A multitude of blessings

If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then here is the equivalent of 8,000 words about how blessed my life has been lately.

This is one of those days when there are no words, only gratitude. May you have days like this, too.

Connecting in the 5 o’clock predawn

Minds are full of possibilities. What if? How about? When, if not now? Why not? Once upon a time? Could I? Would I? Should I?

Ready, set, go? Am I ready? Is anyone ever ready? What does it mean to be ready? Who am I to say?

This is the day. How do I know?

Why not? I keep coming back to why not. There is no clear answer. How about the opposite question — Why? and why now?

The battle is on. Rise from the couch! Stay where you are! Just get started! Finish what you began! Hesitate no more! or just for a little while longer. I wonder what’s on TV now.

Is this the life of quiet desperation that Thoreau talked about? Or was Thoreau full of sh*t? Was he just an imposter with pretty words? Lord knows that’s what I am. Hasn’t everyone noticed by now?

We are all imposters, faking it until we make it. That’s the little secret no one wants to say out loud. I imagine the star who falls from his perch has a sense of relief: “Everyone saw who I really am, and I survived. I don’t have to pretend anymore. It’s not all that bad, come to think of it.”

It’s just after 5 a.m., and I see 16 waking hours ahead. In this first hour I see all of the possibilities, the must-dos and the maybes, and a touch of anxiety — the many ways I could waste this precious gift of time.

The light from the screen threatens to mesmerize me, as it has done so many times before. A weariness settles over me — no, not now, not again, no more wasting time. This is the day the Lord has made, rejoice, be glad.

It is the time of year when we wake before dawn, we denizens of the 5 o’clock hour. We must make our own light while we wait for the Earth to turn our spot toward the sun. Objects on the other side of the window slowly begin to become visible while we churn our minds and ready our bodies for the light.

Sixteen hours of waking over the next 24 — the challenge is how to fill them: precious minutes and hours, love to be shared, work to be done, a day to shape or be shaped.

I like where my mind goes when I choose to come here, to this journal, before I face the mesmerizing light — not the sunlight, of course, but the artificial light that connects me to “real life.” But is that the real life or just fantasy? There is the question. Here is this moment, scribbling words on a blank page, letting sleeping dogs lie. I feel connected to my self. What I do with that connection defines me, if not to others, then to myself.

For a few precious minutes, I remember who I am. I’m not entirely thrilled about this guy, but generally I like me and I’m grateful for my gifts. Gifts are meant to be used and shared, and so off I go, even if I’m still not entirely sure of my destination.

Could that be the key? Instead of driving hither and yon, should I settle on a destination? Should I? Could I? or several destinations so I don’t get bored — stops along the way — and a plan for the next trip after that — but don’t get sidetracked — but what if the tangent proves to be the real destination?

You see my dilemma, don’t you? Am I simply a victim of attention deficit disorder? No, I am no victim, and how dare you call it a disorder to see all the wonder about me and want to take it all in — all of it? My attention does bounce here and there, but what makes that a problem? There are billions, probably trillions of things to see in this world in one lifetime — billions, probably trillions of ways to make a difference. I can see and do them all — or can I?

We have achieved world peace

It’s 4:18 a.m., and the morning newspaper was just delivered to my mailbox. What an interesting process — people collect information (news, advertising, photos, artwork, etc.), manufacture a large booklet, and send copies out via courier to boxes all over creation, including a box on a post 40 feet from my garage door.

Similar processes generated the thousands of items stored or lying about this house, one of millions of homes across the country, billions around the globe, each with thousands, or hundreds, or at least dozens of belongings, each item requiring the cooperation of countless people to reach the place it occupies now.

Thousands of my belongings are discs and tapes of music. I’m not entirely sure what I own and what music I never owned or don’t own anymore. I enjoy exploring the shelves and I don’t, because I know there are gems hidden in the unexplored and undocumented spaces.

Each recording took lifetimes to produce — years of learning by the various contributors, hours of practice to create just that sound from each of the instruments, the right settings for that particular blend of sounds to emerge, and the manufacture of the discs reproducing those sounds, which represent a message from a moment many years ago, perhaps the sound of a winter concert at Carnegie Hall in 1938. The weather that day, the energy from the hundreds of humans in that room, echo through the electronics and are pumped through the speakers in an imitation of what that great hall sounded like that night, here and now in this little house in a field 1,000 miles and 87 years away from where the musicians performed.

Or perhaps the sounds were recorded in a little room on the other side of the world.

And those are just a couple of examples. There is this ceramic mug in my left hand that was fired on the other side of the globe, filled with hot liquid brewed from coffee beans grown in Jamaica and transported to a small factory north of here, where the beans were roasted, ground and packaged, then brought to a grocery store filled with people who stock shelves in a particular way so that I know exactly where to find and purchase my Door County Coffee Jamaican Me Crazy blend.

Each and every one of the items scattered about this house has a similar story. Each was produced, shipped, and delivered through a process of cooperation and collaboration.

You ask if it’s possible we can overcome our differences and get along? The answer is obvious in everything from this coffee mug to the house itself, or the complex machine sitting in my driveway that can take me over mostly smooth roads to the stores where I replenish my supplies.

Everything we see is evidence that humans can get along and live with one another in peace. Don’t tell me that we can’t, when it’s clear that we can and do, every day, all day and all night.