Over time, I have noticed that the most popular post I have on my blog site is my Home page “Who is Dr. John Persico Jr.?” I realize that most readers want to know my credentials to see if anything I am going to say has any credibility. Am I someone you can trust? Can you depend upon my words or my facts? Am I just another wannabe Guru so full of my own opinions that I have no room for other points of view?
Upon re-thinking my Home page, I realized that it really does not do justice to describe who I am. It does not answer the questions that I raised above. In fact, if you take it at face value, it could be very dangerous for you. It could lead you to paradoxes and quandaries which are unsettling. It might lead you “circulus in probando” down a path that flows around until it comes right back to where it started.
A discussion with a friend the other day led me to realize that I am a very inconsistent man. Sometimes I say one thing, but then I change my mind. I am a very erratic person. Sometimes, I am very logical and at other times I am very illogical. Many of the ideas competing in my mind are incompatible. In fact, not only are they incompatible, but they are genuinely irreconcilable. This creates an uncertain and unpredictable me. If you are looking for consistency, if you want certainty in an uncertain world, I do not have much of it to give to you. I am capricious and arbitrary.
I am changeable and often at odds with my own beliefs. My life is discordant. Many of my friends would say discrepant. I subscribe to the motto that, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” I prefer the incongruous and incoherent. The fickle and dissonant are the music of my life. Boring is living with certainty and sameness. God, please surround me with temperamental unstable mercurial and out of step people. James Bond said that “Boredom” is the worst curse of all. What could be more boring than a life whose patterns show no variability? Only sameness. All White motifs. No mosaics struggling with each other for our attention.
I have a friend who wants to be called at definite hours and with a pattern of hours that are predictable. “Let’s set a time to talk each day.” “No, No, I am a serendipitous caller. Let fortuosity guide our conversations.” The unforeseen and the unpredictable make life more interesting. Do we want to be rats on a treadmill? Sometimes, I walk by a health club and ten people are all sitting on exercycles facing the window and pedaling furiously to go nowhere. In my mind, I make faces at them and tell them, “Get a real bike and go ride in the traffic.”
It is these same people who say “I don’t like fish. They taste too fishy.” I try not to reply “Do you also dislike mollusks, cephalopods and crustaceans or is it just members of the Gadidae family that you don’t like?”
Those who march to the proverbial beat of a different drummer live with risk, but they also are not bored. We only experience life when we are open to the unknown and the unpredictable. Walk through a cemetery at midnight. Take a train or bus to someplace you have never been before. Read a book in a new genre. Watch a movie that is offbeat. Try some foods that you think you might not like. Meet some new people. Embrace the strange and esoteric. Life is not a cherry; it is a seething caldron of uncertainty and innumerable possibilities. You will never truly live if you simply stand at the edge of the caldron and wait for it to stop bubbling.
God save me from consistency, constancy, periodicity, routine, steadiness, regularity, and invariability. Give me a life with syncopation.
Aging Capriciously 
Apr 10, 2024 @ 05:10:15
I enjoy reading your posts because it’s casual yet warm, easy yet to the point and in my opinion genuine writing. Keep on writing! Inconsistent or not, you have readers 🙂
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Apr 10, 2024 @ 13:20:48
Thanks so much Lin. I always appreciate your comments. I think the “Golden Mean” probably has a continuum for consistent and inconsistent. How to find the gold is always the “Search.” John
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Apr 10, 2024 @ 07:20:57
I am all for syncopation.
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Apr 10, 2024 @ 13:18:44
Thanks Gretchen. How are things up in your neighborhood? Snow gone by now?
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Apr 10, 2024 @ 13:24:43
Almost gone. The storm last week knocked out electricity for the whole Island and it took a few days to fix. The Red Cross came up with cots and supplies.
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Apr 10, 2024 @ 14:21:58
Sounds like quite an adventure. Hope you guys are ok and no damage to your house. Say hi to Robert for us.
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Apr 10, 2024 @ 08:36:05
I’ve always thought of you as consistent, Dr. J. But then you write this, and now I don’t know. Maybe “inconsistently consistent?” Or “consistently inconsistent?” Hell, I don’t know.
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Apr 10, 2024 @ 13:18:15
I try to be consistently inconsistent Malik or maybe the other way around. I am not sure. 🙂
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Apr 10, 2024 @ 11:02:59
LOL. I might suggestion that syncopation has its own form of regularity; it just “likes” to add a bit of surprise or forward movement to the music. Keep on enjoying life the way it works for you, John, but don’t forget to respect everyone else’s right to enjoy life the way it works for them! 😊
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Apr 10, 2024 @ 13:17:37
No Problem Jane. As Sly and the Family Stone sang “Different strokes for different folks.” Although I do not think it was a syncopated rhythm. 🙂 John
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Apr 10, 2024 @ 13:19:18
LOL. I think you’re right, John!
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Apr 10, 2024 @ 17:35:05
I asked My Grandfather: (Background talk about meeting people), What kind of person should I get to know first? As you know. The answer ******** YOU **********. Thank you for reminding that. It took a few years but now I understand what he meant.
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Apr 11, 2024 @ 16:01:58
Hi, Thanks for the reply. Did you asterisk it out or was that WP that did that? Your Grandfather sounds like someone I wish I had met. Is he still alive? John
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Apr 12, 2024 @ 16:27:25
I like to play around with the asterisk stuff.
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Apr 12, 2024 @ 16:32:47
He turned 84, a long time ago. Came to Christmas dinner and he announced he would die in January, which he did. I guess he was a man that took control of his life and death. He always took time for anyone in the family or his friends.
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Apr 12, 2024 @ 23:39:49
Interesting that he could know when. It seems like many people have a sense of when they are going to die. Karen’s father was in the hospital for a stomach infection. The morning after he was entered he said that he was going to die. The doctors told us he was just being somewhat of a hypochondriac. We went home assured that he would be okay. He died before we could get back early in the afternoon. Karen regrets to this day ignoring his claim and not being at his bedside when he passed. John
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May 01, 2024 @ 14:34:57
Shared your “News” on my facebook page under the title. I vote for this man to get the Noble Prize for Literature.
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May 01, 2024 @ 15:14:55
Thanks EChumly, I will split the prize with you if I win. John
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Apr 10, 2024 @ 20:16:36
I have always believed in the saying– the only constant in life is change. Thus I welcome change and think only those afraid of the future would think change is a bad thing.
But inconsistency can be an entirely different matter and not always welcome, especially if there appears to be no reason for the inconsistency. If one’s behaviour is inconsistent with espoused values that certainly presents a problem for me! For example, I despise someone spouting off about their “Christianity” and then telling lies, cheating, hating and not loving or even liking people because they are different.
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Apr 11, 2024 @ 15:59:25
Good Points Wayne. I think of that behavior as hypocrisy which seems more abhorrent than ” A Foolish inconsistency.” What was it that Kermit the Frog said “It’s not easy being consistent.?” Or was it something else? “:)
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Apr 11, 2024 @ 04:22:34
I agree with Jane. There are people who thrive on novelty and take risks. You are certainly one of them. Me too.
Other people do not dare get out of their comfort zone, and prefere familliar and consistent. However there is no right or wrong way to live.
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Apr 11, 2024 @ 23:47:43
Thanks Miriam, I try to encourage my friends to push back against the inevitable closing of life around us as we age. I think you have to give up some things but sometimes it pays to “Rage” against the dying of the light
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas
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