Sometimes you look at someone and say we have been to hell and back with a smile because you know you have made it…but not always.
Sometimes you survive hell and realize that surviving meant it took all you had and all you were and now you are not that person any more.
You’re someone different and that is not said with anger or bitterness because it is an observation and nothing more.
And I know that on the outside
What I used to be
I’m not
anymore.
Crossroads- Don McLean
The Perfect Lives We Lead
A trip through Facebook isn’t the same picture of Shangri-La it used to be. People are too angry and too filled with rage to fill the pages with nothing but pictures of their perfect lives.
Now the stories about great vacations, perfect dates/children and cat pictures are intermixed with rants about what and how things should be.
I am part of the group that fills the feed of those connected with me with a mix of narishkeit and rage peppered with the occasional insight worth reading.
Excuse me while I break into song.
As we enter summer and round the halfway point of 2018 I watch as my oldest nephew graduate high school and tons o’friends turn 50.
It makes the quote above funnier and stranger as we swap stories about kids realizing that our spawn are as old as we when some of us first met.
Turn on your cassettes and listen to the music as we march into the future with the weight of the past anchoring us in place.
I am not quite sure what to do with myself now. I am a mix of absolute certainty and absolute confusion.
Suppose it is walk forward one step at a time into a future that makes me shake my head with doubt and smile with optimism.
Maybe I’ll just pour myself a drink, listen again and see where the road takes me.
Or maybe I’ll tell you when you are surrounded by people who say ‘y’all’ it sometimes pops out of your own mouth and you wonder how and when that happened.
Not the biggest or most important thing, it is not a frequent guest in your mouth, but it has shown up.
Interesting, sometimes they call me a Yankee and sometimes I am that Jewish guy from LA.
Final Thoughts
Perspective is a funny thing.
Sometimes you look at the tape and see a mess that makes you scream because you can’t figure out how to fix it and sometimes you see a simple solution.
Pick up the tape, find a number two pencil (have you ever seen a one or a three?) and then used the old fashion method of wind up the loose tape.
You won’t have saved or fixed everything, but you will have a good start on solving part of the problem and sometimes that start is all you need.
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