Did You Get Lucky?

Remember the lucky shorts I wrote about yesterday?

You know, the pair I got for a business trip to Dallas 9 years ago that have a hole in the butt but I refuse to get rid of them because they have meaning for me.

Well I have had to face some unusual challenges lately so I figured wearing those shorts might help change up the bad juju.

I don’t want to put the cart before the horse, but I think it might have worked.

If You Could Read My Mind

A moment ago Gordon Lightfoot was singing about a movie star who gets burned in a three way script and was heading towards sharing his song about a ship that sunk long ago.

But I just couldn’t listen, not today because those lucky shorts had their way and the next lick on iTunes was itching to be played.

So I turned on Get Over It by The Eagles and thought about how the more things change, the more they stay the same.

That piece came out at least twenty years ago and could easily have been written today.

I turn on the tube and what do I see
A whole lotta people cryin’ “Don’t blame me”
They point their crooked little fingers at everybody else
Spend all their time feelin’ sorry for themselves
Victim of this, victim of that
Your momma’s too thin; your daddy’s too fat
Get over it

I have compassion for people who try to help themselves and though who are incapable of doing so, but less for those who could do something but choose not to.

Tomorrow the Big O goes in for more surgery, number three or is it four in about the same number of months or so.

Comes to mind because if you ask my old man about it he doesn’t complain, he just does it.

Shrugs his shoulders and gets it done, which is pretty much what I watched him do for the past 47 or so years.

I suppose it is part of why I have approached some things as I have and exactly why I took this position in Texas.

Anyhoo, we’ll skip the specifics of that and move to what I want my children to take from all this.

Pivot, Duck & Dodge

I want them to learn how to pivot, duck and dodge.

Their old man has never feared hard work or been unwilling to dig in and fight the ocean and it hasn’t always served me well.

So I want them to see I learn from my mistakes and from my successes.

I want them to see I am willing to take a risk for a better life.

Better doesn’t have to mean more money or a better title.

It just have to be a better quality of life and that is what drove me 1,500 miles.

It was about promises made and dreams still not fulfilled.

I want those youngsters to live life in the spirit of the song.

Sometimes you have to take another hand or stick yours out.

Sometimes you have to act based upon a gut feeling where you know you know things and just go for it.

Might not always work, heroes don’t always save the day but sometimes they do.

I want them to understand what Thoreau writes and what he means.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms…”

You can live without fear or you can fear to live.

Sometimes you’ll seesaw between them but hopefully you swing towards the fearless side more often than the fear.

And to be clear, that doesn’t mean I want them to be reckless because it is not about that.

But it is about opening yourself up to experiences you can’t have without taking chances and not making conscious decisions that go against your self interests just because you think they are safe.

You never know who might be willing and or able to catch if you fall unless you walk to the ledge.