In high school Cliff’s or Monarch Notes were a short cut when you had not done the eyeball scan.

Read cover to cover Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, other great literary works your Maine high school teachers or college professors put on the assignment sheet of must reads. There will be a test. The cheat sheet short cuts are actually written by teachers, professors as an overview guide.

And as belt and suspenders even if you had done the read read read like the wheels on the bus go round and round.

These resources helped fill in the fuzzy nooks and crannies. A deer jacking bright spotlight splashed into shadowy knowledge cracks. For the highlights, to sharpen the recall. Save time. To earn a better grade higher up in the beginning of the alphabet.

Out in life though, do you do your own thinking or are so overbooked you pretty much go along with the flow of purchased, spun opinion?

Your thinking decision making best options gleaned from others can make you more of a passenger than a driver of your life experiences. Some blame our approach to the educational system process in our country. Losing the creative thinking skills in the bubble. For more uniform gaming the system that is mismatched for outside survival in the real world. To keep the planet spinning.

Like a musician that always does just cover songs. Very well, but just a copy. Not from deep down inside their own soul. Lacking the creative spirit or hand crafted passion. With fire in their belly created uniqueness to shine brightly on its own. To add new and fresh not recycled old.

Iggy Pop, The Passenger Music Video

Today it is big business to be an information gatekeeper.

To round up public information, let folks join for a fee and give back as gospel what you need to do when looking for a product or service. In small Maine towns, that money would be wasted because the natives talk. Share, care, are connected. Over the grape vine, by water coolers, at the barbers or hardware store. Sitting on diner counter stools. Uncomfortable bleachers in small gyms or chilly ice arenas or playing fields at a sporting event.

And online you pick up what you need to know. Form a clear impression of how the local turf moves and grooves. When all that information is put in your pipe and smoked. Chewed on. Who is doing a good job, who is pulling up the rear. And all the in between and why. We use our open porch swings in Maine. Unfold a chair around the lake camp fire for our free therapy with family and friends too. Not relying on paid sessions with a stranger for the 55 minute weekly intervals stuck inside four walls with soundproofing. White noise in the background to assure privacy from eavesdroppers.

But it is not a case of good or bad. More what works best for you.

Tailor made for what you feel is the most comfortable. In the what do you think? Like the relationship, connection you have with your doctor, lawyer, real estate broker, funeral director, pastor, boss and on and on down the pike. Where you shop and why. Because you make the top ten list of what you are after, not someone else if you think for yourself. Are not a passenger bumbling along down the twists and turns in the short highway of life here on Earth.

I understand marketing today. How herds of large groups of the fragmented audience segments are important. Critical to get your message out in front of to connect with, get their attention. To gain their interest, build desire, to engage to get action, results. But still I worry about independent thinking. Dependency on others to spoon feed in the decision making.

Like a Presidential debate, I listened to the entire presentation. Don’t need a talking head media head to tell me what I just sat through, heard with my own two ears.

I can see his or her role in the next day’s newspaper or newscast to hit the high points purpose. In reporting what might have been missed because it was bowling night down at the club. Or was over at the church or grange because setting up for this weekend’s fund raiser community supper. Or away at a kid’s concert, game.

Christian Mingle’s claim to “find God’s match for you” which is a real stretch. Like having a wire tap, being able to eavesdrop into the red phone parked on the corner of the Oval Office desk stuff.

Connecting the super powers of the blue and green marble for the real skinny. The low down on the behind the scenes, the court and spark. But knowing like the Angie’s Lists, Better Business Bureau that all want you have a membership. To play the information marketing game. Swim in the fishbowl. There is an agenda. A platform built to make money. Or it won’t survive in society if not monetized.

What if we all had no disposal folding currency, plastic with the magnetize strip and how we “bought” goods or services were with barter of skills only.

Or delivery of firewood, something to eat, a farm animal to trade even Stephen. The throw money at the monthly services would dry up, disappear. And more self reliance, better impulse control to ask around, do your home work would come back into vogue. Keeping it real, honest, down to Earth common sense. The way we operate in Maine which is a sparsely populated, well spaced collection of the neatest 108 small towns, only a handful of cities.

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573
info@mooersrealty.com