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Dalton
Roberts |
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One human weakness that gets us into a world of trouble is the tendency to say “it won’t happen to me.” That’s one reason people stay in Florida despite the hurricanes. Later in this column I am going to tell you something that might save you a lot of money and property loss. It might even save your life. You may completely ignore it, thinking “it won’t happen to me.” When we have a weakness and let it expose us to danger, it means it is being overwhelmed by a desire stronger than the weakness. I have a pal in Pensacola. His wife is a nurse. She could find a job anywhere they might move. As a successful deejay he has lived from one end of this country to the other. But he has his retirement nest just like he likes it and that overrides his fear of hurricanes. For similar reasons, people keep smoking despite the danger. Yes, they have a deep physiological addiction but they also have a strong desire to continue the pleasure of smoking. With alcohol and some forms of dope, it’s the same thing. Sigmund Freud said man is not a rational creature but an emotional being. Even the most rational among us gains self-mastery better through finding emotional rewards for changing self-destructive behaviors. Maybe our salvation depends on being able to identify and build up the emotional reasons to not take chances. A big part of thinking --“It won’t happen to me”-- is our craving for the excitement of gambling. This human need is right up there close to the need for food and sex. So long as people refuse to find emotional satisfaction in the simple pleasures of life they will do anything for a little excitement, including risking the house and farm in a poker game.” That may sound ridiculous but I know two men who put up the titles to their homes in poker games. Both are intelligent and have experienced success in their work. Yet, they have skirted the edge of the precipice of total destruction over and over by gambling. I do believe it is a stronger addiction than nicotine or alcohol. Look at how common gambling is in so many facets of life. Look at the food we eat. Much of it we know to be harmful, yet we gamble with our health. Look at our cars. We know how quickly we can die due to speed and carelessness, yet we speed and drive like hare-brained idiots. Look at guns. We know young kids can kill themselves or others with them, but we keep them all over the place like ashtrays. My point is not to beat us all to death over our common weakness but to make us more aware of them. Awareness is the first step in any kind of self-change. We need to cozy up closer to the statisticians than the gamblers. Find emotional reasons to love statistics and statisticians. Like staying alive. Toward the end of my service as county executive, three top men at TVA came to my office with a slide projector. They told me downtown Chattanooga would have been flooded at the 500 year flood level if we had had the same rain during a short period that Huntsville had just 100 miles down the road. They asked if I thought the citizens should be told of this danger. I believed they should so I told them to come to a county commission meeting and make the same presentation. Here’s the shocker: not one person called or wrote my office concerning the possibility of massive flooding here. If we were rational creatures, it would have been the topic of conversation for weeks after that TVA presentation. Here’s you a metaphor for staying alive: the chances of it happening to you are directly related to how many times you tell yourself, “it won’t happen to me.”
DR's website is www.daltonroberts.com and his writings are gathered at www.ipsfeatures.com.
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