A Walk…

Posted by admin - 05/05/09 at 05:05 pm

The boy skirted the majestic lake thinking of her as he so often did.

He followed the dirt path that rose as high as twenty feet before dipping to the water’s edge only to climb again.

He walked aimlessly, content to have a direction laid out before him.

“To love her, I must embrace her fully,” he pondered. “Her joys, her sorrows, her happiness, her suffering—all of it.”

He stepped over a rock in the trail.

“The joys and happiness are easy,” he told himself. “What about the sorrows and suffering?”

He glanced from the dirt to the green grass beside it to the still water, scanning without noticing much at all.

“Do I try to put myself in her shoes, see the world through her eyes? Can I navigate that much history without getting lost? Can’t I understand her pain through my own? Is that enough?”

He heaped question upon question, a jumbled pile of rhetoric…so confusing…

A flock of Canadian geese swooped down from above the trees and in perfect unison, flared before gliding on to the glass surface where they settled causing tiny ripples to flow outward in concentric circles.

“They seem to embrace the air with such little effort,” he reflected. “Now, how do I embrace her?”

He meandered along with his yearning as his only company.

The strong smell of honeysuckle interrupted his muse and he stopped to draw it in.

He smiled at the sweet scent, a gentle reminder of all things good—wild, free, a gift from the bounty of nature.

It brought him happy images of her, her radiant cheeks that broke into a wide laugh and caused his heart to skip, a warm glow in the aftermath that lingered like the bees hovering above the vines.

“I can do this,” he urged inwardly. “I can pry open this tortured soul.”

The sun cast a light warm blanket over the morning.

Unconsciously, he raised his head, paused and let his eyelids flutter closed.

He stood at rest and basked for a full minute, his mind quiet for the first time.

“Maybe I try too hard.”He resumed his march.
“Maybe I need to let it flow.”
He frowned for a beat.
“What does that mean, anyway?”Another question.
“To see or not to see, to be or not to be…”
He rambled on.
“I could drive myself crazy,” he mumbled.
“Maybe that’s what it will take,” he continued.
“I can do this,” he reminded himself again.

A cloud split the lake in half, cast a dark shadow in sharp contrast to the shimmering sunlit side, a yin and yang of massive proportions.

The boy took it in and felt a calm ease into him.

“I shall simply love her,” he promised. “And in that love, I shall find the embrace.”

He turned around and began the journey home.

Success Quotes

Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before you know it, time runs out.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.
-Albert Schweitzer.

Key Points

These days, it seems as though everyone has bought into pointing the finger at someone or something. There’s a flu epidemic blamed on Mexico, a global recession blamed on everybody (each pointing the finger at each other) and peoples’ personal economic slowdowns can’t possibly be their own fault—right?

My own web company went out of business—which is why you missed a few issues of this newsletter. Tell me: who can I blame that on? At the end of the day WHO CARES? The site almost ceased to exist (momentarily) and would have, had we spent much time blaming and not enough time acting.

Instead, we calmly (somewhat) went about finding a replacement web company, did the due diligence, negotiated a fair deal and went to work—the result of which you are reading right now—a brand new site with even more features than before. Shortly, we’ll be blogging with each other.

As noted in this column, we had to accept and embrace the challenge, turn our focus to solutions (not blame) and get to work. End result: cool site, better features, more user-friendliness, a win-win for all.

Here’s my challenge to you: be part of the solution, not the problem. Take responsibility, embrace what you need to embrace, make a plan and execute on it—no whining.

Yes, to wine, no to whining.

I declare this a Fine Wine, NO WHINE zone.

You comin’ in???