Category: Dream

Everything changes

I put Tom Petty’s Wildflowers on the turntable and realized he made that album more than 30 years ago. Thirty years is a long time, more than a third of a lifetime for most folks and more than an entire lifetime for more people than seems fair. And 30 years before that was my youth.

Long times ago, we didn’t know what we didn’t know, we heard the songs and the possibilities were endless. Somewhere along the way we began to slow our search for possibilities; even though they were still endless, we didn’t expect them anymore. This was the way things were, and we were not going to change them. That was life’s lie, of course. We always had the power. We have the power today.

This does not have to be “the way it is” — those hands right in front of your eyes have all the power you need to craft a different future, a future different from your present, and this morning is as good a time as any to start making that different place.

“Make a difference” — the very phrase says a difference is something you have to make, you have to build. Oh, a difference can be imposed on you — but where’s the joy in that? Why live in someone else’s world when you can make your own?

Make your own difference. Be the change you want to see. Thirty and sixty years ago, it all seemed so promising and possible, and somewhere along the way we became discouraged that we could change the world. But we did make changes, we built and we grew, and we preserved and conserved, and the world way out there didn’t seem to change much — until decades had gone by and so much was different, and one day we woke up and saw: We made that difference.

Bit by bit, one day at a time, year by year, change happens. Nothing lasts forever, not the sweetest happily-ever-after and not the most horrifying horror. All things must pass, and all things change. It’s up to you, it’s up to me, it’s up to us to work on making it a change for the better. We probably disagree on what “better” looks like, and so you be you and I’ll be me and let’s not try to mess with each other’s dreams except when they harmonize.

Thirty and sixty years on, so much is better. (My 2019 car runs well, and the odometer says 210,000 — sixty years ago our cars were done after 100K miles.) We have not solved hatred or tyranny, but lives are better because of those who would not stand for it.

And always, then and now, the power of change is right there at the end of your arms, in your heart, and behind your eyes.

The possibilities are endless

On Monday morning, new work week, new morning, everything seems possible. There’s a whole new week to complete the cycle again, and better this time. How do we maintain that fresh “Monday attitude”?

Why didn’t I think of this before (and maybe I did — memory is an odd thing)? The answer is simply to tuck the knowledge of what day it is away in a file. Don’t call it a “Monday attitude”; call it a “morning attitude.”

W. Somerset Maugham famously said, “I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at 9 o’clock sharp.” But what if we release 9 o’clock from its deadline? Instead of “inspiration always strikes at 9,” let’s say, “inspiration always strikes.” Would I post more than once a day in my blog? Would I sit down at 7:15 p.m. and bang out a story?

The possibilities are endless. And OMG, what a big idea THAT is — the list of possibilities, the available options, goes on to infinity.

The possibilities are endless! With all due respect to the writer of Ecclesiastes, everything is not meaningless, everything is possible!

Dead ends do not exist. (OK, everyone dies, but only once!) If you’re lost in the woods, you have at least 360 directions you can take to try to find your way back to a path. Yes, some are better than others, but —

Everything is possible.

If one possibility doesn’t work out, try another — the possibilities are endless.

Dance at times like this

I am grateful to live in a world where music is readily available at my fingertips. I can’t imagine a world without music — no, wait, yes I can.

A world without music would be a desolate place with no way to express gratitude for being alive adequately, no way to release the joy inside our hearts, no way to come to terms with the needs for which we have no words.

“I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance,” E.E. Cummings said breathtakingly in a poem.

The world is full of voices screaming, “How can you dance at a time like this?” while I am desperately listening and trying to learn how to sing in this darkness.