AND NOW LETS US CONSIDER THE PERFECT BANANA

It is estimated the average child laughs about 400 times a day. The average adult only 15. What happened to the other 385 laughs...?

This is serious. If becoming an adult requires us to frown more than laugh, where's the promised advantage? For instance, right now I'm frowning at more bad news. Some growers in South America believe the banana that we know today will be extinct in another generation. For me, that's a frowning piece of news!

But while we can, let us thoughtfully consider the magnificent banana. One of those fruits for which ripening is an art. A little too green or a little too black, and you don't have a banana; you have a bust. You see, the ripening process is a matter of exquisitely delicate timing.

And so it is with people and programs. Too little or too much of a good thing can quickly become a bad thing.

Children are emphatically this way. As goo-ing infants and charming youngsters, a delight. As they become adolescents, delight can become disaster. Parents find themselves wondering who snatched their bodies. However, parents too can be guilty of over-ripening. Notice how happy indulgence is the rule with young parents; suffocating over-sight often takes over later on. Big-name athletes are no less guilty. As rookies they play their hearts out. Once they've achieved star status, they play their contracts out.

This too-green-or-too-black phenomenon flairs elsewhere. Take your average Hollywood celebrity. At the start, they can't get enough of the fans and the paparazzi. This is their food, their fuel, their raison d'etre. But wait awhile. If their star continues to ascend, fans and photographers shortly become the enemy. The G-men are no less susceptible to over-ripening. Young FBI and CIA operatives leap from the starting gate with national pride in their eyes. In time, it has become clear the stars often turn into swagger as many become drunk with their unpoliced power.

And so it goes. Liberating armies turned occupiers, and occupiers turned indiscriminate killers. Visionary presidents turned bitter when they feel they are not fully appreciated. Popes and Dali Lamas whose power at the pinnacle deafens them to the people on the slopes below.

If we can't always achieve the perfect banana for breakfast...how can we ever hope to achieve the perfect anything for life? Apparently the answer is what I do every morning. Pick the banana that seems the best from the outside, then take my chances as to what I will find on the inside.