Thursday, October 21, 2010

A Charge to Keep

If you were to check my wallet, you'd find the typical fare.  Some wrinkled ones, a crisp twenty, a guitar pick, some change, various plastic cards, and identification.  You will also find a picture and a small slip of paper.  The picture is not tonight's topic, but rather that rather plain piece of paper.  This is one of the heaviest things I carry. It reminds me of days unlived and in some ways sums up a great mystery of life.  For all the importance I assign to it, it is fairly innocuous.  It is approximately five and a half centimeters wide, by a centimeter and a half tall, with a thickness of approximately .01 centimeters (according to google).  Have you guess where I obtained this slip of paper?  If not, let me provide you with more information.  On the back there are three lines, the bottom line supposedly lists my "Lucky Numbers".  Did that tip you off?  How about the first line that reads: "Learn Chinese - Strawberry" with the appropriate characters under it.  This slip of paper came from a fortune cookie.
It is very heavy.

Sometimes we as people become so involved in the world, we forget who we are; how we came to be; why we are.  This small paper serves as a reminder to what I could be, and is a constant reminder to strive for what I may become.  The text on the front isn't particularly poetic, I could for instance imagine it in the form of a haiku, or a poem, but I feel it none the less as a brand across my spirit.  It has become the fuel for my inner fire, burning with the intensity that lit up Nero's face as played his fiddle among his burning kingdom.  It has become the wind that fills my sails, taking me to exotic locales.  It has become the waves that crash upon the shores of my mind, both calming and frightening.

Hard work without talent is a shame, but talent without hard work is a tragedy.

Can you sum up a person in fourteen words?  No.  Can you capture in essence of their being in as many words? I doubt it.  Can you find a phrase that reveals so much with so little?  I believe so, or at least find a way to develop a greater understanding of that individual; and those words cut to the core of my being.  I admit that things come to easy to me, I usually laugh and make a joke of it, but this undermines the importance of my thought.  I was probably the guy in high school that you cheated off of, but I didn't care, because I wasn't having a hard time, and as long as you didn't drag me into it, I was perfectly fine with it.  Or maybe I was the one that you slipped a few dollars to, and in return I'd let you look at my math project so you could see all the shortcuts in the assignment.  Or maybe you borrowed my notes, copied them and realized that you could skip class and keep asking for my notes.  Before you think anything else, know that I am sorry for what I allowed to happen.  Maybe you squeezed out an "A" on that English exam, maybe you saved a few hours calculating the volume of various shapes, maybe you could sleep in because you didn't have to go to your 9 AM; but at what price?  I cheated you out of the chance to find your potential as much as I haven't explored mine.  I've had very few people call me out on this, but I thank you for when you do.  You remind me to take up the challenges, and view them not as something to merely pull myself over, but to bound over, seeing how far my legs will take me.  Living to my potential instead of potentially living.  Remember that there are no short cuts in life, and the miracle medicine is most likely snake oil.

Why do we fear challenges?  Perhaps it's the effort involved, maybe we're content to hide under the covers when the opportunity for greatness presents itself.  Or maybe it's something deeper.  It may be easy to live within our limits, staying away from the edges, lest we find out the size of the box within which we live.  The fear of failure.  Reaching a boundary that represents the edge of our potential is terrifying.  This confrontation serves to mark off who we are and our dreams, from what we desire and who we can be.  But even these limitations are really just travesties, marking off boundaries in our spirit.  If we took the effort to reach these walls, we'd find we have the strength to scale them.  Where would be if no intrepid individual decided to see what he was truly capable of?  I shudder to imagine the scene.

What is true greatness?  The strength to scale the wall? No, the fortitude to try and find that wall.  We may recall the epics, myths, tall-tales, urban legends, plays, songs, and stories of greatness.  We come to believe that it's a quality possesed by the few.  Heroes that shaped the modern age through their efforts.  Whether leading an ragtag army against inconceivable odds, discovering some scientific principal, or crafting a beautiful work of art, we see these people as fundamentally different from us.  Perhaps they were to some degree lucky, or were shining paradigms of humanity that we could all emulate, but the fact remains that they had to take the first step towards their walls to test their ability to climb, run, and light the torch of human achievement.  We shouldn't be intimidated by their achievements, but rather inspired.  Rather than remain safe in the comfort of obscurity, we should find solace in the fact that their achievements can be replicated.

We all have our limitations, but the worse kind are artificially imposed.  True greatness is the wholeness of being we can experience if we find our true limits and expand our spirit to fill every niche.  If we learn to bridge ourselves, than we can learn to cross the supposed divide that exists between individual people.  I won't pretend that this will be easy, but that's what's exciting about it.  We can construct a future for ourselves that we can be proud of, not because it's perfect, but because we had the strength to take part in it.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Of Stones and Ponds

This begins the first post of my new discourse with you, reader, whomever you happen to be.  I have been an on and off blogger/journalist since 2004, and I intend to see how this work shall compare to my earlier material.  The major impetus for this renewal came less than a week ago, while sitting in the woods by myself communing with nature.  I would hesitate to liken myself to Thoreau, waxing eloquently about the importance and majesty of nature while sipping tea beside a lake in Massachusets, but that seems to be the partial inspiration. Another impetus is the cathartic nature of writing itself, coupled with the fact that at some point down the road, I use these memoirs as a touchstone to reorient myself to specific points in my life.  Which brings me to the topic of this post's ramblings:

One's past.

I find I frequently return to this topic in many of my musings and ramblings, perhaps obsessively, but for this reintroduction it shall provide a fair topic.  As beings infused with the ability to sense the three physical dimensions, the fourth dimension, or time, merely appears to pass before our consciousness (perhaps my next topic).  However, at any given state in your life, you are the product of the past.  Consider, without evaluating or judging, the choices you have made in your life.  These choices influenced the past for you in a certain way that brought about the person you are today.  As a result of this change our interaction with the world changed in some degree or another, and in some way we have interacted with our universe. Approximately five years ago I attended a concert less than miles from where I currently sit.  It took about an hour and a half to get to that concert.  Had you told me then that I'd be sitting at a desk reflecting upon that moment five years later, I'm not sure what I would think.  Additionally had you told me that information, the world we currently live in would be quite different.  Any number of factors responsible for bringing about the current state of the world would have been altered, and in some perceptible way things would most likely be different.  If you don't know what I mean, go watch Back to the Future, it's alright, I'll wait.
 . . . . .
You back?  Okay.  Where were we?  Oh yes, time.  The thing about time is the amazing things that can happen in such a short amount of it.  Consider a typical Sunday afternoon during fall.  Somewhere in the country is probably a football game, and occasionally the result of a game will come down to the leg of one man.  This man will be attempting to kick a ball perhaps 40 yards or so, in an effort to win the game for his team.  Maybe you have his number and decide to call him shortly before the game.  Perhaps you got in an argument.  Maybe that argument has him rattled.  Perhaps his nerves cause him to lose his concentration, and he ends up missing the posts, and his team suffers a defeat by the narrowest of victories.  As a result, bets placed on the game go one way or the other, and the world is impacted.  Now, not every choice or action we take can be isolated in such a way, or indeed viewed in such a direct light.  For instance, maybe the kicker had indigestion because he had a meal that was improperly prepared.  But none the less, it doesn't make them any less important.

Much like a stone tossed into a pond creates ripples that spread across the surface of the water our actions spread out across the world and change the face of the future.  To that end, we are reinforced by our past and continually reinventing the future in every moment.  Right down to the smallest division of time, if such division is in fact possible.  With so many stones being cast into the water, the placid surface of that pond is a constantly changing tumultuous pattern of interfering waves and roils.  To that end, everything appears chaotic, and one loses the trees because of the advancing forest.  Remember though that the trees do exist, and every moment a new one takes root in the soil.

I had hoped to keep this brief and concise and hopefully on point, but for the time being, I see this as an acceptable reintroduction.  Here's to the planting another another tree, the cast of a pebble into a pond, or the conscious choice to take one path as opposed to another.
Placeholder
-
May be used to archive older text