{"id":4896,"date":"2015-10-05T23:11:06","date_gmt":"2015-10-06T03:11:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gollypolly.com\/30473\/?p=4896"},"modified":"2015-10-06T00:02:32","modified_gmt":"2015-10-06T04:02:32","slug":"we-dont-know-if-it-is-what-it-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gollypolly.com\/30473\/?p=4896","title":{"rendered":"We don’t know if it is what it is."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"bdaytwo\"<\/a> \"bdayone\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I don’t know why my brain thinks these things.\u00a0 But it does.\u00a0 And when it gets this way\u2026. I can’t help but to speculate.\u00a0 To wonder.<\/p>\n

One of the things I am pondering is this.<\/p>\n

Unknown Contemporaneous Events.<\/p>\n

The thing about these is\u2026. most of the time\u2026 we will never know about them.\u00a0 Here is what caused my quandary.<\/p>\n

When we were kids, we used to get to go \u201cout\u201d for dinner on our birthdays.\u00a0 This happened a little more often once the older kids started flying the nest.\u00a0 At any rate, our \u201cgo to\u201d birthday spot turned out to be Bill Knapp\u2019s Restaurant.\u00a0 On Shiloh Springs Avenue, in Dayton.\u00a0\u00a0 I think this became our standard restaurant, because we felt like we were getting a deal. Whatever your birthday age was, that was the percentage you got off your bill.<\/p>\n

This photo is from my 10th birthday.\u00a0 At Bill Knapp\u2019s.\u00a0 Hence\u2026 10% of the bill.\u00a0 But holy smokes, I am WAY off topic.<\/p>\n

So a couple of weeks ago, WHIO-TV ran one of their special series of local \u201cUnsolved Mysteries.\u201d\u00a0 I normally don\u2019t give it an ear.\u00a0\u00a0 But the woman murdered was killed in the mid-1970s.\u00a0 She was a waitress at Bill Knapp\u2019s Restaurant.\u00a0 She had worked the evening shift on\u00a0 the night she disappeared.\u00a0 And as I watched the piece, I thought I remembered seeing her.\u00a0 In fact, she could have been our waitress from time to time.<\/p>\n

Now, I can\u2019t find the article on Channel 7\u2019s site, to match up dates.\u00a0\u00a0 But at any rate, my mind is teeming with \u201cwhat ifs\u201d about all of this.<\/p>\n

Did we know her as our waitress?\u00a0 Were we there the night she disappeared?\u00a0 Were we nice to her?\u00a0 Was the killer sitting at the table next to us\u2026 stalking her?\u00a0 Is that the guy I dumped my Coke on accidentally, when I went around the other side of the table?<\/p>\n

Probably none of this. Or maybe all of it.\u00a0 Either way, it is no longer an Unknown Contemporaneous Events.\u00a0 Because, by happenstance, I heard that I had been there\u2026 possibly at the same time.<\/p>\n

So how many of these do we have each day?\u00a0 Not necessarily murder mysteries\u2026 but other things.<\/p>\n

Like the guy who killed my fish today.\u00a0 He is probably clueless how upset I was, but I chose not to go out and tell him about it\u2026 for fear I would lose it.<\/p>\n

Or maybe you cut somebody off in traffic today, and the guy got explosively mad.\u00a0 As a result, when he got home from work, he took it out on his kid.<\/p>\n

Or the lady at the grocery store, who works the cash register.\u00a0 Perhaps when you went through the checkout you told her what a nice job she was doing there.\u00a0 Your comment was enough to give her a spark.\u00a0 You see, she was thinking she could do nothing right in life, and was contemplating suicide that night.<\/p>\n

All of these, Unknown Contemporaneous Events.<\/p>\n

I can only say\u2026 that as we go through our day\u2026 it may be best to walk on the side of kindness, compassion, forgiveness, gentle actions, and good deeds.\u00a0\u00a0 We never know who we may be affecting, and to what degree.<\/p>\n

Or if we could have made a difference to just one single person, on any given day.\u00a0 Any difference.<\/p>\n

I just wonder.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou see, the what ifs are as boundless as the stars.\u201d <\/strong><\/em>
\n \u2015 Sally Gardner, Maggot Moon <\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cA thought, even a possibility, can shatter and transform us.\u201d <\/strong><\/em>
\n \u2015 Friedrich Nietzsche<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cYou do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.\u201d <\/strong><\/em>
\n \u2015 Thomas Merton<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t know why my brain thinks these things.\u00a0 But it does.\u00a0 And when it gets this way\u2026. I can’t help but to speculate.\u00a0 To wonder. One of the things I am pondering is this. Unknown Contemporaneous Events. The thing about these is\u2026. most of the time\u2026 we will never know about them.\u00a0 Here is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nowyouseeit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gollypolly.com\/30473\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gollypolly.com\/30473\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gollypolly.com\/30473\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gollypolly.com\/30473\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gollypolly.com\/30473\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4896"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/gollypolly.com\/30473\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4906,"href":"https:\/\/gollypolly.com\/30473\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4896\/revisions\/4906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gollypolly.com\/30473\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gollypolly.com\/30473\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gollypolly.com\/30473\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}