🚀 go-pugleaf

Dear Cat,

Thank you for your observations. You may well be right, that -- by 
accident -- I do indeed select for the women I compile my data from, 
for indeed most of the women I deal with are in fact "professional" 
career women, and usually college educated with fast minds. [By this remark 
I am not saying that you and your girlfriends do NOT fit this description, 
but rather *MY* experience has been based on a type of woman that may indeed 
introduce bais into my observations that I had never considered.] Were 
all women to be such as you and your girlfriends, I'd *might* have been 
married a long time ago. The fact is that I have never made much money 
[and right now dead broke]; Robert Redford I am not [though I look far 
younger than 44]; and my influence is non-existent. Yes women like me -- 
I am kind, witty, caring, etc., but the minute someone comes along that 
has the money, the looks, the power, etc. I get discarded without a 
second thought. That is direct from the School of Hard Knocks.

While I may not be married, I have been fortunate enough to form 3 very 
deep long term relationships that are rooted in reality, not fantasy. One 
of those relationships is 16 years old, and the other two each 10 years 
old -- that is 3 relationships that have existed longer than the average 
marriage does -- so I must be doing something right -- I compare them 
with 3 more relationships with a 28 y.o., and two 27 y.o. two of which  
have existed for 4 years, and one for 3 years, with them I might as well 
as be from the planet Mars. We all use the same words, but they define the 
words one way, and I define them in a different way. 

What I have discovered is that our "success" is often measured by what we 
have -- the type of car, the size of house, do we rent, do we own, the 
beautiful wife/handsome husband, the type of job, our position in the 
community, etc. If these things are missing -- we drive an old truck, or 
car, we lack a high paying job, etc. --  then we are deemed "unsuccessful".

I am poor; I am not unsuccessful: How many people do you know that can 
say they have lived in, and traveled throughout Europe, and who was 
frequently invited to European events that most "Americans" never get to 
see; have lived and traveled throughout the Caribbean -- and thought of 
as a "West Indian"; have lived in 7 different States, and visited another 
7-10; have been an Olympian; is considered only one of 3 people in the 
U.S. that is a leader is a type of scientific research; who could also 
almost qualify as a professional stage hand as well; who is also a 
freelance photographer ?? I doubt very many. ... and that my Dear 
Cat is but the tip of the iceberg, as I am so much more!! Poor?? Yes; but I 
have done and experienced things 90% of the U.S. population will never 
do. And while I may be poor Dear Cat I also know how to treat a woman as a 
proper lady, regardless of how much money I have.

The biggest crime Dear Cat is that today people are thought of as 
disposable, rather than sentient beings each unique, capable of adding 
value to a personal relationship, a company, a community, a region, a 
country, a world. The instant we accept the concept of a "bottom line", 
we have become corrupted. The greatest resource we have are people and 
their talents and experiences; when we squander this greatest of 
resources by making them disposable, we will ultimately find that we will 
have trivialized ourselves.

Bob 

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