Rediscovering the Road Not Taken …

The less life we have left, the more we live.

As each day is chipped from the rock of our existence our physical life is reduced. Yet this daily sculpting can also serve to give us shape and purpose. Each blow creates an edge that sharpens and defines our true selves.

For some, the process will be one of many small taps of the mallet, with carefully placed blows, delivered over a lifetime. For others a hasty or angry blow early on may damage the stone and thereby affect all the work that comes later.

Regardless of how we approach our life’s work, or whether or not we have had much choice in how certain blows were delivered, when our lives have passed we will all leave behind these memorials large and small, delicate or ponderous, carefully crafted or cracked and haphazardly constructed.

One thing seems certain to me. No matter where we are in our lives, or how the stone has been carved thus far, the end result can be improved when we become consciously aware of the work we have done -and still might do. It is never too late to step back and review our work honestly, see where we may have damaged it and think of ways to avoid those mistakes in the future. If the damage is great, or we are uncertain how to continue, then we may need to seek help from someone with more experience -a master craftsman if you will.

Decide what you want your life to have been about before it’s over, take an honest look at where you are now and plan a course that will take you to where you want to go.

I am a rock.

With jagged and sharpened edges I defy the sand.

It is a sea surrounding me. Always it pushes, scratches, whispers …
I do not know what it wants - nor does it matter. It is only a seething mass of sameness. I rise above it. I am a rock. I am unique. I endure.

The sand assaults me. It drowns me in its crushing embrace, then, suddenly, it exposes me. It rides the howling wind and crashes futilely against my adamantine surfaces. It is all in vain. My defenses are unshaken. I cannot be vanquished.

Secure in my strength I sleep, and I dream.

Eons pass.

I awake, and I am alone. How did this happen? Once the horizon was filled with other rocks jutting defiantly at the sky. I did not speak to them, but I knew they were there. It gave me comfort. Now, there is only sand, and smooth rock colored lumps, where they stood.

I am afraid. My craggy prominence’s have become gentle burls. My massive bulwark smoothed away by the strokes of billions of tiny laborers whose voices relentlessly insinuate themselves in my awareness. They have reduced me. I am lost.

I struggle between dreams of myself as rock and dreams of myself as sand. The work continues inexorably.

Stripped of my defenses, wondrous understanding dawns within me. What I once thought a clone army, is a dazzling panoply of unique colors, textures and shapes. Rich bits and pieces, of myself and the others, who once formed the rocks of barren plains.

I feared I would lose myself. Instead, I have found myself. I have not been defeated by an enemy, I have been rescued by friends. This is my community, my offspring, my family.

I am the sand.

I just ate my 1,000,000th burger today (ok, I’m not sure of the actual number, but it has been quite a few). I have to say I love a good burger. Few things can match the majesty of well ground beef of good pedigree, seasoned with spices both subtle and bold, caressed by grains ground and baked into pillow-like splendor, wrapped with cheeses, doused with the mashed pulp of crimson tomatoes, and accompanied by various friends - mostly Mr. Bacon, Mrs. Lettuce (we suspect an illicit relationship may exist between these two), La Onion, Pickles and rarely Coronel Mustarde.

I only eat about one a week now, but I use to make my wife nuts. If we went to a Mexican restaurant I’d order a ‘Mexi-Burger’ Hawaiian tonight dear? An ‘Aloha Burger’ for me.

I’d swear that at one point cattle would move to the far side of the pen if I drove by. Of course now I eat less meat, and occasionally substitute vegetable patties. I worry about my health, about those poor cows (I’ll be the first to try genetically altered eggplants that taste like beef!), and the possibility that I might come back as a blade of grass in a cow pasture.

There is a time, betwixt the velvety gloaming and sunlight’s first blushing rays, when I dream of castles, flying dragons and magic. In this world I roam verdant hills, and dash through ermine clouds of wildflowers, to rescue a princess of faery.

Long I seek. Fiercely I battle her cruel captor. His shape that of a dragon at times, and at others a black wizard, a dark knight or a demon foul. Always, she fights at my side, her courage and smiling face granting me strength when I waver. A young prince stands with us, casting balls of baleful fire at our common enemy, until at last evil stands vanquished by our united strength.

I awake and for a moment I fear to loose the ethereal ties of this magical kingdom. Then I glance at the sleeping form of my sweet wife. My princess. I walk to my son’s room and marvel at the happines reflected on his dreaming face. The young prince. I listen, and in the distance hear the bugling call of dragons.

I smile. The fairytale has followed into my waking world.