How to Live According to Grandpa: The Wisdom and Philsophy of Tomateots!

By John Reseck Jr

We are presented with several million options during our life that we have to make a choice between. The choices we make create the way we see the world and establish how we live in it. This environment, which we have created for ourselves, is called our world. Everyone has a world that is unique and personal to them.

Of course, our worlds are based on assumptions that for one reason or another, we choose to believe and call facts.

We are sure that what we believe takes precedence over everyone else's beliefs, and that can make our world a bit of a challenge to live in at times. I have decided to share my world with the rest of the world. Not to convince anyone that my world is better than theirs but to share some of the things that I found helpful for the world at large.

In my eighty-eight years as a well-educated wonderer, many of my assumed facts have been proven wrong. I see that as progress a good thing. The challenge is to be able to accept that one of your lifelong facts just isn't true. I have only a few things that I learned that have stayed true so far and have been stabilizers in my world. I think they can be of use to almost everyone and need sharing.

I am not writing this book to encourage you to think like me but rather to just think. There are things changing all around you. So many new things to learn. So many new places to visit. So many edges out there you haven't walked on yet. No matter how intelligent you are, your areas of vast ignorance are greater than your areas of knowledge.

There is so much to learn that when you throw your arms up and say, "I know nothing," it will be true, but it is okay. Every other human on earth is in the same situation, they just don't know it.

We have robots with Artificial Intelligence (AI) far beyond any human right now that are working for us. What will happen when they decide we are too dumb and of no use to them? I believe this could be a far greater threat to human survival than global warming. What do you think, and why?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9798890610881

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Introduction

A TOPATEOTS

Discusses Questions About Life in His World

The Environment

What is global warming?

What can we do about it?

Some reasons we have no control over it

Where do I live?

The Oceans

Why are the seven seas important to our species?

What are we doing to them?

Relationships

What constitutes a family?

A few of the important tools in my life and how they entered my world

Why should we get married?

What about sex?

Health

What is general health?

What we eat

Good and bad habits

What about exercise?

Your home environment

Memory

Aging

Hearing

What about death?

Activities

Adventure

Retirement

Creativity

Why do we need friends?

True friends (A young boy's search)

Things we can control

Emotions

Love

Joy

Laughter

Hate

Anger

Fear

General

Becoming a beneficial presence in life

What is a fact?

Examples of how we learn from life

Why do we have schools?

Why do people love to watch the sunset?

Want vs. need

Just for fun

What do you think?

Epilogue

The Many Lives of This TOMATEOTS, John Reseck Jr.

cover.jpg

How to Live According to Grandpa

The Wisdom and Philsophy of Tomateots!

John Reseck Jr

Copyright © 2023 John Reseck Jr.

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2023

ISBN 979-8-89061-087-4 (Paperback)

ISBN 979-8-89061-088-1 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

To my mother.

I loved you as much as possible in my younger years,

But I didn't appreciate all you did for me

Until I was an old man,

Looking back on my life.

You died way too young for me to tell you

How much I loved and needed you in my life.

You gave me the foundation that I live by.

You taught me how to handle my daily

Chores and how and why it was

Important to appreciate

Every one of them

To have a life

Worth

Living.

I still judge whatever I do

Against the standard

Would my mother

Be proud of me

I thank you with all my heart and love.

Introduction

The author in one segment of his life.

A TOPATEOTS

Discusses Questions About Life in His World

(We are all born with an incurable disease called death.)

On the day of our birth, we arrived at an environment that was totally new to us. We were so scared we cried. Over the next few years, we gathered information that would help us decide how we were going to adjust to and live in this new place. We were starting to choose a path to follow for the rest of our life.

The path would depend on what we had been exposed to and learned so far getting to our present place in life. That is all we had to work with. The information a child had to work with born in China was very different than the information ones born in France, Africa, or New York had.

In the old days (I'm not sure just what that means to you, it depends on your age, I'm old), a path was easy to choose. Most just followed their parent's path, and very little peripheral knowledge was available to them. The majority were happy with that because it was what was available and expected of them. This is not true in today's world.

Between our phones, our computers, and our TVs, we are told what we should do.

We are told about many things every week and convinced by excellent marketing that we deserve them. The ads are very convincing, so we buy a lot of them on time, of course. They never mention what my father taught me. "You don't deserve anything you haven't worked for." This is an old concept that obviously is no longer being taught.

There are two more principles, my father stressed, that no one seems to understand in today's world. If you work for someone, you must produce more money each hour than they pay you. Seems like a no-brainer to me, but I guess not to everybody.

The second guideline was about buying things. Make payments to yourself, just like you had bought it on credit cards. You will have to wait longer to get it, but the interest you save is for you to spend, not someone else.

My mother is the one that taught me to treat everyone I meet like I want them to treat me, and they will. She was a wise lady. It works.

The above information is necessary for my reader to know so they can better understand my world and the philosophy I give for the questions/topics in this book.

There is one more piece of information that is pertinent to know to help understand my approach to life. All my educations (all four degrees) are in the sciences. I taught biology, marine biology, oceanography, martial arts, and diving as my main subjects at the college and university level for thirty years.

All the opinions and information in this book are taken and extracted from my personal world. They are the way I see life and are not intended to tell you how to live your life, just to give you something to think about.

Be aware also that although a lot of the insight given, I think I came up with, I know that isn't true. All I have to work with is what I have learned from someone else through reading and listening. I do not remember where I saw it or who first wrote it down, but their wisdom stuck in my brain. I can never remember the exact quote, so I massage it to fit into my world. I want to thank all of those long gone that have made a small portion of their wisdom available to me. I feel they would be pleased to know I was passing it along to you. To steal