In case you don’t generally click the “Related” posts at the bottom of the page, here’s one you missed yesterday, originally posted Aug. 6, 2024. I don’t remember writing this but I’m glad I did.
I could take a dog for a walk through the forest and the fields,
but there’s a stack of things I haven’t done.
I could go to a beach and watch the waves come in and stick my toes in the sand,
but there’s a stack of things I haven’t done.
I could read a book full of adventure or insight or both,
but there’s a stack of things I haven’t done.
I could listen to music or make some,
but there’s a stack of things I haven’t done.
I could get in the car and not stop until I reach a place I’ve never seen,
but there’s a stack of things I haven’t done.
I could call some old friends or write them a note,
but there’s a stack of things I haven’t done.
For every impulse I have to do something wonderful,
there’s a stack of other somethings I haven’t done.
When I’m breathing my last, it won’t be all said and done —
there’ll be a stack of things I haven’t done.
And so I walk with the dog and I find me a beach,
I listen to music and write an old friend,
because the stack of things I haven’t done must wait a little longer while I go live a life.
Dance, words, dance! Pick a melody and a rhythm and fly across the page like a seagull so high all we register is the squawk and the rattle of the redwing’s challenge here below — Mine! Mine! All I survey belongs to me, it is mine and no other, and I share it with you from the goodness of my very special heart.
Fly, words, fly! All of space and time belong to you; even when the words aren’t sufficient to speak the beauty, there are words to describe when words fail, those awestruck moments when there’s nothing to say except there’s nothing to say.
A picture may show more than a thousand words can say, but the words can say what the picture cannot, the picture only shows what is, the words show what it feels like. The words say why they feel like dancing and flying.
I am frozen in time like that moment a half-century ago when I taught myself how to play someone else’s song and I made the music that came out of the radio using my own fingers — I am frozen in time like that moment I held a girl’s hand for the first time — I am frozen in time like that moment my lips touched another pair of lips and I knew why they say it’s electric because I felt the shock of recognition — another human touching me touching you and we are together literally and figuratively we fit together like we were designed to do this.
I am frozen in time, only my fingers moving slowly across the page scrawling words that are between my ears (some of them, anyway, the ones I remember long enough to write them down) and shouting across time to a moment when someone sees the words and hears my voice inside their head except it’s my words and their voice or their imperfect recollection of the timber of my voice approximating.
I am frozen in time and maybe in years to come I will remember the evergreen behind the naked branches behind the vehicles that passed on the highway behind the old highway behind the rocking chair on the porch on the other side of the window next to the stairs to the basement behind the bookcase with the dinosaur Mary gave me across the room behind the open door to the room where I am sitting frozen in time.
It is twelve minutes past three on Tuesday, April 14,2026, and I have frozen the moment here on this page to be transmitted across space and time to another soul in another moment somewhere else. Hello! And now it’s two minutes later, no, three, because that’s how long it took me to write this paragraph by hand.
Such a slow dance, now 20 minutes and more since I started scrawling, and yet the words hurry by as the reader reads. And how many images and sounds and aromas have I experienced that scrambled past so quickly I could never write them all down even if I remembered them all? So much to see and to say, and the words are inadequate, yet somehow suggest there was so much more in the moment. And that, I suppose, is for you to unravel.
Every moment of every day presents us with choices. At the end of the day, the answer to the inevitable question, “How was your day?” turns out to be a summary of the choices we made in those various given moments.
One June day eight years ago, I conjured a little poem about making those choices. I included it in my first (or third, depending on how you count) collection of blog posts, a little book called A Bridge at Crossroads: 101 Encouragements.
It’s not an especially great poem, but I think about it from time to time when I think about how we’re always making choices. I thought about it again yesterday, when I wrote about choosing joy and finding reasons to rejoice wherever we turn.
Love is the same way, because love is a choice in the same way joy can be chosen. The marriages that last are the ones where both parties have chosen to love each other, and for better or for worse. So, too, can an attitude of love be a choice in our interactions with one another. That’s what I was trying to say here.
Love anyway
When weariness overtakes you And your fuse is short, Love anyway.
When the slap of reality hurts So bad you want to lash back, Love anyway.
When the loss is so deep You can’t see straight, Love anyway.
When you’re tempted to quit And go running away forever, Love anyway.
