One of my all time favourite films is “City Slickers.” A story of four friends working through their mid-life crisis, whilst learning to drove cattle through a perilous range. Fraught with mishaps and personal crisis, the journey is all about discovering ones personal values in life and in particular "the one thing" that shapes and directs who we are and yes, what inspired me to write the book and produce the D.V.D. series of the same name.
As funny as the film is, it is a jolt to us all on keeping perspective in life and living. When I was a younger man, I would laugh at the term "mid-life" crisis. A little further down the trail and now I recognize the characters from the film as bastions of rhyme and reason. Prophetic characters from a wilderness of lost expectation and he tyranny of the urgent. These days, I am more interested in quality than quantity.
Billy Crystal who played the character Mitch Robbins is talking at his sons "show and tell" grade class about "what my dad does at work."
Value this time in your life kids, because this is the time in your life when you still have your choices, and it goes by so quickly. When you're a teenager you think you can do anything, and you do. Your twenties are a blur. Your thirties, you raise your family, you make a little money and you think to yourself, "What happened to my twenties?" Your forties, you grow a little pot belly you grow another chin. The music starts to get too loud and one of your old girlfriends from high school becomes a grandmother. Your fifties you have a minor surgery. You'll call it a procedure, but it's a surgery. Your sixties you have a major surgery, the music is still loud but it doesn't matter because you can't hear it anyway. Seventies, you and the wife retire to Fort Lauderdale, you start eating dinner at two, lunch around ten, breakfast the night before. And you spend most of your time wandering around malls looking for the ultimate in soft yogurt and muttering "how come the kids don't call?" By your eighties, you've had a major stroke, and you end up babbling to some Jamaican nurse who your wife can't stand but who you call mama. Any questions?
What an hilarious but tragic picture of a life lived so fast that at the end of the race all is a blur. I don't suppose any of us would in our darkest hours imagine that image could represent us? No WAY!!! ahumm.
We need some more wisdom from the trail hands, lol.
1.Never slap a man who's chewing tobacco.
2.Always drink upstream from the herd.
3.There's two theories to arguing with a woman. Neither one works.
4.Never miss a good chance to shut up.
5.We can't all be heroes because someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.
6.Never kick a cow chip on a hot day.
7.The best way out of a difficulty is through it.
8.There are three kinds of men: The ones that learn by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence.
9.What the country needs is dirtier fingernails and cleaner minds.
10.Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock.
11.An onion can make people cry but there's never been a vegetable that can make people laugh.
12.If you're riding' ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it's still there.
13.Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier 'n puttin' it back.
14.Don't squat with your spurs on.
16.If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.
17.It don't take a genius to spot a goat in a flock of sheep.
Oh and number 15
Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll enjoy it a second time.
Oh and 15. Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll enjoy it a second time.
