FRUSTRATED WITH LIFE?, "Live with Purpose"

Chapter 10:
Live with Purpose, on Purpose

Being raised by a single mom in the poorest neighborhoods of the South Bronx with my brother and sister was not entirely the most frustrating part of my childhood.

I have to say that the biggest frustration in my life so far has been coming to America on a vacation visa at the age of nine, not knowing why we were here, or when we could go back home. 

When we arrived here in 1974, I did not know a speck of English, nor what snow was. I didn’t even know that we were about to meet my real mom.

A little background on my story….

I was born in the Dominican Republic, where I lived with my dad, stepmom and three siblings. There was no love felt from the stepmom, but I did feel love from my dad when he was around, which wasn’t often.

My dad was an entrepreneur, and as far as I can tell, we were financially well off: we had a maid, a cook, fancy cars, and many employees. 

My father died three years after I arrived in America, and I know of no inheritance money. Perhaps writing this sounds cold, but when you’re growing up hungry, moving from building to building due to constant eviction, or forced out of condemned buildings, a better life is all you think about. Yes, even at twelve years of age.

Luckily, at twelve, I was able to land a newspaper route. I made about $7.50 a week delivering the New York Daily News, and other than enduring the occasional muggings, I loved that job…because every penny I earned was getting me closer to my independence. As I grew older, I worked at a hardware store, grocery stores, and other part time jobs as I attended school.

Major disagreements with my mother (I didn’t appreciate the beatings) and dealing with my kleptomaniac brother made it difficult to live a peaceful life, At age eighteen, I moved out. 

I was barely able to afford rent, food, clothing, etc., so I looked for a better-paying job. 

Not knowing what I know now, and having no guidance, I pounded the pavement in the nicest neighborhoods I knew in Manhattan, NY.

Having held a job in a grocery store since the age of 16, I figured that the next step upwards was working at a supermarket. 

After walking for hours from supermarket to supermarket, I landed a job at a Red Apple Supermarket at 72^nd Street and Amsterdam Ave. in Manhattan. 

If you’re wondering why I didn’t simply search closer to home, the answer is simple. Starting out, I took a job at a local mini-market for a week. The first time I took the day off, there was a robbery, and the clerk was shot dead. I took that as a hint: perhaps I should quit and not test my luck again.

There are many stories I can share about working the overnight shift at Red Apple. For instance, one New Year’s Eve, we were locked in to replenish the store; my partner fell down the food transport belt and lost his ear, and we had to wait until the morning because our emergency contacts did not pick up the phone. We were afraid to lose our jobs if we called the authorities, so we waited. Yes, I was legal in the country at the time, in case you were wondering.

I’m not sure if we were naïve, or simply stupid.

I didn’t last much longer at that job; I knew that there was something better for me. I was not just driven by lack of finances. I was driven by the knowledge that there was something much better out there. I just didn’t know what it was.

I looked, and I looked. I answered a newspaper ad from an employment agency. The agency tested me, prepared me, and showed me how to dress better and shave the fuzz from my face. They sent me on three interviews. I got two offers. I chose E.F. Hutton as my first corporate job. The job was in the Wall Street area, and I knew that I was finally on the right track because I could now afford to pay the rent on time every time. I was eating better, bought a car, dressed better, and most importantly, started to live life.

I was around twenty or twenty-one then. I’m fifty-two now. There have been many ups and downs in my life from then until now. I am married, have two children that have never experienced the depth of poverty that I was exposed to, and I hope that I have prepared them enough so that they never will.

My son has finished his four years at Hofstra University and is successfully living life on his own terms. He and I have a great relationship. My daughter is finishing up her second year in college, and I couldn’t ask for a better daughter. I love them both very much, and our relationships continue to flourish.

As a parent, I can say that all the frustrations I have experienced in life have all been worth it to get to the point where my family is right now.

There are still a few challenges to overcome, and that’s a story for another book.

My message to all who have posted and will post on FrustratedWithLife.com is this:

Look beyond yourself. Focus on a better future, even if you don’t know what you’re looking for.

The people that frustrate you, the challenges that frustrate you, the relationships that frustrate you, anything that frustrates you, these are just specks on your timeline. The future is yours to accomplish anything you wish. 

Choose to accomplish. Choose to live life on your terms without infringing on anyone else’s. 

Choose to live life on purpose, with purpose.

Edison R. Guzman

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Excerpted from FRUSTRATED WITH LIFE? You Are Not Alone, ebook by  Edison R. Guzman and Douglas Winslow Cooper, Ph.D., available online from amazon.com. 

Write your book with me? See my site. 

Ariel Lanyi Plays Liszt Beautifully

Almost an hour of lovely piano music by the fabulously talented son of my writer friend, Gabriel Lanyi, now living in Israel.

Piano Recital of Liszt Pieces by Ariel Lanyi

Review: J.P. Newbery Memoir, BURN ZONES

Jorge  P. Newbery has many impressive accomplishments, starting early as a seven-year-old newspaper delivery boy, participating successfully in long-distance bike races and in marathons, owning over 100 buildings in Ohio, and moving to his current position as founder and CEO of American Homeowner Preservation "a socially responsible hedge fund which purchases nonperforming mortgages from banks at big discounts, then shares the discounts with families to settle their mortgages at terms many borrowers find 'too good to be true.'" Basically, he now gets his money from helping the downtrodden screw their creditors. 

Newbery's next book is DEBT CLEANSE: HOW TO SETTLE YOUR DEBTS FOR PENNIES ON THE DOLLAR (AND NOT PAY SOME AT ALL). This is 21st-century heroism, not going bankrupt, but finding another way not to pay. 

I admire his persistence and talents and appreciate how well the book is written. It is inspiring in showing how hard work can produce surprising results. It is disappointing in the author's goals, which are largely self-serving, though he seems oblivious to this. He does take responsibility for his failure as well as his successes.

                                                    ***

Mine is a minority opinion of this well-received book at amazon.com. Reviews of BURN ZONES

Review: BINARY PHYSICS

I struggled through Binary Physics, impressed with the author’s brilliance, dismayed at the disagreements with much of contemporary physics, unsure whether this was a breakthrough or more of a breakdown on Zilberberg’s part. It was often hard reading. At times, it warranted five stars for creativity and merely one for lucidity, though some of the topics are arcane.

Time as the Fourth Dimension, “Depth”

Let’s start with his view of time, as a quantized fourth dimension, “depth,” with individual units that are about ten to the minus 50^th power of a second, 1/10**50 s, a decimal with 49 zeros and then a 1. A wave passing through a location would have a series of Existences (1) and Placeholders (0). The highest frequency pure wave would be 01010101… over the units of “depth” (“time” from here on). A wave or half that frequency would be 01001001… These are frequencies in the range of 10**50 (ten to the fiftieth power) Hz (= per second), whereas gamma rays (the highest-frequency waves we know of) are 10**19 Hz, much lower in frequency. As with Fourier analysis, the greater the range of frequencies you can use to compose a particular signal, the more accurately you can replicate it, so having a range up to 10*50 Hz gives lots of leeway, which is needed…because the time series of 0s (Placeholders) and 1s (Existences) is what everything is made of.

Existences, Placeholders, and the Real World

We can compose any electromagnetic signal with our 0s and 1s up to 10**50 Hz. How do we get mass? From obstructions, the bunching up of Existences that cannot move freely. A pure wave, 010101…, in the next “turn” (a unit akin to time), becomes (moving to the right) 001010…, as the Existences occupy the Placeholder positions. However, the pattern 0110110… cannot shift fully freely one turn to the next because an Existence cannot move to where there is already an Existence, so we have 0101101… and the change is experienced as resistance. In Binary Physics, motion is inherently at the speed of light but mass gets in the way, so that work is done not moving mass, but removing obstruction and thus producing apparent acceleration.

Perception is Reality

“Apparent acceleration”? Well, it is not clear to what extent what we perceive is real, according to Binary Physics. What we perceive as motion, BP tells us is extinction in one location and creation in an adjoining location (also quantized, like time), which looks like motion of an entity.

Quantized Location

Yes, location is quantized, also:  the universe is in some sense granular, with Zilberberg estimating the spatial quantum at about 1/10**42 meter. The size of a proton is generally stated to be 1/10**15 meter or 27 orders of magnitude larger. The “cells” of the universe are tiny in comparison with physical objects.

Quantum mechanics has prepared us for quantization of physical properties like energy, and angular momentum, so quantizing time does not come as such a big surprise, especially when it is so fine-grained at 1/10**50 of a second. Similarly, locational cells are extraordinarily small. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle indicates that the product of energy and time uncertainty is greater than Heisenberg’s small constant, also true for the product of momentum uncertainty and positional uncertainty; perhaps the “graininess” of the universe in time and space contributes to the lack of precision in these products.

Effect Following Cause?

What does come as a surprise is BP’s statement “the future influences the present no less than the past, and the past is constantly changing….” This contradicts basic tents of science. We do not accept that the cause happens after the effect.

Two-Dimensional Analogue: The Game of Life

The two-dimensional analogy made by BP is with The Game of Life, where squares in a grid are given initial values of 0 or 1 (visually white or black) and then are required to change or stay the same during a series of time steps, where their existence (1, black) is determined by a set of rules generally dependent on what their “neighbors” are. On a square grid, each square would have four full-neighbors, one on each side, and another four part-neighbors, one on each corner. Depending on the rules and the starting conditions, rather life-like patterns and behavior can emerge. BP analogizes this to Existences and Placeholders in eight dimensions, a familiar three plus time (depth), plus four more, which extra four I won’t explain and do not find persuasive.

Ten Rules to Supplement the Axioms

Much of the book describes how Existences and Placeholders and cells in space and time can be understood to explain motion and gravity. A weakness here, in my estimation, is the adoption of The Ten Rules of Private Binary Physics. I’d prefer fewer rules. The need for these seems like the addition of the epicycles to the old Ptolemaic view of the solar system to be able to explain eclipses and “retrograde” motion. Occam’s Razor needs to be employed.

Multiverse?

Another disagreement I have is with the idea of a multitude (infinite?)of universes, to explain how this particular one is capable of having human life. Yes, the anthropic principle is persuasive to me: this universe is too well suited to our existence to be just a coincidence. Zilberberg believes in God the Creator, as I do, so there is no need for this multiverse hypothesis. I like that he thinks God would create something that has the virtues that God has, while allowing (somehow!) for us to choose between right and wrong.

Goals, Awareness, Consciousness

Zilberberg discusses in depth the degree to which systems can be goal-seeking and even aware and conscious, and I defer to his greater knowledge and more extensive contemplation of these issues.

Sources and Methods

The author is clearly brilliant and well-informed. His sources and inspirations range from thinkers Dawkins and Hawking and Harari to films The Matrix and Back to the Future. Nevertheless, I concluded that much was mistaken, much was unclear or repetitious. This was hard going. With almost no equations, it is hard to follow some arguments to assure oneself of their validity.

Profound or Profoundly Wrong?

As I read the reviews on Amazon that have preceded mine, I am unsettled by how few of the reviewers have the scientific background to examine Binary Physics in depth. I found BP challenging myself. despite my own education (A.B., physics, Cornell, 1964; M.S., physics, Penn State, 1969; Ph.D., engineering, Harvard, 1974) and three decades of technical employment.

I recall how impressed I was in my youth in the 1960s by the iconoclastic works of the genius Immanuel Velikovski, works such as Worlds in Collision and Earth in Upheaval, both of which were closely argued, well documented…and now considered to be mostly wrong (see The Velikovski Controversy). I fear this may turn out to be the case for much of Binary Physics. What survives such scrutiny may be of real value, however.

AMAZON LINK 

https://www.amazon.com/Binary-Physics-Everything-JOSEF-Zilberberg-ebook/dp/B072QZDWWM/ref=sr_1_1_twi_kin_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1504662067&sr=1-1&keywords=BINARY+PHYSICS

Toe Fungus Among Us

TOASTMASTERS TALK: TOE FUNGUS AMONG US

“Saints preserve us,” said Mrs. Jervis, there’s fungus among us.” Somewhat of an alarmist, Mrs. Jervis also proclaimed, “There’s malaria in the area.” So went an old comedy routine.

Mrs. Jervis may have been wrong about malaria, but likely right about toe fungus. There’s a lot of it.

She didn’t say, no one would say, “TGIF…thank goodness, it’s fungus!”

THE TOE-TAL PROBLEM

Toe fungus is not very funny. It’s ugly and can lead to other infections.

It doesn’t take much to make feet ugly. Our feet are rarely our most attractive feature. Feet are rarely as attractive as faces. Note that the Internet has FaceBook but no FeetsBook.

We note “the joy of victory and the tragedy of da feet.”

Toes are often unattractive, and fungus can make them ugly.

Toe fungus comes in three stages, ranging from nearly invisible damage in the nail in Stage 1 to truly ugly discoloring, thickening, and warping of the toenail in Stage 3. 

My toe fungal colony has achieved Stage 3. Oh, do I have ugly big toe toenails! Discolored, misshaped, fungus-infected, these babies I do not show in public. Yellow, brittle, deformed nails…argh!

And, I am not alone.

Most adults in our country have similar fungal infections. Once you get infected, you tend to stay infected. The fungus victims accumulate.

The infections are not painful, but they occasionally can lead to infection by other organisms that are more detrimental to health and welfare. The toes are still useful, a comedian would say they are not a toe-tal loss.

TRANSMISSION

How do we get them? From other people, from the water on the floors in shared bathing areas.

PREVENTION

How do you prevent them? Wash and dry your feet often, try to keep them dry. Use flip-flops or shoes in public showers.

Dry your feet and put them in clean, dry footwear.

PERSISTENCE

Why do they persist? They love warm, moist, dark areas…like our toes in our shoes.

TREATMENT

Cures? No good ones.

-        

     Soaking feet for five minutes per day in 50/50 vinegar/water. It kills some, bleaches some. It is boring, but beneficial. What’s not boring, however, is what happens if, as I did, you add bleach to this mixture, releasing chlorine gas that can be deadly. I did this one morning. Fortunately, I noticed a strange feeling right away in my nose and throat and threw that solution out.

-        Toenail polish is a cover-up that does not stop the nail thickening and warping. I am not a toenail polish kind of guy, however.

-        Lotions, creams, ointments are not very effective either [show bottle]. I’ve used religiously three different anti-fungal concoctions over the past decade or so. I’m not certain they helped, though perhaps they get partial credit for keeping elephants out of our home.

-        Pills are claimed to be more effective, but with more serious side effects. Think of those advertised acne cures that clear your skin but might kill you. I’m not interested. Yet.

-        Lasers are being studied, but the jury is out. Lasers are high-tech. Even hot lasers are cool. Their effectiveness in dispute.

-        Podiatrists will do some cutting and some grinding. For me, Medicare foots most of the bill. I wish mine would get a toe truck and make house calls.

Why do I tell you about this? You are likely to become infected. You will want to be alert. You will want to start treatment earlier than I did. You may not want to make the mistake I describe next. Then again, maybe you will.

MISTAKE?

One morning recently, my mind was on other things, and I was treating my toes after a shower and a boring five-minute soak with vinegar and water. Two little bottles with applicators were on my desktop: Terpenicol prescription lotion for my toes and Wite-Out correction fluid for my prose. Without my glasses, I reached for my prescription topical ointment bottle and started to put the white liquid on with the little brush, when I realized that I had mistakenly picked up the bottle of Wite-Out correction fluid on the table and was applying it to my right big toe. It looked surprisingly good. I covered the nail.

It has been a month since this treatment mistake. I have returned to my former routine, using the prescription lotion, not the correction fluid. Eventually, the correction fluid coating wore off, but I think this right big toe treated with correction fluid looks better than the left one, conventionally treated.

PATENT?

Perhaps I’ll apply for a patent.

Furthermore, I decided to tell the story at Toastmasters.

Maybe I’ll even become…a Toes-Master!

TGIF

At least I wasn’t like the guy who was so poor at dressing himself, he had to write “TGIF” on his shoes. His “TGIF” stood for “Toes Go in First.”

FRUSTRATED WITH LIFE, "Health"

“It took a lot of willpower, but I finally gave up dieting.”

“Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.”

Buddha

“Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live.”

Jim Rohn

HEALTH Statistic

More than half of Americans have chronic health problems according to a 2016 Emory University study.

Chapter 9:
Health

A comedian claimed he saw a tombstone inscribed, “I told you I was sick!” Sadly, several of the bloggers below tell of mystery illnesses for which they are getting little help. #309 has been sick for 5 years, and he is going bald, and his girlfriend left him, and the company he worked for has closed down. #446 fears the cause of her terrible headaches is an incurable neurological disease, and yet she cannot get any sympathy…she ends up crying in the shower.

A quarter of us will die of cancer, and #75 was just so diagnosed. The father of #337 is dying of cancer, too, and the insurance company will not pay for a treatment that might be beneficial: “I hope everything burns one day,” writes his son.

#121 is too depressed for a mere 750 characters to explain it, and #34 is simply sick and tired of being sick and tired.

We are all under a death sentence. With exercise and diet and prudent risk-avoidance, we can delay that date…if we don’t get hit by a car, like my sister’s oncologist and like my mother’s ophthalmologist. Even doctors die.

Our choices in life are often constrained by age, gender, race, talent, location, era, finances, time, and especially health. If you are healthy, enjoy yourself while you can! If you are sick, you deserve our compassion and our understanding of your frustration.

At least we have modern medicine and modern conveniences to make our lives longer and more pleasant. Centuries ago, Hobbes wrote about human life in the wild, without civilization, as being “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Short seems to have been the good part.

Douglas Winslow Cooper, Ph. D.

#6

Im allergic to dust :-(

#7

So I go in to the dentist for a really bad tooth ache, and they tell me that I need $4,000 worth of work...and the insurance company only covers $175. WTF???

#22

fat people shouldn't be allowed to give diet advice just sayin

#34

i am sick and tired of feeling sick and tired all of the time

#75

found out today that I have cancer

#121

Im struggling to free myself from depression, but every time I feel like Ive reached that silver lining, the ground under me crumbles and Im back in the hole I fell in before. I just want out. I want stability, health, balance. Thats all. Im trying hard to regain my health, to refocus on my studies, to be diligent in my job, but I hate the fact that 1 event trips me up so easily. I want to change the way I think. I want to be stronger. I need to leave the environment Im in. However, I cant escape. I just dont want to go back to that time where I was so far gone. I dont want to go back to the hospital, feeling that hopelessness, the shame, the guilt, the emptiness. I thought I could vent here, but 750 characters just isnt enough...

#309

I am losing my patience now.i am suffering from which disease even i dont know. Since 5 years i am consulting doctor and 1 tine operated also but still the same nothing good. I am feed up with this stomach problem. Sometime it feels that i should end my life. That not all along with this problem i started losing my hair from all over the body at an early age. My gf dumped me. My office shut down leaving me unemployed. My life is simply become hell there is no way of hope i see. What should i do? I dont know. I am just suffing all of this day to day....

#337

My father is dying from cancer and he only has 2 months to live. This isn't what's frustrating me, and I use the work frustrated very lightly because there is nothing in the world to describe what I feel right now. He has two months to live because the insurance company wouldn't pay for it and we didn't have the money to pay for it. How in the fuck does a piece of paper dictate life and death for a human being. Where have we gone so wrong that currency has fucking superceded a life. My dad is going to be dead in December because a company decided his life wasn't worth paying for. My dad worked hard, he never messed around, and he always did what he could to be there for us. There is no goddamn justice in this world and there never has been, and if there was a god, it either died a long time ago or its the most sadistic being to ever come into existence. Maybe thats the most frustrating notion of all, that despite what religion and the media want you to believe, there is no fairness or karmic justice done. He's going to die, and the CEO of the company is still going to be a rich motherfucker at the end of the day. I hope everything burns one day.

#408
I m 26 yr old mother of 2 yr baby girl. After my delievery their was not even a single day when i felt that today i m felling fine. Since last two years. I am getting low day by day. I went in depression i am having chest pain i have regular headache problem. i m scared of all these my situation thats why i m not able to sleep properly . Now days because of underweight problem i am feeling so weak. I m not able to live my life normally. I m just frstrated from my life. I dont know why i am living???

#446

I have horrible headaches that make me fall over bc they hurt so much, horrible stomach issues with like cramps and diarrhea and I went to physical therapy and they told me I’m weak and all this and stuff and said I might have this disease called ehlers-danlos syndrome because he said a lot of me is hyper mobile so now I match almost all the symptoms and I don’t have my next neurology appointment until December and I also have anxiety so I’m stressing about it because all my life I’ve always told my parents there is something wrong with me and they never believed me and now every night for the past week and probably the weeks to come I’ve been sobbing in the shower so nobody will hear me!! I cry so hard that nothing comes out but huffs and I have to do PT stretches and strengthening exercises that make me cry because I’m so weak. I don’t know how many more days I can stand to be waiting anxiously until I find out I have an incurable disease that could put me in a wheelchair.. Thanks a lot world another great strike for me NOT IM SO ANGRY AND SAD AND GRRRR IM JUST SO DONE RN

***

Excerpted from Guzman and Cooper (2017), FRUSTRATED WITH LIFE? YOU ARE NOT ALONE! based on years of blog entries at http://FrustratedWithLife.com. The book is available in paperback at amazon.com.


Would-be authors are invited to see my site WriteYourBookWithMe.com.