Good Morning all you pre-Christmas survivors out there in shopping land; your King of Simple News is on the air.

Well, this is the last shopping day before Christmas, a condition that I take great pleasure in observing.

The end of yet another year is upon us and for many of us oldsters, the possibility of the year 2000 actually coming, was akin to Buck Rogers and imaginary space ships; it was fun to think about, but would never actually materialize. Now, I find it difficult to get my mind around the fact that the year 2000 is nearly ten years past! The point of my rambling is to remind all of us how fast our lives pass.

In my book, I made note that if a person had an hour glass that sat on the breakfast table, and if the sand in that hour glass represented the individual total time that we have here on planet earth, we would live our lives much differently.

As we watched the sand surrender to gravity each morning while we sipped our morning coffee and tea, it would be a subtle reminder that we better get to living and doing the things that make us happy before the last grain dropped from the upper chamber.

We would consider whether or not we really enjoyed our present lives or whether we were just marking time waiting for someone else to make our lives better. Barrack Obama for instance.

Do you enjoy your work? Do you enjoy the area of the country where you currently live? Do you have hobbies and activities that you enjoy when not at work? Do you absolutely live for the weekends? If you answered NO to any of the first three questions or YES to the last, consider that you have limited time to change those answers. The sand is running out and Barrack Obama ain’t the answer. Nor was George Bush, or Bill Clinton, or Ronald Reagan, or Jimmy Carter.

Most of us will have some down-time during Christmas and New Years to consider the above questions; and I recommend doing so. It’s during some quiet down time that our minds and thoughts are clearest. Life is short; don’t waste it attempting to climb an impossible mountain.

The word radical gets a bum rap as it is normally associated with bad behavior. But radical is often the only type of action that will get the job done.

 I often use analogies from my flying days to better explain the points or views that I’m trying to make. If a pilot starts out on a 3 hour trip with 4 hours of fuel on board and inadvertently allows a stiff crosswind to drift him off course a hundred miles or so toward a place called ‘Nowhere’, there are two choices. 1. Make a radical course correction and go directly to the destination where he can make a safe landing. 2. Don’t do anything radical that would upset the passengers. Allow them to enjoy the flight until such time that you all go down together.  

I have always been intrigued by people who make radical changes in their lives. The doctor who suddenly decides to be a fishing guide, because that was always his passion. The New York City or Los Angeles dweller that twists off and moves to a remote area because they were never happy in the city. The person who goes to the corner store one night and never returns, secretly changing their life and locale.

Radical can be good behavior if it makes you happy. But we are told that such radical behavior is…well… irresponsible, stupid, ridiculous, throwing your whole life away. But then, come to think of it; it is your life.

Have a wonderful Holiday Season and rethink radical. Live simple, live free, and live well.