The B. S. M. G. Report

Jonathots Daily Blog


Refusing to ever rest

From seeking what is best


You are not worthy of great opportunity unless you’ve counted the cost and decided you know how to lose.

Someone will lose.

Unlike what your third-grade teacher told you, not all of us are winners.

I saw something bad yesterday. Three or four grown men—college football coaches—turned into whiny, bitchy babies because their teams lost, and the reporters asked them questions they did not want to answer.

I’m sorry, gentlemen. You don’t get to do that. The minute you start taking millions of dollars in salary for running a football team, you lose all privilege of being snotty. If you can’t give a civil answer, cancel the press conference. Please, do not teach the younger generation that it’s perfectly acceptable to be so disappointed that you pour your poison out on everyone around you.

Play to win. Lose and survive.

That’s how it works.


Great full.

I thought it was a little sad this year that Thanksgiving was not nearly as punctuated with true gratitude as I have seen in the past. Maybe it was just me—perhaps I was at the wrong places. Could I have watched the bogus television shows?

Yet the message I heard was, “It is great that we are full.

Anybody can smile when their belly is satisfied, their house is warm and they’re doing good on their job.

Maybe it’s true that none of us learn how to be grateful until one or more of our wishes is absent and we still have to press on.

Yes, I think that’s it.

Gratitude is always better expressed by the souls who offer their appreciation, and those around them wonder how they can be so happy with so little.


I heard it again.

Somebody told me they have “faith in their doctor.”

I know why they said this. Medicine portrays itself as a religion. Everything is white, pristine and there are all sorts of gadgets, tons of explanations, and enough pomp and circumstance to march the Pope into the Vatican thirty times.

I don’t know why we can’t just deal with the truth:

Doctors and nurses are fabulous, and also ignorant.

  • We’re still doing more cutting than curing.
  • We still prescribe more medication than offer solutions.
  • We are still wrong much too often.

For instance, medicine has killed tens of thousands of people through opiate addiction and the misapplication of painkillers.

Everyone knows there are more infections in a hospital than there are in your kid’s sandbox.

I’m not asking the medical field to be diminished, nor am I criticizing them.

I am demanding some needful humility.

In the 1790’s, when doctors were treating President George Washington for pneumonia and they bled him with leeches, they were certainly convinced they were giving him expert treatment, and probably discussed among themselves how this particular breed of leech was ground-breaking.

All the chatter did not change the matter. And the matter was, their treatment was counterproductive. They had to learn their way out of it.

I think it’s important to go to the doctor and get checked over as best you can—as long as you realize that part of what you’ll experience is somewhat experimental, making you a temporary guinea pig.

So oink-oink. And let us encourage these people of science to grow instead of crow.


I believe I saw it on a YouTube.

It was a little boy, about nine. So maybe not so little, but still young.

He was asked a question in his classroom by a teacher.

“What do you want your life to be?”

They filmed a couple of students talking about money, happiness, marriage, cars and such.

Then they came to this young man. It was as if he was suddenly possessed by an angel from heaven. He explained, “Life doesn’t show up fixed. You gotta put it together.”

I laughed and broke out in tears all at the same time.

Do any of us really believe that?

Even though the boy’s words were eternal, can we realize how powerful this idea truly is?

It makes me glad there is one small member of the human race out there who has it right. Maybe he’ll infect us. Here’s what we need to learn:

Inhale life. Exhale good cheer.

Then repeat the process.

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