Jack Handey doesn't know what to do with these thoughts

If life expectancy is 77.8 years, I am nearly 10 years past. 

Were I born some 300-400 years ago and managed to survive childhood, I'd be close to dead right now. 

Oh, and also managed to survive childbirth three times. 

That is a lot of maybes. 

Of course, I suspect life's lessons were learned much faster back then for all sorts of different reasons. 

I guess when you butt everything, every possible concern up next to death, all those other concerns become a lot less critical. 

Sometimes when I'm in an SBDM meeting (or any meeting) and I feel myself getting worked up about something, I have a moment of butting the issue up next to death which tends to make me step back just a smidge.

Because I'm a naturally reflective person, I've considered things from lots of angles before I actually verbalize whatever it is I actually think. I've read or done research or considered before I open my mouth. Heck, some of what I think lands on this blog which helps me sort through things and add to my thinking. 

If I could be paid for my thinking, I would be so fucking rich. 

And about some things I do tend to have strong opinions. 

Because I assert those opinions or questions or concerns, I wonder if people think me asserting those things means I think I'm right. 

I used to be that way. I used to give my opinion and think my opinion was correct.

But now I mostly don't know. 

I still assert a viewpoint or opinion because I think I sometimes have some smart thoughts, and if nothing else, they might help distill a situation or help someone check me and my viewpoint. 

Sometimes I like to mull over topics over which I used to feel very strongly in one particular way and now do not. 

I used to believe that breastfeeding was the absolute best way to feed one's baby and one should do it for a very long time, and while I believed that for me, it took awhile to get that what is right for ME is not right for everyone. 

I used to believe some of my neighbors were semi-normal people, and after 2016 and the ensuing years, I realized they appear to have some glaring problems with black people that I never noticed before and maybe aren't the sort of people I actually want to be neighbors with. 

I used to believe that Catholic education was the absolute best, and then I believed that public school education was the best, and now I believe that no education system has all the answers and do whatever is best for your kid. 

I used to think that Tom Cruise was the world's worst actor and now I think...ok, I still think this. 

I feel like the older I get, the more loosey-goosey I get. 

What do I believe? Do I have any rails on which the track of my life runs beyond just like a basic Golden Rule situation?

Sometimes I even ask myself, "Am I moral person?" because I'm like "Are drugs wrong? What drugs are wrong if they are wrong? Are some drugs more wrong than others? Is this even a moral question at all? Do drugs have anything at all to do with morality? Is doing drugs harming only you or is there a chain reaction of harm that may not harm you but harms people on the production chain of getting the drugs to you?" 

Remember when I said I could make millions if I got paid for my thoughts. This is why.