Is that all there is?

Is that all there is?

God & Ed’s Excellent Adventure

 So I’m driving home one night in late January.  It was dark and gloomy with patches of fog drifting in front of my car.  There was a mound of snow along the side of the road.  I was on my way home from a financially successful business meeting that had landed a new account for my ad agency…a large auto dealership…which meant that I was personally going to pocket thousands of dollars every year for handling their advertising.  I should have been ecstatic.  Instead, I was depressed. 

The owner of the dealership was a pompous blowhard who treated his employees like dirt, yelled obscenities at vendors and was an all-around very unpleasant person.  And now I am committed to working closely with this guy on a daily basis. Terrific.  And for what?  More money.  Whoopee.  I already had plenty of money. So why? Competitiveness? Ego? Greed?  Probably some of each of those, but deep down in my heart I knew it was something else, something that kept me running like a hamster in cage.  An itch that I couldn’t scratch, a scream that lay bottled up inside me waiting to erupt.  I didn’t know what it was, but I knew that something was missing.  I had tried to find it in money, career, power, booze, gambling and women.  Nothing.  I hadn’t yet realized that there was a big empty hole in the center of my being called “satisfaction” and until you figure out how to fill that, there will never be enough of anything to satisfy anybody. 

As I pulled into my driveway that January night, cold and discouraged, I suddenly became aware of a song playing on the car radio.  It was an oldie by a singer named Peggy Lee.  She sang, “Is that all there is, is that all there is?  If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball.  If that's all there is…”

I went in my house, picked up a bottle…and got drunk.  Again.  And I slowly drifted off to sleep with that one question circling around and around in my head:  “Is that all there is?”

Epilogue
Mickey Mantle, the baseball legend, once was asked how things were going. He replied, “Better. I haven’t had a drink in months.  I’m starting to get my life back together, but I just feel like there’s something missing.”  He went on to say that the accumulation of wealth, fame and accomplishment didn’t satisfy him.  “I feel empty inside,” he said.  Fortunately, Mickey found what he was missing just before his death.

Thought for the Day
I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific.   Lily Tomlin

A semi-interesting fact
A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.  If you don’t believe me, count ‘em yourself.

Joke Du Jour
 "What happened to you?" asked the bystander to the man lying on the sidewalk outside the beauty parlor.
The man shook his head groggily and rubbed his bruised chin. "Last thing I remember was my wife came out of the beauty salon. I took a look at her and said, 'Well, honey, at least you tried,' and then it was lights out . . . "

Really???
There is a company that, for $1,250, will place one pound of ashes of your dead loved one into a nice load of ammo, which you can later use to shoot off using your favorite shotgun, rifle, or pistol. One pound of human ash will yield 250 shotgun shells, 100 rifle cartridges, or 250 pistol cartridges. The name of the company is, are you ready…Holy Smoke.

There may be a scientific reason why people eat cookies when they're depressed: fatty foods make us happy. The National Institute of Digestive Diseases have subjects given an injection, then played sad music and showed them sad photos. Those who got an injection of saturated fat remained happier than those who just got saline. Fatty acids appear to comfort people's psyches and make them less vulnerable to sadness, even if they don't know they're getting them. So "comfort foods" don't just comfort us because they taste good or evoke warm memories, but because they're full of fat.  You can thank me now…I just gave you an excuse for eating cookies.  So shut up about dieting and pass the Oreos.

This guy fell onto the subway tracks and barely escaped getting run over by a train. And that wasn't the end of his luck: The fall was from a seizure, and the mishap was how they discovered that he had a malignant brain tumor. The fall basically saved his life, because they caught it and treated it. Although I wouldn't recommend falling onto subway tracks as a diagnostic measure. (New York Daily News)

Are You Kidding Me??
In 1631 an English Bible printer forgot the NOT in one of the Ten Commandments. Here's how his mistake in Exodus 20:14 read: "Thou shalt commit adultery." Because of this colossal goof, the edition became known as The Wicked Bible, and the printer had to pay a large fine.

Remember, Christianity is more about walking than about talking.