Daily writing prompt

Do you think everything happens for a reason?

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Beyond cause and effect, besides action and consequence, I have trouble believing that everything happens for a reason. That’s a pretty wide-ranging, convenient generalization.

If someone is always looking for a rational explanation, or a silver lining, I believe they may be grasping at straws, searching for something that isn’t there. Not everything in life can be made sense of, or wrapped up with a nice bow, or is possessed of some intrinsic meaning.

When a young child dies of cancer, or a couple succumbs in an accident on their wedding day, or war breaks out and people die needlessly at the hands of some cold-hearted politician on a power trip, there are few things less comforting than someone offering that God has another angel in heaven, or that some terrible occurrence is God’s will. If I hear someone say such things, I want to grab them by the collar and shake them awake.

Of course, I don’t do that. I instead grimace like I just heard someone scratch their fingernails on a chalkboard, then find somewhere else to be.

We go to great lengths to put a square peg in a round hole, to sooth ourselves, find that balm in Gilead, and tell ourselves that all is well when it’s not.

We grieve, we make peace, we lean on each other. We walk with a limp, learn to live with the loose ends and the mystery.

Daily writing prompt

What’s your home decoration style?

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I don’t have a style, really. Just clean and uncluttered, functional furniture, some artwork and family photos on the walls.

Daily writing prompt

If you could rewrite any book’s ending, which one would you choose?

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The ones I’ve read have all ended the way they were supposed to, even The Old Man and the Sea.

Sometimes I wish the Bible came with an addendum filled with corroborations and more recent eyewitness testimony, maybe even a stamp of authenticity from a trusted expert. I guess that wouldn’t change much, though.

Daily writing prompt

What’s your biggest dream?

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To manage to remain healthy and live at home with my wife for at least another ten years, long enough to see at least one of our grandchildren graduate high school.

A reasonably close second would be to come into enough money to live comfortably, travel a bit, and be able to buy a hybrid vehicle that’s comfortable to drive and get in and out of.

Of course, the longer I go without publishing this, more possibilities come to mind, like living in peace, living Trump-free, leaving these dark and confusing times behind, and undertaking a wholesale effort to reverse human-induced climate change.

Daily writing prompt

If you could have dinner with any fictional character, who would it be?

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It might be a tie between Indiana Jones and Chuck Noland (Cast Away). The stories they could tell, the wisdom they could impart…

Daily writing prompt

What is the best purchase you have ever made?

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The first thing that came to mind was a pair of comfortable shoes or a tool or something, but I needed to give this a bit more thought.

The cars we drive are both 12 years old and have served us well, but I feel like there must be something else.

I suppose in the bigger picture, it was a college education, toward which I paid a relatively meager sum but which led to being able to get a seminary education, which in turn provided us with the modest means to purchase a little patch of earth with a house on it and eventually retire with enough monthly income to get by and remain involved in the lives of our children and their children, who live close by and far away.

Daily writing prompt

What app eats up most of your screen time — and do you even feel bad about it?

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Solitaire.

Sometimes I feel bad about it, because I know I should be tending to something more urgent or fruitful or stimulating. But most of the time it’s something to do at most any time or in just about any setting, and apparently there is an endless number of combinations of starting cards– 8×10 to the 67th– which exceeds the number of atoms in the known universe, so I’m unlikely to see the same setup… ever.

A close second is YouTube, with Pinterest in a distant third.

Daily writing prompt

What’s a movie or book that inspired you to travel?

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The ending scene from Castaway still resonates with me, and often gets me thinking about the open road. For a long time now, I get a hankering, a sense of anticipation, when I think about heading west.

It’s somewhat cliche, but also based in reality– I love the feeling of heading toward the wide open spaces, in the direction of endless corn and grain and grassland– and mountains, eventually– where the land opens up and the horizon expands and things feel less cluttered and close.

Daily writing prompt

If you could erase one trend from history, what would it be?

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The trend that has humans resorting to war as a solution. Evolution toward kinder and gentler– if there is such movement– is taking way too long.

And whatever it is that keeps cranking out skunks like Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin and their ilk.

Daily writing prompt

Which outdated technology do you miss the most, and why?

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I don’t know that I miss any of it. We still have a land line, though it’s been tempting to lop that relatively small expense off our monthly TV/Internet bill, since it’s all bundled. We keep it as a back-up and I occasionally still use it, even as cell service is established and has become increasingly robust.

I don’t miss my iPod, VHS, DVDs, typewriters, dot matrix printers, the clunky, heavy CRT televisions and computer monitors, and I never got into the gaming systems, though we took the plunge and bought a Nintendo Wii, which has long been boxed up and is sitting on a shelf somewhere. I would still spin a CD every now and then, if I had my stereo set up.

Nostalgically, I wouldn’t mind if we still had phone booths around, though it makes sense that they’ve also gone the way of the dinosaurs.