What comes to mind when you hear the word “Cheers”. Likely,  you picture a bar, based on that great 80’s sit-com. The kind of place where everybody knows your name.  Movies tell us there are places like that where a man’s wife knows where to find him.  Ah yes, a bar that you can say is “my place”.  That's something I've never ever really had. A place that the Brits would call a "local", a community social center really.
I've never had or lived in a location with a neighborhood bar. It wasn't an experience that I got to have in the years that I would have most enjoyed it. The neighborhood bar, pub, tavern, whatever you want to call it,  was once a common cultural custom back  in a time when people lived, shopped, and entertained themselves in the neighborhood in which they lived.  Where you had Friends and according to many movie scenes, where  your wife knows where to find you. In these modern times, neighborhoods are accessed and traversed via car….. We’re all spread out in the suburbs.  Cars and bars, not a great combination for obvious reasons.
Just like watching cheers, you always kind of felt a tug for that neighborhood place where you had friends… and  you watched a game together and experienced life, usually the better parts of life, together. I think that's why that show, Cheers,  was such a great hit, because people either could relate emotionally to it because it was in their life or because that was the kind of experience we were looking for. But, this episode is not about cheers. It's just about that neighborhood bar, which is why the reference to that great TV sitcom cheers is so apropos.
You may not be a tavern visitor very often or at all. Your social home base could be a coffee shop AKA friends, another example of taking this concept and making a great TV series out of it. I believe that those two stories strongly support my assertion of our drive to be in a social group.   Drinking coffee or libations…. it doesn't really matter. The VFW hall, the Laundry Mat, a park……… somewhere outside of our own home… We need a place to make our social energy flow. 
And I have complained about this before, there just aren't too many places in our community that you can get that. People are living in vast suburban neighborhoods which are mostly homes and maybe a gas station or a quick trip and possibly a grocery store nearby, if you're lucky.  Our sprawling modern subdivisions do usually have a relatively nearby social center point….  Like a  tavern or a coffee house….. places where people will just naturally migrate to and form friendships and social bonds,
Food for thought, where is your social home base? Do you have one? Do you feel as I do that it's important to have that social home base? If you are thinking to yourself that the answer is  “my home”, the man cave or my outdoor living space, that’s great, but do you have people over?  Is it just you and a few close family members?  That might actually be the opposite of socialization that I’m arguing about.
So what are we waiting for, if you are missing this essential aspect of socialization in your life.  Or you want to improve in this area.  Then find THE place. Make those friends, build those social relationships.  And if you do, make sure you tell everyone there to listen to the old man's podcast.
On I remember when, there was a certain weekly magazine was a welcomed arrival at our home. That was the TV guide, our best read publication.
On Mindset for Happiness, work on your weakest links, and don't worry about your strongest.
Is Torture a viable tool for disciplining kids? I found an idiot who appeared to think so.


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