ROAD TO . . .
Wednesday Oct. 30, 2013
Where are we headed?
What is the best we can be, at something, that makes us want to skip study-hall and go straight to Carnegie Hall? Or is it just relentless, endless, hard work to travel any straight path, or make our way back out of the ditch to resume our own crooked one?
I spent some time this morning, as I do every morning, crossing an item off my daily list called ‘work the drawer’. It reminds me to go through my pending file drawer – to pull files requiring action, a call, a nudge, or a shove – to move them along.
First file in that drawer, always, is a folder holding a few things that don’t fit anywhere but need regular review – and in front of those, first things I read every day are some Chopra quotes, a page of large block letters saying ‘GET A LITTLE BIT BETTER EVERY DAY’, a list of my desires, and a list of my unique talents. I keep a few other treasures in that file too, but mostly it is those four things. It takes me a minute or two – every morning. Then my walk takes 10 minutes some days, an hour some days. These columns take 10 minutes some days, an hour or more on others. So, after 10 ½ years, I’ve managed to get a morning activity of walking/writing that took 30-40 minutes … now compressed nicely into 2 hours, tops. OK, sometimes 3, but those would be weekend days. Bottom line, I get up really early!
The problem, you see, is that my head keeps getting clearer – or, more clear which should simplify life, but it doesn’t at all. It makes me want to look deeper. Then someone in my life will surface, someone else will disappear, someone will be silent, someone will tell me what I need to hear, someone else will get the same message across so much more diplomatically. Someone will cry out for help, someone will go silent or say little – but with the same cry, just that I can’t hear it.
My ears work fine, but I’ve learned I need to hear with my eyes and read between lines – sometimes across a table, or a street, sometimes across the world . . . perhaps we’ll meet.
And I had a great conversation with my daughter Carla yesterday, listening to Isla playing in the background – life doesn’t get much better than that, even though I got home absolutely bagged, worn-out, feeling ill and in need of sleep, which I got a good night of.
That all said, where is my head pointed this morning . . . ?
If we are buying front tires for our car, medicines to ingest or a new roof – is there any way we’ll consider an adequate job from someone who sort-of knew what they are doing? Of course not – we want to prevent the blow-out, but we’ll drive without the care we and those we transport deserve. We want perfect pills but then we fail to manage our health nearly as well as we know how to. We don’t want leaky roofs, but we’ll let a leaky toilet go unchecked without much thought until the water bill arrives.
How is time best spent – succeeding, or trying to succeed, in failing, or trying not to fail?
Our value, I would contend is not basking in our successes or wallowing in failures – but in the labour of our efforts, struggling to find words to say it, just right, struggling to fix it better than anyone has ever fixed it before . . .
OK, struggling to fix it so it won’t break again, or so often . . .
I get it wrong a lot.
Wrong idea, or right idea/wrong timing, wrong person or right person/wrong timing, wrong project, or right project/wrong client . . .
Whether we trade in wood shavings or rocket ships, life savings or SCUBA gear, fly to the moon, or to Portland … whether our joys are found with our nose to the grindstone or in chipping something out of a granite block, we are struggling to reveal something. Every one of us, every day, in every action or inaction, reveal something about ourselves. Most often, kind people don’t point out to us what we’ve revealed.
Good enough – it’s been revealed, we know it. We show it. No need for someone else to point it out to us.
Organizing thoughts – like building a to-do list, or a shopping list, no need to list in priorities when they are stroked off already. If the list is bread, jam, eggs and ham – stroking off what we bought, or chose not to get isn’t a big deal. But if the list is goals, ambitions – things to do, what then? I don’t mean ‘wash the floor’ or ‘fix the door’, but things like these we might do for ourselves:
stretch
grow
learn
repair
Which ones are on your list? Which ones have been stroked off? Or things we might stretch to do, grow to become, learn to feel or repair ourselves to be ready for . . .
What if our lists are people:
Joe
Fred
Sally
Tom
Which ones are stroked off? Who got stroked off the list yesterday, last week, last year?
Who, or what, should be added back to those lists. Were those stoke-outs a mistake, like oops .. I really do need mouthwash, or yes, I really did mean to take butter off the list?
Samuel Beckett’s words seem right today – “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
Mark Kolke
292,628
P.S.: I was at the Calgary Real Estate Forum yesterday – saw lots of people, too many I missed .. so, Hi to all of you! , too many shortened conversations, much catching up to do. Lots of feedback on yesterday’s interview with Ken King …thanks so much. I even got a note from Ken saying he liked it too!
column written/ published from Calgary
morning walk: 2C/35F, clearing sky, nice steady breeze, snow receding, better footing for me and mucky-paws dawg .. Gusta happy to scratch away the slush to find whatever organic stink she is after.
Comments Received:
Courage. What I need. Elusive, IMF, Jakarta, Indonesia
Reading your morning walk with Gusta made me wonder. If a dog licks the ice, does its' tongue get stuck to it? I have never seen this phenomenon but wonder why it doesn't seem to happen the same way a person's tongue does some times stick to an ice cube. Hmmnnn....GW, Brady, Tx.
