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May 2, 2018
3,975
30,777
Bucks County, PA
Being 50 years of age and having experienced the thrill of victory & the agony of defeat, the sadness and pain of loss & the joy and pleasure of achievement…I can tell you a certain truth that LIFE IS GOOD! I’ve learned to not expect too much from life and I’m mostly satisfied with the results. May you all sleep well tonight my friends! 🙏 ☕
 

dingdong

Part of the Furniture Now
Apr 2, 2024
579
5,856
Jakarta, Indonesia
No point wasting our effort and time to worry about the future..life will eventually stop, but live it fully and support and love people around you. Life changes and i never thought i will be a single dad with 3 kids at 50 - but i am now- all that freedom and girlfriends (free or paid) here and there. A Corgi, Friends and hobbies, So it is not all bad.
and the nicotine is just a bowl away puffy puffy puffy
 
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Mar 4, 2024
320
839
Where Texas Began
Well, I am not new, and can't agree with your post about newbroom's statement ['I'll smoke a bowl and that always helps me to relax."]
Can you not relax because of external stress(es) or because you are too focused on some breathing/pacing/tamping routine?

I was making reference to those people who seem to be worried about "not doing it right,"
rather than just enjoying a smoke (even if it requires a couple of relights).
 

brian64

Lifer
Jan 31, 2011
10,041
16,099
As for the question of time, I think Jackson Browne came up with two of the best single word descriptions for it in these two songs...time is a fuse, and time is a conqueror.

Through every dead and living thing
Time runs like a fuse
And the fuse is burning
And the earth is turning




With every grain of sand casting its own shadow
And every ray of the sun flashing on the sea
Time may heal all wounds
But time will steal you blind
Time the wheel, time the conqueror


 
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georged

Lifer
Mar 7, 2013
6,087
16,678
Regarding intrinsic value or worth as a "thing", consider that every human who ever lived would fit (sardine-style) in a 6000 foot cube, everything Man ever built/created would make one average-sized mountain if bulldozed into a pile, dinosaurs roamed the Earth for 200 million years before we did---some of them the size of a 727 airliner---and nobody even suspected their previous existence until a guy got curious about some weirdly-shaped river rocks in the mid-1800's, and the Earth itself is only 20% of the way to the end of its life. Four times more to come than it has seen so far.

And how big a deal is THAT? Our Solar System? Well, if the Universe were shrunk to fit inside a volume of space the size of the Earth, it would take a year to travel one millimeter at 670 million miles per hour.

Traveling across the Milky Way galaxy would take 184,000 years at the same speed.

OK, how many galaxies are there, then? Surely they are a big deal.

Best guess is around two trillion.

Yeah, individual humans and their affairs are all that.

Not.

The only sensible response to this ^^^^ is smoking a bowl of good tobacco, of course.
 
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ophiuchus

Lifer
Mar 25, 2016
1,650
2,501
Maybe I’ve missed the point of this topic, but it’s gotten me thinking … or at least thinking that I’m thinking.

One of my favorite times of the day is the drive home from work. I’m not rushing to get there. The work day is over. It’s me and the truck and the road and the wind through the window and the music on the radio. The horses in a patch of farm I pass. I’m not thinking about what supper’s going to be yet. Maybe there’s an errand on the way back. No one’s gabbing in the passenger seat. Good weather’s welcome, bad weather’s fun. The coffee in the Yeti is still sippable. Maybe I'm smoking. Time, for a moment, is irrelavant.

The news hasn't had a chance to remind me that the world is burning. And it is burning. It's been burning far longer than us naked primates have been a blip on the radar.

Maybe we should be focusing on enjoying our moment, creating what small pieces of beauty we can, instead of obsessing on what got us here and how we're going away eventually, and how we're causing our eventual demise? Hell, I don't know. I'm not God.

(Thank God for that. ;) )
 
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newbroom

Lifer
Jul 11, 2014
6,379
10,018
North Central Florida
“A pipe is the fountain of contemplation, the source of pleasure, the companion of the wise; and the man who smokes, thinks like a philosopher and acts like a Samaritan.”

"The combination of stress and worry is a very real and dangerous killer, and arguably, far more dangerous than anything associated with pipe tobacco. Government and societal crusades against pipe smoking completely miss the point: the unhealthy addiction of our time is the constant need to fill our daily life with phones, texts, screens, machines, and the technological noise of a world gone mad."

“The pipe draws wisdom from the lips of the philosopher, and shuts up the mouth of the foolish; it generates a style of conversation, contemplative, thoughtful, benevolent, and unaffected.”
 

jpmcwjr

Lifer
May 12, 2015
26,263
30,342
Carmel Valley, CA
Can you not relax because of external stress(es) or because you are too focused on some breathing/pacing/tamping routine?

I was making reference to those people who seem to be worried about "not doing it right," rather than just enjoying a smoke (even if it requires a couple of relights).
Good point. Yes, there's a bunch of that, but generally confined to newer smokers.
 
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