What to do?

INCIDENT:
I'm at the cross roads.

MORAL:
What should I be?

Giving thanks

INCIDENT:
Once a year we need a holiday to realize everything that we should be thankful for or that we take for granted. But why do we need a holiday to bring life to our attention? Or some other special occasion like a wedding or the birth of a child? Or difficult circumstances like illness or loss?

MORAL:
There is so much to be thankful for in our everyday. And perhaps the greatest gift is to realize that point and live it.

Opposing Forces

INCIDENT:
My shy friend made a good point about my post on beauty. He argued that happiness doesn't have meaning without some an opposing force to compare it to. We can find beauty in this opposing force as well. I am not doing justice to my friend's comments... let's just hope they anonymously reply to this...

MORAL:
Everything needs to be in opposition to something else in order to exist. I remember this cheesy movie we had to watch in religion class when I was in elementary school. It was Jesus on trial in the modern day. And what was salient about the movie is that they asked him why there is evil... why do bad things happen to people. And his response was that without the bad then we would be mindless robots. Without choice we can't really live. And while this is a bit of a tangent it applies to my friend's point. Happiness and sadness exist together and not as separate and exclusive entities. They have to exist together. Without one or the other than we would not know what we are experiencing. We would now have anything to compare it. I completely agree that there is beauty in sadness. It is often times that sadness makes the beauty in life apparent.

"Architect" - I think not

INCIDENT:

"Republican defeat in the mid-term polls has been blamed on the Iraq war, and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a key architect, has resigned." -BBC News

MORAL:
One of my biggest pet peeves is whenever the term architect is used to describe people who are not architects even in the broadest sense of the word. When someone fixes a leaky faucet, they don't call themselves a doctor of pipes. They are a plumber. When you argue with someone, you are not necessarily a lawyer. That is why every field has associated words/labels. Sure you might be doing something that is one aspect of that job type but it doesn't mean it is correct usage of the term.

And to put insult to injury, people trained as architects (such as myself) can't legally call ourselves architects until we are licensed. Meanwhile joe schmoe over here who fiddled with some programming code calls himself a software architect. Is it right? I don't think so. Get your own terms!