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    • There All Along

      For the last few weeks Orion has greeted me in the dark beginnings of the day, reminding me that he’s been waiting all along for me to see him again. Like an old friend, mostly, who has entered the scene after some time away. Or maybe we are the ones re-entering the scene.

      So much of our lives is there waiting in the wings for the moment when we turn our attention back to it. Old books sitting on a shelf, old friends you haven’t spoken with in years, old neighborhoods that framed so much of the way you look at the world, old lines from movies or lyrics from songs that remind you of a moment long ago when things seemed simple. Sometimes these things come back into our lives, but often they’ve been there all along.

      Orion reminded me to look for what I often miss. I see Orion and look for Taurus, and then smile at memories of long walks with a curious dog who saw things in the night that I could only guess at. That dog is no longer here, but his memory is still with me, waiting to draw a smile or a grimace… or sometimes both. You can miss someone that’s long gone, and you can miss them when they’re right in front of you.

      My father suffers from dementia, and I wonder if my memories will fade the way his have. Will I still remember the names of my children, or will they be lost the way my name is to him? It’s hard to imagine an existence where I don’t, yet see it happen over and over with the generations before ours. Will I remember to look up at the sky and know Orion? The future is never guaranteed, and our memories are fragile things. And so, it seems, are we.

      Sometimes we can’t control anything at all, but we can reach out and let them know we’ve been here all along. I suppose that’s about all we can do in the end. Look up and say “hello, it’s nice to see you again”. And make the most of that time together while we have it.

    • Trusting Dawn

      The brain burrows in its earth
      and sleeps,
      trusting dawn, though the sun’s
      light is a light without precedent, never
      proved ahead of its coming, waited for
      by the law that hope has made it.
      – Wendell Berry, The Design of a House

      We all trust in dawn, and the fresh beginning it offers us. And now that it’s here, why are we so audacious as to expect another tomorrow? There are no guarantees in life, we all know this. Yet we assume the dawn.

      What would we do if we knew this was the last day? The last time you’ll turn thoughts into words? The last time you’ll speak to someone? The last opportunity to say what must be said, what must be done, or what must be undone?

      Living every moment as if it were your last sounds like a nice motivational poster, but let’s face it, it can be exhausting. To function we have to place a bit of faith in a future that’s mostly like the one we have today, if maybe incrementally better (whatever that means in our heads). To thrive we must believe in exponential improvement and a world that embraces what we gingerly place on the table before it. We trust in our beliefs either way.

      Maybe it’s best to hedge our bets. To boldly advance towards our dreams but linger in a hug a beat longer. To plan the big trip but celebrate the quiet walk in the local woods as the leaves remind you of the season at hand. To trust in the dawn but verify the moment. Here, it seems, is where hope meets happiness.

    • Born Before Apollo

      I surf the wave of time with a group of Gen X people born before Apollo landed on the moon. That might make me old, or still young, depending on the reader. But age labels are nothing but stories people tell themselves. In my mind I’m still a kid in pajamas and no helmet on, riding my bike barefoot as fast as possible down the steepest hills available to me. I celebrate the recklessness of my youth and smile at the scars as they remind me of the highlights. Another tetanus booster shot? No problem.

      The Beatles and The Rolling Stones might have been Baby Boomers, but we had a steady diet of each, swept into the diverse wave of music that crashed over us from birth until college. Rock to singer-songwriter to disco to reggae to punk. We swam in it all. No, they weren’t our generation, but they were our soundtrack and we made them our own. Until Nirvana and Pearl Jam kicked them aside and declared that it was our time to break through.

      Consumerism, good god the consumerism! Plastic and white bread and designed obsolescence, all positioned to feed the worst junk to the masses in a recurring revenue scheme to keep the shareholders happy. All this junk loaded onto shelves at Kmart and Toys R Us and a hundred other stores that lived and died with their consumers. And who pays for it but the environment and our bodies? The C-suite that grew ultra-rich in this trickle down economics scam will casually gesture to the crew to move their yachts to a better view.

      We saw, and we still see, that it’s all bullshit. All the positioning and titles and tail wagging the dog political maneuvering? BS. It’s all stories and power-brokering and wealth accumulation, and you either play their game or you move aside on their climb to the gates of hell. Hell must be somewhere at the top because that’s where some of the worst in humanity are ascending to. And boy do they spoil the view.

      Apollo was the space mission that fueled our dreams. To launch into space and land humans on the moon! It seemed anything was possible, and that we’d all be space rangers. And then Atari and Star Wars came out, grabbed all that pent-up space fascination and channeled it towards fantasy. Bigger movies, more immersive video games, faster and stronger computers. Yeah, more consumerism. See what they did there?

      The thing is, I’m not jaded, none of us born in Gen X can be. We’ve seen all the stories and positioning all our lives. We were born skeptical of the generations around us. And why wouldn’t we be? Collectively we’re all messing things up, aren’t we? And we all see it, even if some choose to immerse themselves in the distraction of Squid Game or the latest superhero franchise movie. Fantasy soothes the sharpest doubts and fears.

      Of course, we already knew that. Cue Captain Kirk for a real space flight, brought to you by a billionaire working to hold your attention from the toxic workplace accusations his employees are screaming about. Yeah, that’ll hold their attention for a few minutes. But doesn’t it feel like we’ve seen this one before?

    • Beauty as a Gateway

      “I will not of a certainty believe that there is nothing in the sunset, where our forefathers imagined the dead following their shepherd the sun, or nothing but some vague presence as little moving as nothing. If beauty is not a gateway out of the net we were taken in at our birth, it will not long be beauty, and we will find it better to sit at home by the fire and fatten a lazy body or to run hither and thither in some foolish sport than to look at the finest show that light and shadow ever made among green leaves.” – W.B. Yeats, The Celtic Twilight

      We, born as we are with a shelf life, chase the divine. In big ways and small, putting yourself in the way of beauty is a gateway to the divine within our mortal existence. It’s why we stumble through muddy paths to find hidden waterfalls, wake in the deepest part of the night to make our way to sunrise vistas, and brave the sounds of the forest to dwarf our egos amongst the giants. In nature we encounter the divine, and in doing so coruscate an otherwise dim life with grace and wonder.

      Admittedly, some of us are schemers, carving out time in our lives for glimpses of the otherworldly. On a recent flight north I glimpsed a spectacular sunset above the clouds and cursed myself for not getting a window seat on the western side of the plane for that particular trip. We must be deliberate even with the mundane if we are to enter the gateway to the divine. That particular world of magic and light was meant for others to witness.

      It’s no surprise that Yeats was a fellow seeker. You can’t be a poet without first being a collector of moments of dazzling infinity. If there’s an afterlife, the westernmost reaches must get crowded with poets and philosophers lined up to see the green flash of another epic sunset. And if there isn’t an afterlife, shouldn’t we catch as many while we’re here as our time allows? Who’s to know until we get to whatever come next? But why risk missing out on the divine in our daily lives? Seek it now.

      It’s all around us, waiting for you to notice.

    • After the Owls

      If there’s a joy in shorter days, it’s greeting the dawn at a more civilized time. We all have an idea of what that word civilized means to us. I celebrate the late evenings when I’m able to stay awake long enough to enjoy them, but generally call it a night well before last call so that I might have the early morning solitude. Life is full of trade-offs, and we must choose which edge of the day to hug closely. The alternative is to sacrifice sleep. But sleep should be non-negotiable.

      In the darkness of early morning October, I sat in the dark with a family of Barred Owls overhead, gossiping in their most hauntingly unique language, an eavesdropper whom they were no doubt aware of but with whom they could easily talk circles around. All the while the sky brightened and the waning crescent moon cut in and out of the inky black clouds. Eventually they tired of toying with me and took their conversation elsewhere. And there I was, in the sudden stillness at the edge of the woods, alone with my thoughts.

      What do you do with the waning darkness after the owls have moved on? You might think about the game of life and sort out how to play it better. You might conspire with hot coffee and the slow appearance of the world. You might replay the highlights of the previous day; what went well and the what might-have-beens. Or you might just listen to the world around you as if waiting for more instruction.

      When you wake up to the loud conversation of owls the rest of your day has a tough time measuring up. But isn’t it fun to give it a go to see if you can? In that time, after the owls, I decided to leap. And, having decided, the real work begins.

    • The Dew of the Morn

      Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill
      For there the mystical brotherhood
      Of sun and moon and hollow and wood
      And river and stream work out their will;

      And God stands winding His lonely horn,
      And time and the world are ever in flight;
      And love is less kind than the gray twilight
      And hope is less dear than the dew of the morn.
      – W.B. Yeats, Into The Twilight

      When you read Yeats you feel the old Druid blood stir within. We know this world, where the sun and moon whisper, and the wood and river and stream work their will upon us. We’re never quite right when we’re too far away.

      We all run calculations in our heads, figuring out our time and where we want to place ourselves next. We run the numbers, and they tell us to get back to what’s important as quickly as possible. The world piles atop you, scorning your hopes and dreams, reminding you of responsibilities and your time earned. Save such folly for another day, the voices say.

      The blood of the ancients beats in our hearts, you and me, and it has a different rhythm than this world at large. It grows restless and impatient with our stories of later and soon enough. What is hope but a deferred dream?

      Time and the world are ever in flight. There’s no catching either, is there? Our hope is in the dawn, when we walk out into the freshness of a new day and seek what’s been calling us all along. But the dew of the morn is drying with the rising sun, and soon our footprints will fade. Seize the moment.

    • Make it Now

      How have I not made a note of every word
      You ever said
      And time, is not on our side
      But I’ll pretend that it’s alright
      – Mumford & Sons, Beloved

      Each conversation, each moment of insight and full awareness of another’s presence is a gift twice given; now and in our memories. Life is a series of such exchanges, one after another from our earliest recollection to our last fading moment before we leave this world in the hands of those who carry on without us. The people who make us feel most alive are those who embrace this exchange, leaving us more energized than we were in the moment before.

      Our time together is brief and fleeting, and each moment matters. When we finally see this, we squeeze as much meaningful engagement as we can from our relationships. For some, it’s too late in the game. So why not begin immediately, with the urgency that life demands?

      We tell each other to stop to smell the roses, but what of lingering in conversation a moment longer? What of hugs that take the breath away and smiles that spark the light in another’s eyes? What of quick notes and calls out of the blue? Time is not on our side, friend. If not now, when?

      Make it now.

    • The Duck With the Broken Beak

      If there’s a perk to travel, it’s the opportunity to encounter things you would never see in your daily existence. When you pause from your frenzied attempt at getting things done long enough to observe what’s hiding in plain sight around you. On this particular trip, it began with a glimpse of a duck swimming in the pool at the Rosen Plaza Hotel in Orlando.

      It seems this duck that was hit by a car at some point, resulting in a broken beak and an inclination to live a more comfortable life. The story goes that she had a family with some scoundrel mallard and returned with her ducklings in tow. When she became an empty nester she dropped the old mallard for another mate and now spends her days swimming in the hotel pool and walking amongst the guests looking for handouts.

      At some point in her evening she flies away to spend the night elsewhere, but returns in the warmth of the day to take up her role as ducky ambassador for another day. The hotel employees are familiar with her routine and don’t blink an eye when she walks around looking for stray bits to eat. The novelty is still with the guests, as we encounter this unusual pool duck in our own time. She seems to relish every encounter, and poses for pictures as she’s no doubt done a thousand times before.

      The broken beak is her unique feature, and no doubt caused her great discomfort when she had her accident. But she wears her scars proudly, showing the world that this duck is a survivor. Humans could learn a thing or two from her. Wear your scars proudly, treat everyone with respect and don’t put up with characters who don’t measure up to your standards.

      These encounters are where the joy of travel resides. We move through our time and this world, chancing on these moments with a life force here and there that makes us stop in wonder. I’ll continue my journey, likely never back in this place again. But I’ll remember this scarred, friendly ambassador, poolside with her court.

    • Hearing Our Music

      “Those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
      – Friedrich Nietzsche

      When is it easiest to hear your own music? When it’s quiet, of course. When you pull yourself away from the madness of the world, find the stillness and listen.

      When it is easiest to hear the music that others are dancing to? When you break bread together, gather around and listen. And after the last couple of years you’ll hear all sorts of things.

      Being out amongst the masses again, seeing many old familiar faces that have weathered differently in the storms of the last few years, prompts reflection on how I’m weathering the storm myself. You see quickly who has struggled, who has pivoted to find a different side of themselves, who has stuck to old beliefs or abruptly changed to new ones, and who has opted out entirely. And you see yourself in each of them.

      This is a particularly noisy week, at an industry event full of people with diverse opinions, stemming from equally diverse backgrounds, information sources and social reinforcement. In this environment you hear some of the music that others are dancing to, even if you don’t always find it dance-worthy yourself. I think the important thing is to hear their music anyway.

      And then reflect on what you’re currently dancing to. You might like it more. Or maybe less. But either way you’ll hear it differently.

    • Today, as Forever

      “We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.” – Carl Sagan

      I met an old friend at the airport, both of us heading for the same plane, and we caught up on each other’s lives until we boarded the plane and went our separate ways on the other end of the flight. We spoke of family members fighting cancer who faced different expectations for the duration of their time on this planet. And saw in that brief conversation the folly of waiting for another day that might not be ours for the taking.

      Each of us reminded that life is but a brief flutter that all too soon must end. Memento mori.

      Each of us reminded to seize the day. Carpe diem.

      What will we make of this day? This, our brief dance with the world? We ought to have one eye on the moment while we aim at tomorrow. To build for that tomorrow but to not ever rely on it being there for you. Celebrate today, as forever.

      “Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to throw away. Death stands at your elbow. Be good for something while you live and it is in your power.” – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      Enough of talk and grand plans. There’s no time for that! Get to it already. Today.