Re-Igniting My Passions

I have to admit, I thought 2020 was a challenging year, but 2021 has pushed the limits of our collective sanity. I changed jobs and moved to a new city, far away from my home town. I worried enough for a lifetime in one year, and doubted myself and my abilities as a teacher, researcher, and scholar. Through it all, my wife has stood by me as always, and the move has been a refreshing change for both of us. My life is good, even though 2021 has made me re-evaluate what is important to me and what brings me joy.

I refuse to make resolutions, but I will select a theme for 2022 that will push me in new and powerful directions. My theme for 2022 is “Re-Igniting My Passions.” These include (1) weightlifting and fitness, (2) mental and spiritual well-being, (3) reading for both business and pleasure, (4) committing myself to better learn qualitative methods to strengthen my research, and (5) develop new skills related to music (specifically how to play my new mandolin that is collecting dust). I have many other sub-goals and priorities for my work and professorship, but these will do for now. What passions will you re-ignite in 2022? Blessings.

We Are All Prisoners

Trapped in our thoughts that gnaw away at time; bound to a clock that never ceases to spin.

The sentences are all different, as well as the crimes. The cells are of our own design. Some are bleak and shady and some are brushed with an eternal sunshine that never fades.

Yet we are all serving a sentence of death; it is the fate of all human flesh. We cannot stop it even if we wanted to. We can travel, entertain, and spend frivolously on our many pursuits, but in the end the cell awaits and calls to us.

Are we guilty for these crimes? For the crime of choosing to live? For the crime of choosing to be wrapped in flesh, led through the maze of childhood, and given a menu of life choices? It is both our punishment and our reward. We deserve much worse, yet we also deserve much more.

Whether the cell is desolate or decorative, it always ends up to be a place within our minds. Should we choose to live out this sentence, we must confront the choices we have made, put aside the regrets, and come to peace with how we have curated each step.

I think often of those with a death sentence, earned or not, as they contemplate the rope around their neck or their arm strapped to the chair. All they have are their thoughts, and though they may be free of their prison soon, regret will always be their fleeting thought as they fade into black.

How will you serve your time? How will you spend those days as you wander toward the inevitable? The mind is the last refuge of solitude, for it speaks to us in our time of need. Call on the gods and saints if you will, and maybe they will hear you in your time of trouble. But most of all make peace with your thoughts, for that is the only way to release the chains of bondage and set your spirit free of the prison walls.