2016 won’t just be remembered for how many celebrities it consumed but for the personal reminders it has provided me about the pitfalls of playing with your health.
It will be the year in which I look back upon certain events and recognize the truth of how whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
That is not because the year itself was horrible because I have been through worse than this but there have been significant challenges.
And so I look back at the worse and share a bittersweet smile because without that experience these significant challenges would have felt like they were crushing me.
The Pitfalls Of Gambling With Your Health
I intentionally held off on getting a physical because I didn’t want to hear really bad news.
Don’t mistake that to mean I expected to because I didn’t. I had a pretty good idea about what the doc would say and I was right on all accounts.
But I held off because I had to f0cus my energy on a couple of family members and was confident that whatever personal matters I had would be manageable.
You could say the pitfalls out gambling with your health are large enough to make that a loser’s bet or you can accept I knew I could beat the house this time.
Of course had you come to me with similar circumstances I would have pushed you to get checked out sooner because of the whole forewarned is forearmed business.
Call Me Kenny Rogers
When my doc suggested I try to avoid repeating this behavior in the future I told him he could call me Kenny Rogers and shared a verse of The Gambler with him.
I don’t know that he appreciated it.
But I think he understood I felt like I had so much on my plate I needed to find a way to offload some of the work and weight.
Speaking of Kenny Rogers I heard Coward Of the County for the first time in forever.
It was a day in which I had driven to Plano, Benbrook, Arlington and Richardson which is to say I felt like I was living in the car and was grateful for satellite radio.
I am not sure if I had ever really paid attention to the lyrics before, but that day I did and I was struck by something.
It was another story song in which I was reminded about how much of our behavior swings from what we were taught and or socialized to what we do because we feel we have to do it.
Who We Are
Take the song in it is entirety and or parse it out in pieces and I come up with the following.
It is about a man who ignores what others say in part of out of respect for his father’s wishes until he has to follow the instructions of his heart.
Maybe that is how everyone does it and maybe it is just my own simplistic world view that gives me this interpretation as if it is profound.
Doesn’t really matter to me because it is a worldview that works for me and makes it easy to get out of bed and do my thing.
Maybe it is because of the challenges I see some family members taking on and the knowledge I can’t do more than I have done to help.
Yeah, that is probably it because it is hard to stand around knowing that force of will isn’t enough to change some things nor is being a role model.
So you just keep going and doing what you are doing saying that is enough because enough is all you have to offer.
I tell the kids that all the time and have for years.
Lately it is by telephone or via Facetime, but it is always to remember the importance of who you let into your life.
Some people will support you and build you up and others will try to tear you down.
Most people probably fall somewhere in between.
Seven Bridges Road
Somewhere in the midst of writing my overactive imagination took me on a journey past the Seven Bridges Road over to BrokeBack Mountain.
And it reminded me of skipping rocks on some endless body of water.
Something about that always relaxes me.
Maybe it is counting the number of skips or the search for the perfect stone and the quest for the perfect throw.
Could be the concentric circles that come from dropping a stone in a pond.
Or maybe it is how time stands still for a moment while I am skipping those stones and I am a collector of moments.
2016, you will not end my collection.
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