"now a days people really take kindness for weakness"
I have tried to write about this very thought on many occasions, and have not come close to expressing this thought this well. I have never claimed to be eloquent, nor succinct. This is a quote from an e-mail I received last night. This is from a friend that I respect and admire and I thank him for sharing.
I have felt this way for a long time now, "death of common courtesy," and people have been telling me for years that I have to stop being so nice, whatever that means, as if it were possible. I can only be who I am and will never stop, at least not before I stop breathing.
Thank you again for getting this far with me.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Déjà vu All Over Again
How is it that no matter what we do, or how hard we try to change things, we seem to always find ourselves back looking at the same situations, the same dilemmas? If the definition of insanity is repeating the same behavior over and over and expecting a different result than I am definitely completely nuts, thankfully I am confident that I am in no way alone. Then there is the old standby, “history is doomed to repeat itself.”
Not sure I got that last one right, but you get my point. I am a giant gerbil running on a wheel and I just don’t seem to have the sense to stop, or maybe the know how to jump off. To some extent or another we all are, and I take comfort in the fact that I am not alone, but at the same time would love to find a way get off the wheel even if just for a little while to see what it is like to not be running, to not keep seeing the same pieces of the wheel coming back again.
The other side of course is that there are things that I would have to change in the way I like at life, and at people, and choices I have made about who I am that I simply don’t want to change. Most notably, I believe that deep down all people are good, and that everyone deserves a chance. If I can help someone I am going to do so. When you take this approach you are going to be disappointed, you are going to be hurt, and you are going to have a whole bunch of people saying I told you so, or telling you that you were foolish to trust that person, to give them a chance, to reach out. So what.
This is something I am never going to stop. Seeing the few victories in this approach make it worth doing, and if it is true that I continue to “look the fool,” then so be it. I would rather look the fool and see someone achieve something that no one thought achievable, especially the person in question, than worry about appearances and let someone fail.
Thank you again for getting this far with me.
Not sure I got that last one right, but you get my point. I am a giant gerbil running on a wheel and I just don’t seem to have the sense to stop, or maybe the know how to jump off. To some extent or another we all are, and I take comfort in the fact that I am not alone, but at the same time would love to find a way get off the wheel even if just for a little while to see what it is like to not be running, to not keep seeing the same pieces of the wheel coming back again.
The other side of course is that there are things that I would have to change in the way I like at life, and at people, and choices I have made about who I am that I simply don’t want to change. Most notably, I believe that deep down all people are good, and that everyone deserves a chance. If I can help someone I am going to do so. When you take this approach you are going to be disappointed, you are going to be hurt, and you are going to have a whole bunch of people saying I told you so, or telling you that you were foolish to trust that person, to give them a chance, to reach out. So what.
This is something I am never going to stop. Seeing the few victories in this approach make it worth doing, and if it is true that I continue to “look the fool,” then so be it. I would rather look the fool and see someone achieve something that no one thought achievable, especially the person in question, than worry about appearances and let someone fail.
Thank you again for getting this far with me.
Friday, September 4, 2009
Rearview Mirror
How nice it is to be able to always be looking forward, always be anticipating the next great challenge, always be happy with where one is and where one is going.
How many of us actually get to do that? How many of us can't stop looking in the rearview mirror as we continue down our individual roads? It is a tough way to drive. I am not suggesting anyone ever try this in real life, but it would be awfully hard to drive down the road looking in the rearview mirror the whole time and actually get where we are going, or even get anywhere without causing a major wreck.
Ok, so I guess I just figured out why it is I am where I am on my particular journey, and not where I thought I would be. All I can do now is keep trying to spend more time looking out the windshield and less time in the rearview mirror.
Thank you again for getting this far with me.
How many of us actually get to do that? How many of us can't stop looking in the rearview mirror as we continue down our individual roads? It is a tough way to drive. I am not suggesting anyone ever try this in real life, but it would be awfully hard to drive down the road looking in the rearview mirror the whole time and actually get where we are going, or even get anywhere without causing a major wreck.
Ok, so I guess I just figured out why it is I am where I am on my particular journey, and not where I thought I would be. All I can do now is keep trying to spend more time looking out the windshield and less time in the rearview mirror.
Thank you again for getting this far with me.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Catching Up
A month has gone by since I have written a word, or at least since I have published a word, for the two of you that read this blog I am sorry it has been so long. This month has seemed much longer, both in missing the writing, craving it, and in where I have been and in the distance and time covered with two simple trips.
I will write shortly about pieces of those trips, thoughts and memories evoked, people and places visited. I will write shortly about other things as well, I hope.
Thank you for reading what came out in the first two months. I hope you will enjoy what comes next. We will all find out what that is as it happens.
Thank you -- once -- again for getting this far with me.
I will write shortly about pieces of those trips, thoughts and memories evoked, people and places visited. I will write shortly about other things as well, I hope.
Thank you for reading what came out in the first two months. I hope you will enjoy what comes next. We will all find out what that is as it happens.
Thank you -- once -- again for getting this far with me.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Runaway Train
Eight days later. Plan, hope, anticipate, and now it is eight days later. How does time pass so quickly sometimes and stand still others? How does life seem so wonderful, enjoyable, utterly relaxing some moments and so completely out of control others?
If I knew the answers to these questions, or any questions, I would not be in the state I am now. I expect too much. I deliver too little. I have spent myself life looking forward and backward all at the same time, and now twenty five years have passed in a blink.
The cycle is simple and yet amazing all at the same time. From the beginning of a new semester in school, to planning for a new season, to specific moments in a relationship, the cycle is always the same. Time slows almost to a stop, consumed by the excitement and anticipation of the promise contained within. Time is spent, effort put in, and then in a flash just as time almost stalls, the moment is here and gone and the emptiness of a pure vacuum is left.
Days have moved to weeks, weeks to months, and months to years without my noticing and the person I see in the mirror now is not me. The promise of a lifetime full of happiness, joy, meaning, success, however defined, has passed by.
I have always loved train. If a love for trains is genetic then I got mine from my mother. This train is moving way too fast now. Too fast to catch. Too fast to jump on board.
Thank you again for getting this far with me.
If I knew the answers to these questions, or any questions, I would not be in the state I am now. I expect too much. I deliver too little. I have spent myself life looking forward and backward all at the same time, and now twenty five years have passed in a blink.
The cycle is simple and yet amazing all at the same time. From the beginning of a new semester in school, to planning for a new season, to specific moments in a relationship, the cycle is always the same. Time slows almost to a stop, consumed by the excitement and anticipation of the promise contained within. Time is spent, effort put in, and then in a flash just as time almost stalls, the moment is here and gone and the emptiness of a pure vacuum is left.
Days have moved to weeks, weeks to months, and months to years without my noticing and the person I see in the mirror now is not me. The promise of a lifetime full of happiness, joy, meaning, success, however defined, has passed by.
I have always loved train. If a love for trains is genetic then I got mine from my mother. This train is moving way too fast now. Too fast to catch. Too fast to jump on board.
Thank you again for getting this far with me.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Our Little Girl Is All Grown Up
I was on the train, the “L,” sending text messages to update my progress towards our meeting point. The journey was a bit crazy, take the hotel shuttle to the “Yellow Line,” then the “Yellow Line” to the Howard stop, then change trains at Howard to the “Red Line” or the “Purple Line” depending on the time of day. Of course when I started out to do this the first night I do not know all of this and when I got to Howard I got off the train because it liked like the station in Evanston from what I remembered.
I started out excited to see her, and then I started to get frustrated, then angry, as I was wondering around trying to figure out where I was. If I hadn’t been so steamed I would have found it funny that I walked for almost half an hour before winding up at the exact door that I had come out of when I first reached the Howard station. I re-entered and asked the question and then climbed the stairs back up to the platform to make my way North.
When I finally reached the “Davis” stop in Evanston, I called and began the modern day human equivalent of the homing pigeon. “Where are you?” “I am outside Barnes and Nobles. Where are you?” “I am just leaving the station I will be there in a minute.” “Can you see me?” “No not yet, can you see me?” Cell phones, and all the other technology, have turned us all into morons.
Finally I saw her and said “I see you I will be right there.” I could not believe my eyes. There was this five foot seven inch, blond haired, blue eyed actress standing at the end of the block outside the entrance to Barnes and Nobles. She looked confident, happy, mature. She had that layered thing going on that actresses do, with the t-shirt and the vest and the button down over the top. She also had the wrap around scarf thing happening. There is no way this was my seventeen year old sister!!
She is twenty nine years younger than I am, and until this week she has always been a little kid. Not anymore. I gave her a hug. She called her friends to find out where they were. We walked a block to a PUB where they were having dinner. She introduced me to all of them, including her boyfriend, the boyfriend part I figured out later. I met her director. It was all so strange.
We then went out to a restaurant and sat down and had dinner together. This is the first time we ever did this. We had a conversation. We laughed. We joked. We enjoyed each other’s company and we were at ease together. I then walked her back to the theatre to meet her friends and made my way back to the hotel.
The next afternoon I shaved, showered and put my fancy duds on. Met a friend outside the hotel and we walked our way over to the theatre once again, this time to see her matinee performance. This was an “ensemble” show that had been five weeks in the making. This was a very talented group of fourteen actors working as one, actually all playing the same women over the course of an hour. This play was beautifully and cleverly written, adequately directed, and superbly acted by all. This was not the community theatre bit part stuff I had last seen her in; this was a theatre production of the Northwestern University Theatre department. In the three years I had been away she had become an actor, or as she prefers, actress, and a very talented one at that.
Thank you again for getting this far with me.
I started out excited to see her, and then I started to get frustrated, then angry, as I was wondering around trying to figure out where I was. If I hadn’t been so steamed I would have found it funny that I walked for almost half an hour before winding up at the exact door that I had come out of when I first reached the Howard station. I re-entered and asked the question and then climbed the stairs back up to the platform to make my way North.
When I finally reached the “Davis” stop in Evanston, I called and began the modern day human equivalent of the homing pigeon. “Where are you?” “I am outside Barnes and Nobles. Where are you?” “I am just leaving the station I will be there in a minute.” “Can you see me?” “No not yet, can you see me?” Cell phones, and all the other technology, have turned us all into morons.
Finally I saw her and said “I see you I will be right there.” I could not believe my eyes. There was this five foot seven inch, blond haired, blue eyed actress standing at the end of the block outside the entrance to Barnes and Nobles. She looked confident, happy, mature. She had that layered thing going on that actresses do, with the t-shirt and the vest and the button down over the top. She also had the wrap around scarf thing happening. There is no way this was my seventeen year old sister!!
She is twenty nine years younger than I am, and until this week she has always been a little kid. Not anymore. I gave her a hug. She called her friends to find out where they were. We walked a block to a PUB where they were having dinner. She introduced me to all of them, including her boyfriend, the boyfriend part I figured out later. I met her director. It was all so strange.
We then went out to a restaurant and sat down and had dinner together. This is the first time we ever did this. We had a conversation. We laughed. We joked. We enjoyed each other’s company and we were at ease together. I then walked her back to the theatre to meet her friends and made my way back to the hotel.
The next afternoon I shaved, showered and put my fancy duds on. Met a friend outside the hotel and we walked our way over to the theatre once again, this time to see her matinee performance. This was an “ensemble” show that had been five weeks in the making. This was a very talented group of fourteen actors working as one, actually all playing the same women over the course of an hour. This play was beautifully and cleverly written, adequately directed, and superbly acted by all. This was not the community theatre bit part stuff I had last seen her in; this was a theatre production of the Northwestern University Theatre department. In the three years I had been away she had become an actor, or as she prefers, actress, and a very talented one at that.
Thank you again for getting this far with me.
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