Starts and stops and lucid dreams seek me out, leading me forward and backward in the same moment.
How can I be over half a century old when just yesterday I dreamed
of catching a fish with my dad on Saturday and bragging to my middle school
friends on Monday? But then I woke up and my sore back and feet reminded me of
all the years that have passed since I was that little boy.
So many distinct yet unique stories…too numerous to count…some
filled with joy and happiness, but others driven by tragedy and hurt; yet
onward the journey goes no matter how we try to slow it down. This is the
burden we share as a human race.
How can we consider being finished when there is so much more
work left to do? How could the world spin without you in motion around it? Yet
on it goes; when one dies and another is born the relentless spinning never
slows through it all.
We feel that we must keep moving because if we slow down, we
will see that the world is perfectly fine without us; yet we are not fine if we
don’t enjoy it until the very last second…until the last beat of our hearts.
We grow up together yet separate with a multitude of total
strangers and share common stories – skinning a knee on the playground, getting
our hearts broken in high school, feeling lost in college, falling into the
routines of life with family, bills, and raising children, then coming to grips
with a world that is spinning out of control. That is when we find that we must
do our best to ease the dizziness.
There are thousands, possibly millions, that follow similar
patterns, yet we feel we are so isolated…that only we have felt these pains and
have tried as we might to repair what was broken. If we heard all of the
stories we would feel better at our common struggle, but it would be too much
to bear. Our story is enough, along with the parallel stories of those we know
and love.
At some point everyone senses when it is time for a change,
but not everyone is brave enough to take that first step toward evolution and
freedom. Its never too late to continue your unfinished journey and to follow
the brave path of other lost and wandering sojourners who have stayed the
course.
