RunHard GetPaid...NOT ANYMORE!!!

I don't understand why a person would get into this career with all the sacrifices that it entails to be lazy about it. If I'm away from my friends and family I want to make it pay. And to do that I will bust my azz, otherwise what's the point? There are plenty of jobs you can get with very little skill , be as lazy as you want and be home all the time.

ife is not a 4 course meal where you can sit there and someone serve it all to you. Life is a buffet!. You have to get off your butt, get up there and shove the fat guy out of the way to get your fair share of the mashed potatoes and fried chicken!

If I'm away from my friends and family I want to make it pay

That's exactly how I always felt about it. If you're gonna be out there on the road, most of the time there isn't much of an option. You're either driving or you're sitting around somewhere killing time. Laying around doing nothing is only really fun when you've earned it and you really need it. Nothing feels better than to let your head crash to the pillow after an exhausting but productive day.

Life is a buffet!. You have to get off your butt, get up there and shove the fat guy out of the way to get your fair share of the mashed potatoes and fried chicken!

That's funny! But it's also true. Trucking is actually really competitive. Most people have never had jobs where they're actually competing with their co-workers, but trucking is one of em. A company has all the miles available you'd ever dream of turning if you're one of their top-tier drivers. It's the guys and gals on the bottom that get the leftovers, if there are any. So you either go out there and prove you're one of the top-tier drivers and earn your fair share or you sit around at truck stops watching John Wayne re-runs in the TV room and listen to people complain all day. Seems like an easy choice to me!

I see what you're saying. But I don't believe I have the right to expect people to live up to my standards unless I'm paying them or I'm allowing them to play an intricate role in the outcome of my life. I set my standards high for myself and I expect to live up to them. But just as I wouldn't want to be forced to live at a lower standard, I wouldn't try to force others to live to my standards.

Diversity is a good thing. Individualism can be healthy. Different ways of doing things brings spice to life. People can have different standards for themselves. Yes, we each have the freedom to choose how we want to live - we each have the ability to choose, not saying that we SHOULD make certain choices, mind you.

Let's talk about making serious and meaningful moral and aesthetic judgments or choices. Let's just keep it to moral judgments for now. And we don't even need to bring God into the discussion to make this work, although ultimately that is where this leads.

"Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you." The golden rule. So what happens when your idea of doing good doesn't match up with somebody else's? You've infringed on their freedom, perhaps put them in harm's way, this could have disastrous and serious consequences. The golden rule would not work for a masochist, unless they were in a community of masochists. Nevertheless, we all have a 'working' knowledge of the golden rule, and know when we're following it or not. The golden rule is based on absolutes - thrives on absolutes - it's also a rule that assumes you CAN and SHOULD expect somebody else to follow or adhere to your values and judgments.

When it comes to serious or meaningful moral judgments and convictions, they simply aren't worth having if they don't apply to everybody else. Dare I even say they are wrong? Living a life without moral absolutes is not practical, it's not good. Moral absolutes don't shy away from saying, "this is wrong, and you are wrong for thinking or doing this."

Back to a more 'trivial' example. If you know that you wouldn't and shouldn't sit on the couch eating chips and watching the boob tube all day, every day, then by all means don't stop short and say, "but that's OK if you do that, just as long as it doesn't affect me." You can't force somebody to be healthy, to live a meaningful life, to do the right thing. But being that there are such ideas, values, judgments and morals that ARE good and bad, right and wrong, higher and lower, fair and unjust, you can bet that you have every right to hold somebody else to those same ideas, values, judgments, and morals. Given a sound mind, all of us would agree that to live one's life on the couch eating chips and watching TV is no life worth having. Would that affect me, if somebody else chose to do that? Not really. But that doesn't mean that I won't call a spade a spade, and then expect that individual to get a life - literally. It might not be politically correct or fashionable, but all of us have a conscience, and all of us have the ability to taint and corrupt that conscience. We want to be moral and aesthetic absolutists, it's just not fashionable to admit it.

I say all this because you are a man of conviction, and I have respect for you. I have respect for anybody that shows conviction. You don't have to agree with me, but you should. Take it as an encouragement. Nothing wrong with have a moral and aesthetic backbone, even if it's not popular. Forget the wimpy, politically correct, relativistic, people pleasers. Those that say "it's all just opinion." Yes, some things are just opinion. But the things that matter, the true things in life, those things that are worth living for, what we base our lives on and how we treat others - those are the standards we should not only hold for ourselves but demand that others hold for themselves. Being a man of conviction, you have to be a man of principle - there's no way around it. Nothing to apologize for.