My daughter called me from California to wish me a Happy Father’s Day. She began by asking me how my Father’s Day was going. That simple question unleashed a long diatribe regarding how my Father’s Day was.

My tirade began with unanswered medical questions. I have been dragging around due to an underactive thyroid. I knew that, but I couldn’t get a resolution to my problem with the medicine I was taking. My doctorate is unrelated to medicine. Nonetheless, it is a medical issue that isn’t life-threatening. If the prescription that I am taking isn’t working, there are two options: increase the dosage or change medications. I was getting nowhere.

Beyond being tired all the time, which is a personal problem, I have some issues. Trump and his MAGA minions are a national and international dilemma facing America. On the other hand, Trump has to deal with what he calls a witch-hunt. That witch-hunt is a multi-faceted witch-hunt. There are witch-hunts in cities, states, and nationally. Several of the witch-hunts at the city level have found him guilty. He has been indicted at the state and national level and/or awaiting to be indicted.

Another issue is rewriting history. The governors of Texas and Florida are rewriting history by deleting things like slavery or the insurrection. If they don’t delete the material, they alter it. The insurrection was merely a patriotic demonstration on 1/6.

My litany of issues continued as Michelle quietly listened to my rant. She is aware that I have an interesting idiosyncrasy. I utilize Rogerian psychotherapy. Essentially, I am the client and therapist at the same time. I listened to myself, and midway through my rant, I realized what formed my mindset about life.

There were two items. The first was moving from a nice middle-class community in Pennsauken, NJ, where I was an above-average student, to Mt. Lebanon, PA. My father was transferred to Pittsburgh. Since he couldn’t attend college due to WWII, he wanted his children to get an excellent education to prepare them for college. He asked a realtor which community had the best schools. The realtor said Mt. Lebanon.

Mt. Lebanon had the best schools in the Pittsburgh area. However, it was the 19th-best school system in the entire country and the wealthiest community in Western Pennsylvania. I learned two things while at Mt. Lebanon; I was dumb and poor.

The other issue that changed my Weltanschauung related to my two dances with death in 2008. I fell off a ladder and hit my head on a retaining wall. I nearly died from a subdural hematoma. That same year, I had prostate cancer, which metastasized outside my prostate.

The move to Mt. Lebanon and my dances with death taught me the meaning of the old adage, no pain, no gain. Both those items were Archimedes’ eureka moments for me.

Now, I get it.

Archimedes and Carl Rogers would have been proud of me. I realized that my mindset was based on pain. If you didn’t experience the pain of Mt. Lebanon or the pain of doing the dance with death, you can’t have the same mindset. A large part of my Weltanschauung is due to those transformative moments.

That doesn’t mean that the stupidity of Trump and his minions is correct. They are still saying stupid nonsense. What it means is that I can’t merely rant on and on about dumb mindsets. My efforts must be directed at education rather than merely dissing their absurdity.