Entertainment and Sports

The Voice Inside My Head

As long as there's only one, it's mine, and its not telling me to do anything outrageous, I listen to the voice inside my head.

By Kevin Somers
Published April 30, 2008

As long as there's only one, it's mine, and its not telling me to do anything outrageous, I listen to the voice inside my head. I consider it thinking. If I'm going hard, it's concentrating. My mind is more active than my body, however, so I don't always act on the voice inside my head.

When the voice inside my heads says, "Go for a walk," or, "Workout," for example, I usually ignore it. However, I tend to comply with the voice inside my head when it says, "You're special and you deserve a break. Go to the fridge, then the couch for a few hours before bed."

I was reading the schedule of a Hillary Clinton aide, recently, and the voice inside my head reminded why I'll never be successful.

I like sleeping, eating, drinking, watching TV, watching movies, reading, writing, playing with my kids, listening to music, fiddling with plants, and dreaming of success too much to ever reach the top. The voice inside my head says it wouldn't be fun holding a ladder for someone else to climb, anyway.

You can't read a newspaper, magazine, or blog without seeing something about a global food shortage and skyrocketing prices. The voice inside my head wonders why everyone is so shocked. We let guys put subdivisions on perfect dirt in Winona and import fruit from South America, where it's sprayed with godknowswhat.

Anyone who can read numbers knows the price of gas keeps going up and it will never come down; not with a huge demand from the West, a surging demand from the Far and South East, and dwindling supplies in the Middle.

Whenever I hear money guys talk of pricing cycles in the oil industry, the voice inside my head says, "It's not a cycle. We're running out. A line going straight up isn't a cycle."

Then, the voice inside my head asks, "Aren't these dudes supposed to be experts? How come homeless hobos know more than they do?"

It only makes sense that Hamilton (and other communities) start reducing dependency on cars. However, a suburban councillor called a transit proposal for the creation of light rail or rapid buses through Hamilton, "Absolutely ridiculous."

The voice inside my head asks, "What's wrong with that guy?" Automobiles are all the rage on Ancaster's roads, but any clown can conclude catering to cars in the core has been catastrophic.

Population growth means more hungry mouths to feed, while crop failure and bio-fuels mean less supply. Much like oil, the pending food crisis is a perfect storm from Economics 101 (circa 1984): when a decreasing supply meets an increasing demand, prices go up.

That's not consequential if it's diamonds or ping-pong balls, but when the products are food and / or oil, the impact could be massive. Scarcity is coupled with anxiety and often followed by hostility.

The voice inside my head says, "Finish the bunker."

Even the rightest of right right-wing, born again, God and immigrant fearing, gun loving, environment hating, small c conservatives will concede that the war in Iraq was unnecessary and $old to Americans on bogus premises, yet George Bush and DICK Cheney still strut around unscathed.

When I think about it, the voice inside my head says, "That's Kim Possible. They must be amongst the greatest murders in history, by now."

Then the voice inside my head asks, ""Why were they impeaching Clinton, again?"

Sometimes, the voice inside my heads sounds like Stewy Griffin and asks, "What the hell, man?"

The voice inside my heads makes me laugh out loud, sometimes. Laugh out loud has been abbreviated to lol by hipsters and Internet users. The voice inside my head says, "Everyone knows that, old man."

The voice inside my heads is apt to say, "Look at that," if there's something interesting afoot. Knowing that I'm squeamish, the voice inside my heads says, "Look away," if it promises to be grisly.

Malcolm Gladwell wrote an entire book about first impressions called Blink. I didn't read it, but after a few reviews, got the gist. The voice inside my heads says, "Good enough."

Essentially, the book argues, we make accurate decisions about people in the blink of an eye. Interestingly, the voice inside my heads sometimes says, "Run!"

The voice inside my heads asks, "Why and how?" when I see something done very well or poorly.

Whenever I end up in a mall, the voice in my says, "Look at all the people. These kids should be outside." All the malls host lingerie outlets now and they often have larger than life posters of scantily clad models posing provocatively in their windows. The voice inside my heads says, " Wow. Young ones shouldn't see that. Neither should you."

I have a short drive that can be very long if there is an accident or weather, so I listen to CHML every morning to get conditions on the commute and climate. Bob and Shiona are funny and positive, but the news is always bad.

Whenever I see a fellow commuter singing along to a song they obviously love, the voice inside my head says, "They're having more fun than you," and I get sad.

If I have two seconds of downtime, the voice inside my head says, "Read something. Anything." So, I was flipping through Oprah's magazine lately and read a beautiful story by the coach, C. Vivian Stringer, of the Rutgers University's Women's basketball; the team that Don Imus insulted so thoroughly.

She writes, in part, of her deceased husband, "He had amplified the quiet voice within me so that I could always hear my dreams."

As I read it, the voice inside my head said, "You poached her idea."

"Inadvertently," I protested out loud.

When I see a plant that looks dry, the voice inside my head says, "Water it." If a picture isn't straight, the voice inside my heads says, "Fix it." Sometimes, the voice inside my head says, "Help." The voice inside my head never stops. Inevitably, however, I have to, so I'll put this piece to rest.

"Finally," says the voice inside my head.

Kevin Somers is a Hamilton writer.

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