Sweet Dreams

I awoke. It was just after four in the morning. My room was unsettlingly quiet and dark, given my playlist had long ago run out. Restless, I shifted positions in bed, searching for something to slow my racing thoughts. Why I had awakened, I have no idea. But what I awoke from was one of the more life-like and eternally blissful dreams I had ever dreamed, with the thoughts, visions, images, emotions, passions, and experiences so chillingly vivid it was staggering. The details of the dream are hardly important, but the feelings of perfection were fleeting so quickly as the moments between my eyes opening and my current state were ever-increasing, letting the cold reality settle in. I, in fact, was not living the dream I dreamed. It was cold, dark, silent, and still an hour and a half of dreaded attempts at sleep before my alarm would disrupt any semblance of nocturnal rest. Once again, I was fooled. Quite the gag my mind was able to pull off. Casting a life so strongly feeling like one I had been living for years, only to wake up and scare it away. So why do we dream?

In a mild attempt at research, I’ve found that some researchers suggest that dreams serve no real purpose, while others believe that dreaming is essential to mental, emotional and physical well-being. Not surprising, but I didn’t want to continue if there was an agreed-upon scientific theory that would completely nullify my words. But since I found nothing, I will forge on.

In no way will I attempt to explain my dreams, but it’s my un-researched belief that dreams fall into three main categories:

1.) My aforementioned utopic dream

2.) Frightening dreams we commonly refer to as nightmares

3.) Bizarre dreams that have no grounding in reality, which make you sound like a schizophrenic 8-year old when you try to relay the events involving raining peapods, your 3^rd grade music teacher, candy lava, and your shoes could talk to you. Also known as ‘acid trip dreams.’

I don’t count day dreams since I believe they are simply times when your thoughts wander and you lose focus, therefore, a controlled and planned mental diversion as opposed to the ones that happen in the middle of the night. But no matter the type of dream, and whatever researchers might suggest is the reason for having them, there’s one concurrent theme: they *always* leave you disappointed.

You wake up after the most amazing and perfect dream ever. You realize it wasn’t real. The situation I outlined at the beginning of this post comes true. You went from feeling like a king to feeling like normal. Result: Disappointed.

You wake up after the most terrifying and miserable dream ever. You’re panicked. You’re sweating. The creak of your pipes make you want to turn every light on. You seriously dread closing your eyes, assuming the evil that you just escaped will promptly reappear. Result: Disappointed.

You wake up after the most confusing and jumbled dream ever. You’re… confused. Why did someone try to eat your leg? Why was your family on a rocket ship to Boston? Why were you 10 feet taller than everyone else? Why did your 6^th grade class show up singing Christmas songs? How come when you try to tell someone how crazy this dream was, you can’t remember anything, and they lose interest immediately? Result: Disappointed.

Sure, half the time I wake up, I don’t have one iota of an idea of what I just dreamed. It kept me asleep for at least 4 or 5 hours, and now I’m ready to start my day. And I would think it’s obvious that recent activities or conversations or thoughts have an easier time finding their way into a dream and influencing how you perceive them (if you just watched The Exorcism, you’re worried about devil possession…). But I kind of hope they get behind the nonsense of dreams, because I’m sick of being disappointed or freaked out. I don’t want to dream in colors, I want to dream of colors. ‘Oooooo, blueeee, that was calming, good night’s sleep!’ Save the serial killers in my neighborhood and the winning the World Series, I’ll take care of that stuff in reality.

Just Another Manic Monday

I work in a large building full of cubicles, offices, and labs. Hundreds of people come here every day for work. I see, talk to, pass by, run into, and correspond with dozens of them, along with people around the country and around the world. What I’ve described is most likely, in some way, relative to what you might come across on a daily basis, be it people on the street on your way to work, or the close-knit group you work with every day. Without a question, the most common question you hear is ‘how are you?’ Half the time it might only be in passing, the answer being less important than the question used as a greeting. Those get the ‘good,’ ‘good’ type of exchanges. But when you are some sort of conversation version of ‘how are you,’ based on research I have never conducted and with no actual proof, 80% of the time, people use the day of the week as a catalyst to describe how they are doing.

The weekend just ended. You spent 8 hours watching football, eating wings, and drinking beers. You spent the day at your parents’ house with the kids. You spent the day dusting, vacuuming, polishing, and cleaning the entire house. At the end of the day, you were exhausted. Wake up, and it’s back to work.

Good morning, how are you today?
- Ugh, it's Monday

You were able to get through Monday, which is, for most people, the busiest day of the week. That alone is the silver lining. You might have four more days still on the calendar, but at least Monday is done. You can catch up on some sleep. There were some good TV shows on. You watched some Monday Night Football. You’re already used to waking up early again. Not all is lost.

Good morning, how are you today?
- Eh, it's only Tuesday

It’s the middle of the week. If you talk to me after lunch, I’m more than halfway done. I’m starting to make some weekend plans. The work is shifting from my inbox to my outbox. There’s a flicker of light at the end of the tunnel. You’ve reached the peak, and now you’re on the downhill side of the mountain. Unless something drastic happens at work, it’s smooth sailing for the rest of the week.

Good morning, how are you today?
- Hey, it's hump day!

There only stands one day between you and the weekend. Conversations have flooded to what the weekend has in store. The prospect of the weekend makes you feel like it’s already here. Knowing how good of a mood you will be in on Friday, it almost feels like today is a freebie. The mood of the office is light. Everyone seems to be in positive spirits. And your week of work is coming to an end. It becomes less about what day it is, and more about what day it almost is.

Good morning, how are you today?
- It's almost Friiidaaay....

It’s here. You are hours away from the best feeling of the 9-5 life: the moment the weekend starts. It’s full of opportunities, possibilities, people, places, ideas. Nothing is better than potential. Whether the office claims it or not, it’s casual Friday. Not necessarily in dress, but in spirit. Everyone is bubbly, people mingle, plans for the weekend are shared and discussed, and everyone has a common goal. Make sure everyone’s work is done. If that means pitching in with work that wasn’t assigned to you because you’re done early, that’s okay. One team, one goal: get to the weekend.

Good morning, how are you today?
- Woohoo!!! Finally Friday!!!!

Have I accurately portrayed what you have all experienced? I sure hope so. But I also hope that this doesn’t apply to you. I can’t speak for how I’ll be in 20 years, after the working life has worn me down to a tired, cynical soul, enamored with privacy in the bathroom or silence in the morning, but I can speak for how I want to be, and that is not confined by my monthly calendar or daily planner. The days of the week cannot control me or how I feel. Why does everything have to wait for the weekend (again, I see the flaws in this theory, for parents with nightly activities, and people with other responsibilities)? If you feel yourself getting caught in a rut, where every night is the same, forgettable routine, feel strong enough to break it.

Just because a few of your favorite shows air on Tuesday nights, doesn’t mean you need to deepen the ass-grove in your couch and snuggle up with your TV blanket. Just because you’re used to doing laundry on Monday nights, doesn’t mean you can’t go an extra few days with what you have and trying again another night (unless you’re out of underwear). If your friends invite you out for a drink, or for a town concert, or a showing of an old, classic movie at the local auditorium, you can do it. If you’re waiting for the weekend before you call a friend to hang out, try a Wednesday. If you continuously wait until the weekend, something will inevitably come up. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve thought I’d just wait until Friday before giving someone a call, then before I know it, I fall into the same plans with the same people I’ve seen for the last month, and never make the call. It’s okay to go do something on a Monday. Work will always be there in the morning. For the rest of the week. And the rest of the month. And the rest of the year. And the rest of the decade. You get the idea.

If you let the days of the week control your mood, your plans, and your approach to life, then you’re giving away entirely too much authority. Next time you get asked how you are doing, I plead, do not reference the day of the week. We can all count, and we’re all on the same page. I’m not saying I’m not in a better mood on a Friday, but I have enough autonomy to let my own life dictate when I do things, how I do things, and how I feel on a day to day basis.

Quote Me on This

If you knew how much time I spend looking through quotes, it might surprise you. Okay, that was underwhelming; it would baffle you. I look forward to finishing movies so I can go back and read every quote that IMDb lists. I've read the full quote page for shows like Boy Meets World, The Simpsons, Seinfeld, and The O.C. more times than I'm willing to admit. I've purchased two different movies based solely on the quotes I read on-line and word of mouth (Boondock Saints and Juno). Trust me, I completely understand this is bordering on an obsession. I almost called it an 'unhealthy obsession,' but that's kind of the purpose for this post, so I'm going to hold off passing self-judgment until I explore this a little further.

I use quotes as a muse. I've had posts in here that are centered around a quote, or that are the product of a quote launch pad, or that are attempting to disprove a quote I heard. When what I do is based on a snap shot of time, a moment, a picture, quotes offer that. They are complete and whole as they are. There is no 'well let's see how that plays out' type characteristic. There is a capital letter, a period, and will never been changed, only recreated. This makes them easy targets to write about. And since I began writing From Shore to Pschorr, I tend to look at quotes in a slightly different way. Now, I look for the story behind the words. I look for the meaning between the lines. I have deified quotes, as impossibly blasphemous as that sounds. I find it uplifting when someone can recognize and appreciate the work of others in their same genre. In a world built on individual competitiveness and an overwhelming desire to be the best, it's refreshing to hear compliments of the craft. Whether it's an opposing team member clapping after a dunk, or a rival band attending and appreciating a concert, I love when people can respect the art of their competition. In a small way, that's how I feel reading quotes (and lyrics get lumped in with those whole conversation, I just don't feel like typing 'quotes and lyrics' every time). No, I'm not a financially successful writer, but I have done more than I thought I would, and consider the experiment here to be a success. And even though I can go back to some of my manipulated words and sentences and find gold, I am frequently stricken by the talent of others.

This long intro sets the stage for this conversation: what are we to make of quotes? 3-part answer...

1.) Do we just appreciate them for the meticulously constructed formations of words, spelling, grammar, syntax, and style? Like I was just saying, there is a certain amount of poetry in a well scripted line, and really, to quote someone or something is an implied tip of the cap to the author. There was something inherently beautiful it what you repeated and the final form was enough to pass along. This can also include the meaning behind the words, but they're usually combined with several other tools of language. You would see this more in poems or fiction or songs, where there is a craft at stake. There is a level of artistic obligation that twists in analogies, alliterations, parodies, ironies, rhymes, metaphors, inferences, references, puns, and any other device that can raise the level of written language.

This side of the break down is relatively straight forward. Text can be appreciated for a work of art.

Example: "How could you leave me, I thought that you needed me, when the world got too much and you pleaded with me, who helped you immediately, how speedy of me, how could you deny me so vehemently?" (Jay-Z - I Know)

2.) Do we appreciate them for the personal way they affect our lives? I have been quoted as saying (ha) that the chills are the truest, rawest, purest form of emotion. Whether it's scared out of your mind or deeply connected, your body naturally reacts by making every hair on your body stick out. With my affinity towards getting them, it's no wonder to believe that it happens to me often. I used to get the chills 3, sometimes 4 different times while reading William Wallace's speech in Braveheart. Yes, often a movie is to blame for these emotional arrows, and like songs, music is also an integral part of the meaning. But it's almost inexplicable the times when our body reacts to something simply spoken. This might be my greatest fascination with quotes. How the right assembly of words on a line can produce such an emotional surge. Whether it's the key quote from one of your favorite movies, which rushes you back into the moment, or just the right trigger word that gets you all choked up, certain quotes at certain times can mean more than any of us realize.

This break down is also straight forward. For each person, a quote might mean the world, regardless of the meaning, who said it, or where they heard it. It's personal, and it's beautiful.

Example: "I love you. Very, very simple, very truly. You are the-the epitome of everything I have ever looked for in another human being." (Holden McNeil - Chasing Amy)

3.) Do we appreciate them for the meaning, the light, the knowledge they can bestow? Keeping this in the world of fiction, whether it written or filmed, what are we (am I) really doing when I quote an author or a movie like it’s some majestic discovery and holds the secret to life, love, and happiness? This was my main reason for exploring this topic, and this continues to challenge me. Not only do I love reading quotes, but I love finding ones that nail it. Ones that are so drastically smart, clever, on point, that I have no other reaction besides wanting to spread the words to everyone. Quotes that leave you thinking (shocking), quotes that create new ideologies, open your mind, cause you to rethink your mental foundation. Clearly, this is not surprising to anyone still reading.

But I assign these quotes as scriptures. I could find a list of quotes on the internet and create my own 10 commandments. I could line up enough quotes from books, from movies, from songs, and create a creed, a book to live by. But I’m using the quotes of characters. Of people who don’t exist in situations that aren’t real. Then again, the scripts had to be written by someone. So now I’m not quoting William Wallace, or Mel Gibson, but I’m quoting the English major sitting behind the curtain, pulling all the strings. Well what do they know? Am I really basing my life theories on six writers drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes 12 hours a day, churning out words for millionaire actors and actresses? Scary thought. I’m not ready to go that far yet. I still feel confident I can extract life meaning from movies and books without fear.

Break down: What we hear might not be written by experts, but they help you make a positive life change, then what’s the harm?

Example: "The unreal is more powerful than the real. Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because its only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on. If you can change the way people think. The way they see themselves. The way they see the world. You can change the way people live their lives. That’s the only lasting thing you can create.” (Chuck Palahniuk – Choke)

Final thought: I’m not ready to give up quotes quite yet. I consider it my continuing education. Not something that prepares me for a test, but that prepares me to identify challenges and build strategies to survive. An obsession, sure, but not unhealthy.

Coming Up Aces

“I told him that a player on a streak has to respect the streak… because they don’t – they don’t happen very often.” – Crash Davis, Bull Durham

I’m not one to believe in the graces of God coming down to redirect our sails into greener pastures. I’m not one to believe that the universe is laced with some cosmic equation of karma that proportionately awards behavior in a ‘what goes around, comes around’ kind of way. (Proof). I’m sure there are dozens of other, similar-type belief structures that in one way or another, explain a lot of the hows and whys of every day human life. I’m not one to believe in those either. Not because I’m an overall non-believer, but it usually takes a little more evidence for me to buy in. It helps me to believe in the tangible. And part of it, I’m sure, is that it helps me believe in me. If I had to justify my successes by admitting they were a product of a greater majestic blueprint, it would start to take away a feeling of accomplishment.

But I’m not here to make this all about beliefs. I’ve done mildly well avoiding that gigantic, polarizing bag of opinions, and this time, I only use my abbreviated thoughts as a spring board to the most prevalent topic on my mind. I opened this post with a quote from one of my favorite movies. I was going to say ‘if you haven’t seen it, you should,’ but that’s not entirely true. If you really hate baseball, well, then I’d say skip it. Otherwise, it’s classic. And what the quote is referring to is a scene in which a young pitcher is the driving force behind a triple-A ball club’s winning streak. Now, the point of the quote is that it never matters how or why a streak starts, but whatever you believe you’re doing or not doing that might or might not have sparked the streak, well, you just keep doing or not doing it. As Crash says, moments later, “If you believe you're playing well because you're getting laid, or because you're not getting laid, or because you wear women's underwear, then you ARE!”

This kind of superstition is rampant in baseball. From never stepping on the foul line (guilty superstition) to adjusting your batting gloves to tapping your toes to touching the center field fence before every inning, I’ve never met a player that doesn’t do or believe in anything, as silly or serious as it might seem.

Funny part is, this quote applies to baseball and real life the same. I know plenty of people that find small or insignificant things in their habits that they deem responsible or any number of random victories or rolling hot streaks. Whether it’s a guy having good luck with meeting girls after switching shampoos, or a lawyer winning case after case because of a new leather binder, it doesn’t take much to assign a reason.

So why do we do it? Why do we think the winds don’t change for any reason? Why can’t we accept that we might be doing something different which elicited these new results? Why don’t we see there might be consistently random patterns of success and failure based on things out of our control?

Assigning something responsible for a run of good luck is regrettable. I think there is a lot to be gained by blaming yourself as your successes or failures begin to stack at unprecedented rates. Believing that a new pair of shoes is responsible for your better free throw shooting percentage is silly. Now, believing that you think the shoes make you better, but in reality, they just give you more confidence to go do your thing? Well that’s a theory based in much stronger reality.

There is also the theory that winning begets winning and confidence begets confidence, or combing the two and saying confidence breeds success. So now we have the idea that you don’t know why things have taken a turn for the better, but it’s a snowball effect. It happens once? Luck. It happens twice? Coincidence. It happens three times? Well obviously I can do no wrong, so I have no reason to believe that numbers four, five, and six will happen without even having to try. And a confident person will typically have a higher success rate, so once again, is based in some sort of reality.

So there are a lot of reasons that can be applied to a hot streak. Quite honestly, most of them are plausible, and I’d be lying if I said I really thought any of them were 100% correct. But what I do know is they’re rare. Maybe not specific to an athlete, since I’m pretty sure it’s not rare that Derrick Rose is a badass on the court every night. And maybe not to a brilliant mind, since I’m pretty sure getting A’s throughout high school in college goes past a ‘hot streak.’ But for those caught in the middle, those of us somewhere between slightly above constant failure and just below constant success, streaks are not a dime a dozen.

When you find yourself turning over aces every time you’re dealt a card, don’t bother checking the deck. It might be random, it might be you, it might be a higher power, it might be your shoes; it doesn’t matter. Whatever keeps you moving in the right direction is worth believing in.

Hold Back the Day

When I listen to heavy metal, which is still pretty frequently, it isn't always easy to decipher the lyrics. "All they do is scream, how can you understand what they're saying?" I often hear. Well it's true. Without the lyrics printed in the inlay of the CDs back in the day, and now, without the internet, it was quite difficult to know, word for word, what some of your favorite songs are talking about. This isn't true across the board, but it helps me launch into today's topic.

So I was driving to work yesterday, listening to some of that aforementioned metal, and was jamming out to one of my favorite songs. Attempting to sing along, I realized I had very little assurance that what I was screaming was accurate to the original lyrics. I wanted to look them up so I could sing along with a little more confidence, but there was another reason, and a reason that can apply to all music. So often, we blindly sing along with songs without thinking about their meaning. Aside from surface-level pop songs where the meaning is about as subtle as the intent behind girls' Halloween costumes, there is probably a meaning to the songs we know and love that flies under the radar or over our heads. With the song I referenced, 'Hold Back the Day' by Devildriver, I wanted to read the lyrics so I could figure out what the hell the song was about. It kinda loses its luster if your favorite song is actually presenting the message of worldwide genocide or puppy slaughter. The music and the sound and the talent of a song is one thing, but if you're not on board with the intent behind the lyrics, it's hard to truly identify with it. I think this can accurately explain why I haven't left the world of heavy metal yet. The average person might _think_ metal is all about genocide and puppy killing, but more often than not, the song lyrics are so well written, so poetic, so deep, and with so much more social, political, romantic meaning than the pop music released these days.

Fast forward to me reading the lyrics to 'Hold Back the Day,' and trying to figure out the meaning. I took what I discovered and combined it with what I already had uncovered and tried to piece together meaning. It was during this process that I realized, 'it doesn't matter.' Sure, like I said, we all want to believe we're singing along to words that we could see ourselves writing. But the reality is: art, in all forms, is under the control of the audience.

So often we look at a painting or listen to a song or read a poem and think, 'what is the artist trying to say?' You see two red dots on a canvas of yellow and try to conjure up the thoughts of the person behind the paint brush. The artists is sitting behind the painting saying, 'can't you see it! It's the back of the school bus! It symbolizes the lack of detail we pay attention to the education system, even though it's right in front of our face!!' Really, Picasso? Unfortunately for you, the deeper meaning, the hidden tricks, the small details of your work, will most likely be lost on anyone who’s not an enthusiast of your work. Same goes for music. You could masterfully maneuver the strings of a guitar that no human has ever done before, but if the average listener just goes, 'huh, sounds cool,' in between bowl hits, well then all the talent in the world is lost. Writing: you could interweave and disguise hundreds of references, jokes, symmetries, quirks, nuances, or any other skillfully arranged piece, while at the end of the sonnet, the reader goes, 'so, Shakespeare was gay?'

I was a really bad English major a.) Because clearly I don't enjoy following the rules of grammar, and b.) There were times where I couldn't get away from thinking, 'maybe he just wrote it to write it.' You know, maybe there are not 10 different meanings to the poem. Maybe it wasn't a social game-changer. Maybe it didn't have political subplots and conspiracies. Maybe it was just one night that Whitman got a little drunk and thought it was funny. And all that thinking is obviously the lazy, easy-way out, not wanting to write a paper on it mentality.

But now I see, that's not the case. In the same way that we, the audience, might miss the intricacies of a piece of art, we can also over-analyze something that was never meant to be anything more than entertainment. The point being, the author doesn't get to choose. I have no idea how what I write impacts those who read it, the same way that musicians have no idea their audience will interpret the newest single. It's asinine to blame a band for a school shooting. The kid can say 'Marilyn Manson was the reason I did this' all he wants, but that's just because when he listened to the CD, that's what he got out of it. Sure, you probably won't have people bringing guns to school after hearing a Britney Spears song, unless they're scared of organized teenage dancing in school hallways, but the point is the same. When you create something, you don't have control of how people will interpret.

It's with that point that I bring this full circle. I looked up the lyrics to 'Hold Back the Day' hoping to find meaning that I could latch on to, when I already had something in my head that I liked:

'Miles to go and skies to fly, hold back the day,

Miles to go and skies to fly, it's darkest before the dawn.'

I created my own interpretation. Sorry, Dez (lead singer), but I'll take from it what I need.

The Best Laid Plans...

I spend the majority of my waking hours at work or in a car. This is common for the average person. I bring this up because given that on any given day, I spend approximately 11 hours of my day either inside my building or inside my car. Needless to say, that's where most of my thinking takes place. My latest revelation pulls examples from my everyday experiences.

There is a famous quote that goes "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / go oft awry." A book I've never read, but a quote I enjoy.

Now, I'm a strong advocate of planning, and without realizing it, we take for granted how many things in this world are actually planned out to the smallest detail. From the label on your water bottle to the flight schedules at an airport, there aren't many aspects of life that didn't receive a great amount of attention and planning.

I opened with that work/car explanation because when you're so engrossed in something, it's easiest to take examples from what you know. Admittedly already confessing my distaste for traffic, I realized something recently. Besides just tacking on lane after lane until it takes 10 minutes to cross the road, I'm always wondering why our road systems weren't designed better to increase the flow of traffic and alleviate the bottle necks and traffic jams. Every single day I witness the follies of our 'expressway' system, crawling past exit after exit at the pace of a small child riding a Powerwheels. Aren't there people out there smart enough to orchestrate a scheme that allows for high capacity work traffic? Surely, I don't have the answers, but what I can tell you is that whoever was behind the planning of the current traffic system in this city, thought it was all figured out. You can't tell me someone would propose a new grid to a board of officials and say, 'well, based on my calculations, this expressway from Northbrook to Chicago will be bumper to bumper and crawling more than twice a day, assuming the number of cars on the road increases at its current rate, traffic coming from the on and off ramps will cause a mild form of hysteria, and any hint of additional construction will bring the whole thing to a screeching halt.' APPROVED! No, sorry. You can't propose something that you know will fail based on reasonably unlikely but still possible scenarios (unless you're Thomas Andrews), and have people agree. You have to propose something that without a doubt will succeed. That's the only way something of this magnitude would be given the green light.

So based on that theory, when these highways were designed, built, modified, and maintained, each instance was thought to be perfect, maximizing fluidity and reducing stoppages. So then, aside from increases in population, which obviously factors in, why is there so much damn traffic? Because, like I've vented recently, people don't know how to drive, don't pay attention, don't care, and ultimately exploit a system that would most likely succeed without questionable drivers.

Now let's go to a work example. Part of my job includes designing online training. Employees or customers register online for a course, then must log in to our system to find their learning path. Any course they registered for should be in there, you go through the course or courses, complete the requirements, and you get credit. It seems so unbelievably simple, and for the high majority of people reading this, I'm sure it would be easy for you to complete the process. Yet my team here has been reduced to creating every single 'safety valve' so people don't screw it up. We tried putting the instructions on how to properly exit the course as the last slide, but no one ever read it. We made it a window that pops up before the training even starts, people either forget it or close it without reading. We can't make adjustments or advancements to new training ideas because we always have to consider how the functionality will appear to people that can't pay attention long enough to figure out how to complete a training. We get calls about people not receiving credit, and when we ask if they viewed all of the slides, they'll say no. We have devised a program and a process that should be clear as crystal to a 4th grader, but functioning adults in the world can't comprehend the simple instructions that we beat over their heads.

The point of this was not to throw all of my fellow employees under the bus, as I'm sure a few of my coworkers will read this, but it's to point out that no matter how we set this system up, as perfect as it was constructed, there are still people that poke holes in the blueprint and ruin your structure.

The best laid schemes of mice and men - often don't consider the human element. We are an amazing species. We have the ability to destroy that which was built for us, to abuse that which is there to make our lives better, to ignore that which can make our lives simpler, and selfishly trounce through life without considering the consequences of our careless actions.

I know, that was a reach, a broad slap in the face, and probably off topic enough where it deserves its own post, but I don't always stay on topic. I shouldn't generalize, so I won't. There are people out there that are like water in a broken surface, they will always find the cracks. And once one does, the rest will follow, until the crack is a hole, and the surface shatters, requiring repair to once again be functional. There is no plan for the human element besides planning to adapt and repair.