So now that I have you convinced that I have finally took my leave of the same zip code that everyone else has and have taken up residency on another planet I can get to the point of the post today and no one will know if they can take me seriously or not. So let's get to it shall we?
With business around here being at a virtual crawl, I have had the opportunity to visit a few "things" from my "it never happened" past. I have had more than a few questions posed to me and many of them have been some humdingers. Many of those questions I have rolling around in my head even now and expect them to be around for a while longer. "Come on over and lets get together and have some laughs!" Never respond to an invitation like that. You wind up playing the "Do you remember when?" game and more often they're things you would rather not remember or at least not talk about because they tend to reopen some pretty deep wounds that you think had long since healed. They all mean well and maybe it does have some benefits but I'm not sure. All I know is that I have found myself doin' alota thinkin'. I have gotten a lot of exercise out of it all and my driving skills polished.
Don't get me wrong, I have made a few decisions. I'm going to be getting a new phone in a day or two. It's one of the 3G iphones and yes I will let the graphics guy now when I get it switched over. I have also decided to get a new piece of equipment within the next week or two for calibrating our monitors (I'll only let you imagine way). I had my brakes checked and to my surprise they were still ok. So things haven't been all ugly. But still those questions keep rolling around in my head like an old obnoxious blast from the past song (you pick it cause I don't want that added to the mix in my head).
The only thing that I have found some comfort in is that over the past few months and even years for some of us this has been happening to virtually all of us. We have all look to the past trying to get guidance for the future. For some that guidance has been to return to the things of the past. I know that as a Christian I have heard many of my fellow Christians having to go back to events or choices of the past and set the record right in order to get back on the path that God intended for them to be on in the first place. I myself have had to do this on more than one occasion. For others it has been "carpe diem" or "seize the day" while others my also use to mean "seize the moment". For still others (and I have from time to time found myself in this group as well) they take solitude in the phrase "Quando Omni Flunkis Moritati" which is my personal favorite Latin phrase meaning (and yes I am serious) "when all else fails, play dead". This is a phrase that is recognized by probably thousands of members of "Possum Lodge" of Red Green fame. You get it right, Possum Lodge and play dead, get it!?
Well anyway, back to the post at hand. One of the questions kind of deals with one of the many stories or parables I heard while learnin' stuff years ago. It goes like this; when you come to a fork in the road, how many choices do you have? No, I'm not going to share the answer with you. Just THINK about it for awhile. It just seems that blast from the past are crawling out of the wood work.
There are other things that seem to be dug up from the past other than questions and parables. Songs, parties, games and even movies get salvaged from the depths of the memory ocean. One such movie was brought to my attention and unlike many other things that the helpful Santa Elves have drug up, this one kind of hit really close to home. What's the movie you ask? Well surprisingly it's not "The Jerk" but it does star the same guy. Steve Martin plays the part of a fire chief in a small community in a movie named "Roxanne". Some times you can find comfort and strength from the strangest places.
So what's my point? We all hurt and have our challenges. Turning to others is almost always a good thing to do. Trying to find answers to questions in our lives can be as difficult and milking a porcupine (hope that passes the PC test). But don't overlook searching for those answers in one of the least obvious places, in yourself and your past. We all have to move on to the future but for many the strength and courage to do that has to come from things that have molded your life to this point. If they're good things, build on them. If they're bad things, blow them up and start with a clean slate. More often than not the fuel we need to lift us out of the muck and mire of the present to help us build a better tomorrow is the BS and treasure we've accumulated in our past.
Let me share a final little story/parable with you to put an ! on this point. I'm told that one of NASA's more difficult problems to overcome in working in the weightlessness of space was how to get their ink pens to work. Since ink needs gravity to make the ink work in the pen, NASA had to spend millions of dollars to develop a ink pen that could work in a no-gravity condition. At the end of the cold war with Russia, NASA was able to interact with the scientist of the Soviet Union where they found that there scientist were able to fix the problem for only 17 cents. How? They went down and bought a pencil. Moral of the story, some solutions are so illusive because there standing right in plain view. It's not that we're stupid or blind, just selective vision!
Well, Spot needs out to conduct some business and I have another letter to write for someone else before I can set on the roof and watch the comet fly by. Have a great day everyone!
Richard
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