Today my boss was looking for a phone number on a phone listing sheet. He asked me about the number and I told him where it was on my listing. He immediately found the number on his sheet and said, “Thanks for showing me the obvious.” He meant it as a gibe at himself, but I immediately thought of it privately in regards to my blog and I answered, “That’s my specialty!” I’m neither a mystic nor a rocket scientist, so everything I write about comes from daily life and is no different from what anyone else could readily observe. At 66, however, I still run across ideas new to me. It comes back to the wonder of perception and how things can simmer for years subconsciously and suddenly configure and surface into an intelligible pattern. I’m thankful for every year that I’ve lived and every experience I’ve encountered (and I do mean that—even going to the dentist) and I’m grateful for each experience today that is added to the mix. I recall a phrase by Henry James: "Try to be one of those on whom nothing is lost." The way that human beings are configured mentally, I think that “being one on whom nothing is lost” is literally true for everyone—everyone is a testimony to and record of their experiences. We encounter the manifestation of that truth everyday—sometimes triumphantly, sometimes tragically. We need to be grateful for the insights that are uniquely ours and should stand ready to turn them into practical uses such as voting on Election Day and contributing to social discourse.
Print Page
