FULL THROTTLE

For a long time now, we’ve been told that the younger generation reads less, leading those of us no longer part of the “younger generation” to long for the good old days when things were done right. (Hint: If you are reading this, I’m probably talking about both of us.)

There is some truth to that, particularly if you are one of those people who believe change is generally not good and that reading something in print is more valuable than reading something another way.

I honestly don’t know my answer to that thought any more. I still love print publications, and luckily for our business model, a lot of you still do, too. But everything you find here in print — our stories and the advertisers who make all of this possible also is available online at our website (advocatemag.com) in the same format as this magazine, as well as in other formats geared for mobile readership, too.

Those of us with the Advocate also spend an inordinate amount of time writing daily neighborhood news updates, most of which never appear in our print magazine: Instead, you have to visit advocatemag. com to find those tidbits every day, or subscribe to our Facebook or Twitter feeds, or sign up for our regular e-newsletters (advocatemag.com/social).

I bring all of this up today because one advantage of the Internet is the ease with which both damning and inspirational material can be found. Just the other day, I was looking at my LinkedIn feed (we’re on LinkedIn, too!), and I came across this quote from fellow Dallasite Mark Cuban: “Work like there is someone working 24 hours a day to take it all away from you.”

Cuban is right: Every day, no matter what we do or where we work, there is someone probably a lot of someones — who see our life and/or job as better than theirs and wouldn’t mind sliding into our shoes.

It’s a slippery time to be alive, because the plethora of information and opinion make it difficult to simply be happy; constantly looking behind us worrying about someone catching up isn’t exactly restful.

Self-styled entrepreneur Peter Voogd seems to see things the same way: “These days, the only security you have is the confidence in yourself and your ability to make things happen.”

He’s right, isn’t he? If we can’t be happy with ourselves, we’re probably not looking at a fun life.

And then there’s this bit of wisdom from Yogi Bhajan, credited with introducing a certain type of yoga to the U.S.: “If you are willing to look at another person’s behavior toward you as a reflection of the state of their relationship with themselves rather than a statement about your value as a person, then you will, over a period of time, cease to react at all.”

I know a lot of people who are easily cowed into feeling badly about themselves simply because someone else acts negatively toward them. A lot of what happens to us in life doesn’t have anything to do with us; we just happen to be in a spot where someone else’s life is unfolding in a good or bad way.

Young or old, we can’t lose sight of our own path because of it.

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