About 40 years ago, while still on active duty, I wrote an article for the Air Force Comptroller Magazine. Happily, for me, it received the “Best Article of the Year“ award, from a panel of my peer fellow “Bean Counters”. One reason I received the award was that the article contained some humor. Professional Comptrollers are not normally known as “laugh riots”.
The title of the article was “How To Manage the Unmanageable”. It was a series of “Truisms” that I had found helpful in meeting the many challenges of life and work that I had personally faced in over 25 years as an Air Force officer.
By popular request (my son asked me), I will share a couple of them with y’all (a term this Yankee believes he’s entitled to use after 63 years of living in the South). These “Truisms” are not necessarily original. I probably heard or read them someplace. But I found them applicable and helpful to me. I hope you find them applicable, useful, interesting, thought provoking, or amusing (any of those adjectives would do). Here’s my son’s favorite.
“You cannot not communicate.”
How many times in our 60 years of marriage, did Marjorie say “you don’t like this”. To which I replied, “I didn’t say that.” Yeah, I did, but not with words.
Scientists tell us that less than 20% of a person’s understanding of what we say is based on the actual words we use. About 80% is based on non-verbal communication. What the hell is that? Simply put, your body language, your tone of voice, that frown, those folded arms, that fidgeting, pushing the food around the plate, instead of eating it with relish, all say myriads about what you’re thinking and feeling.
Based on your tone of voice “Yeah, right” can either mean “What a great idea that is“ or “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard in years.“

Another truism I particularly like is
“Maturity is the ability to live with imperfection”.
Believe it or not: there are no perfect spouses, houses, jobs, kids, etc. etc.
The search for perfection can be the enemy of the good. Our goal should be excellence not perfection.
My Executive Assistant, who was typing the article for me, (remember, this was over 40 years ago) said, “You really know how to hurt a person.” “What do you mean?” I asked. She answered, “I’ve been married three times. I guess I’m not very mature”.
My lovely wife, Marjorie should definitely get the top maturity award for putting up with my many imperfections for 60 years.
There are several other “truisms” I could share, but for now, these two are sufficient. I promise more later. But for this chapter. Enuf.