Life Is Funny, and We're All Funny Different.
- Richard {Reggie} Smith
- Jul 11
- 4 min read
By Richard "Reggie" Smith Research /Editor, The Cheshire Ct Phoenix News
I have a confession to make.
I like artificial intelligence.
That's not a particularly popular thing to say these days. Depending on who you ask, AI is either the greatest invention since the internet or the beginning of the end of civilization. Most new technologies seem to go through that cycle. At first, they're feared. Then they're criticized. Eventually, they become so woven into everyday life that we wonder how we ever lived without them.
History has a funny way of humbling us.
Every generation believes it has the answers. We try to shape society according to our own values. We pass laws. We march in protest. We argue over politics. We separate ourselves into camps, convinced that our side sees the world more clearly than the other.
Then time passes.
The next generation looks back and wonders what we were thinking.
Someday, people may study the headlines of 2026 and see a country wrestling with immigration, struggling over questions of equality and civil rights, experiencing sharp political divisions, navigating international conflicts and diplomatic disputes, facing rising healthcare costs, economic uncertainty, and growing concerns about the environment.
They will almost certainly ask questions that we cannot yet imagine.
That's the privilege of hindsight.
What strikes me isn't that people disagree. Healthy debate has always been part of democracy. What concerns me is how quickly disagreement can become dehumanization. We sometimes forget that behind every opinion is another human being with experiences we may never fully understand.
As for AI, it has done something unexpected for me.
I've never considered myself a gifted artist. Stick figures were about the extent of my artistic ability. Yet today I can describe an image from my imagination and watch it come to life. It hasn't replaced my creativity—it has unlocked it.
For someone like me, that's liberating.
Technology should always be used thoughtfully and responsibly. It raises important questions about authorship, employment, privacy, and ethics. Those conversations matter. But we shouldn't dismiss the genuine opportunities it creates for learning, creativity, and expression simply because it is new.
Recently I found myself standing along a shoreline, looking out across the water. The waves kept rolling in just as they have for thousands of years. It made me think about how incredibly small we are in the grand scheme of things.
We're tiny.
Smaller than we care to admit.
In many ways, each of us is like a single oxygen molecule—nearly invisible on our own, yet essential to the larger world around us. Alone we seem insignificant. Together we make life possible.
My friend Bill, a true cancer warrior, has a saying that has stayed with me.
"Life is one big joke," he says. "We live, we laugh, we cry, we win, we lose, and eventually a new generation rises from the ashes."
There is wisdom in that.
The older I get, the less certain I become about having all the answers. Maybe that's not a weakness. Maybe it's the beginning of wisdom.
I think of my Great Aunt Agnes, who never claimed to be a philosopher but somehow managed to sound like one.
Whenever life became too serious, she'd smile and simply say:
"Life is funny, and we're all funny different."
After all these years, I still think she was right.
Here is my original. Which do you prefer?
Today everyone hates AI.
Tomorrow we will wonder how we ever lived without it. Why are we always trying to conform people into thinking the way we want them to act or think. We pass laws, socially protest against people with different thoughts and ways and even shun people who are different than us.
Some people might say, if you don't have a talent for writing or art, you should develop them before sharing your thoughts and idea's. I do not believe you can learn a talent. I believe you are born with it and then strive to perfect it. Thoughts and idea's on the other hand are like anal orifices, everyone has them.
In the future, people will look back at us and judge us as we judged our ancestors.
Look at 2026, they were prosecuting immigrants, minorities were harassed by right-wing extremist group and the United States was at war with everyone and even threatening Greenland. The economy was in a shambles, health care un affordable and they were destroying our environment. Ai allows as un talent dopes like me to express myself visually and I find great freedom in that.
My friend Bill, a cancer warrior, says life is all a big joke. We live, we laugh, we cry, we lose and from the ashes of our lives a new generation is born.
Looking out over a beautiful scene at the shore line I could not happen to think. All this beauty and yet in the scheme of things we are more infinitesimal then that molecule of oxygen floating in the air before me.
Completely unseen and yet so necessary to being.
I guess in the end there is no better why to put it than the Great Aunt Agnes. " Life is funny and we are all funny different."
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