or distort to our heart’s content. “I certainly don’t remember that, Harry.”
 
“Too bad, Eileen. That’s the way it happened.” Or not.
 
It’s not just reunions where we enjoy reminiscing and recreating our pasts. It happens all the time when folks get together to share stories. Even if you are just regurgitating last night’s party, there are gaps in your timeline that require others to fill in. In fact, what would be the fun if you remembered everything? You’d be one big know-it-all then and no one would want to ever hang out with you.
 
Just this past weekend, a good friend of mine joined us from his current roost in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. He and I shared many spectacular times back in the early 1980s. But neither of us can completely remember which door of his pickup truck he had to keep sealed with a rubber hose so it didn’t fly open around corners. “Hmmm, was it the driver’s side or the passenger’s side?” It doesn’t matter. What does matter is how funny and scary it was hanging on when he drove that dinosaur, and the number of times we had to push it out of intersections when it broke down. If he reads this, he may even email me to correct some details. And that will be fun, too.
 
Selective memories help us share. By sharing, we find out who we are. We also remember who we were.
 
That’s another great thing about getting together with friends and telling stories, particularly in environments like reunions. Another good friend recently celebrated her 60th birthday with several other female friends. The group has known each other for 45 years, some of them longer.
 
That includes high school, college, getting married, raising kids. Through it all, they’ve remained close and stayed in touch. Their recent mini-reunion was an opportunity to piece together parts of their lives – the joy, pain, laughter and love. Their lives are enriched because of these gatherings. We should all be so fortunate to have a group of friends like that.

I could sit around a campfire late on cold evenings telling about the time 4 of us got kicked out of a camp site for taking a piece of wood from the owner. The story wouldn’t be complete without the other guys who were there because I can’t fully remember the details. We’d chortle and guffaw and wonder if the camp was still there, whether the owner had died from a popped blood vessel in his forehead when he got too angry over something trivial.
 
Selective memory opens those opportunities to share. If you get enough participants back together, you might even be able to create a Chinese movie.