Some days my briefcase-backpack-mobile_office is heavier than it is on other days. In it are the contents of not just my professional labor, but the weight of my family commitments and responsibilities, as the luggage also holds the connection to these as well. Those who know me know this item is rarely gone from my side. It’s a bit of a joke really, but there you are.

Still, no matter the bleariness of my eyes or the ache that may come, I still strap the thing to my back, clear my head, and press on into another day.

I can imagine what’s going through your head at the moment… but wait a moment, the narrative does get better!

This isn’t a post of sadness, dismay, or pitifulness.

It’s a post of thankfulness.

I’m thankful to my parents.

Without them I could not appreciate the beauty and hope within the layers upon layers of items inside this weight I carry – a weight that has strengthened me by its presence.

My parents have taught me patience by being patient with my own youthful decisions and childish reactions to their household rules.

Without this I could not have known how to be patient with my own children (and sometimes employees/wo-workers, haha)

My parents have taught me compassion by being compassionate to others who might have been given up upon by others.

Without this I would not have known how to show this to my own children by forgiving their youthful acts of selfishness and showing uncompromising love for them – even though they know i still would not approve the actions they choose.

Also i would now know how to feel for others’ plight, and to teach others how to fish instead of just throwing money their way in the hopes of appeasing my guilty conscience.

My parents have taught me steadfastness by being faithful to their commitments day over day, year over year.

Without this I would not have known the pleasure in rising to plateaus in my profession because of my employers’ trust and respect in my word ad deed.

Also I would never have known how to show my children how to be trustworthy when promises made are kept on a consistent basis, and not on a whim when the time and opportunity suits me.

My parents have taught me honor by being honorable to themselves as man and wife.

Without this I would not have known what it is to be in a family that respects itself – even when the role of husband and wife is not always easy to maintain.

This is one of the shining hopes that lie before me for my children to follow.

My parents have taught me the love of God by being the types of people who are faithful to the God in which we trust.

I know this is a broad statement, but our family’s relationship with God encompasses all the above, and more.

Without this most important lesson I would never have known how to be the person I strive to be every day – and the person I pray my children yearn for and attain as they grow into the people they are learning to be.

This is why, on days when that backpack seems a little heavier than others, I stop and thank my parents.

Without them I would not know the value in what it is I carry.

Time travel is indeed possible, thanks to high school English class. Sounds like an odd statement but it happened just the other day.

My daughter and i were sitting across from each other and she was filling out a job application. I tossed out a suggestion related to filling out the form, and wondered in the back of my head where the idea had come from – as the suggestion wasn’t something i normally do or would have thought to do.

Then it hit me, and BAM!  I was sitting across from my 10th-grade English class study partner during lunch.

—

“This is stupid”, I found myself saying, “I’ll never use this idea.  Who thought this” [I waved my hand across a notebook paper covered with 10th grade-ish scribbles] “…would be helpful?”

—

And then again, BAM! I was back, sitting across from my teenage daughter, who was busily running full speed with this idea I had only just moments ago rejected with scorn.

Well, it seemed like just moments ago.  Time travel is funny that way.

I was having a chat with my mom yesterday and was reminded that:

1) You don’t HAVE to date the lonely, downtrodden and oppressed to help turn him or her a winner.

Being poor, from a broken home, or recovering from a lifetime of bad decisions doesn’t automatically mean that he (or she) will perform some magical movie-like life turnaround just because you’ve come into his (or her) life.

If you’re young and relatively inexperienced in life decisions, and especially if you don’t have the best of family ties, you’re likely to be ‘dragged down’ instead of ‘bringing anyone up from their worst’.

You’ve got enough to deal with learning the ropes yourself – getting involved with a “bad boy” (or girl) is infinitely more painful than the tv shows and movies let on.  Here’s a secret why – the folks in the tv set have many more, and far better writers than you do IRL 🙂

2) Not every jem is found in the rough…

It’s actually wiser to look for “the one” in a higher class of person than you’d normally feel comfortable in. This encourages you to aim for higher standards.

Here’s a secret – class does not equal money.

‘Class’ is deeper than that.  One thing to look for is how respectful the prospective mate treats his or her family, those he or she doesn’t need to impress, and those who might be influenced by that person’s decisions.

That’s not all that makes a person ‘classy’, but that’s the fastest way to weed out the junk from the rest.

3) And contrary to most modern movies,

sometimes a nice young man (or woman) is not some freaky psycho person hiding beneath a calm exterior, but is ACTUALLY just a nice person.

No, this guy isn’t digging a shallow grave, burying a pipe bomb, or hiding evidence of a drug smuggling run.  He’s just making his neighborhood look a little nicer by tending to his yard.

I was stuck in a couple of lines today.  Almost back-to-back.  And I was late for most of my activities at work today because of that. But I didn’t mind and I didn’t fuss.  And I’m really glad for that.

I was working “from home” on a remote connection to work and needed to pop out “for a minute” and planned to be back quickly.

Puppy

The first one today was when I picked up my pup from the kennel.  It’s normally a 5-minute task.  Not this time around… there was a cat lady just ahead of me, and she had an anecdote for every question or statement the lady at the checkout till made.

O yep, and the lady at the till was a cat lady too.

30 minutes later I had my dog.

I didn’t fuss because after awhile it was a challenge to see how many ways I could mouth the letters O.M.G in my head without breaking into laughter.  I had a calypso version going full brunt when my turn came about.

Grocery

Then, after dropping puppy off at home, I went to the grocery store.  And after shopping, happened upon (and was next in line behind) lady-who-looks-up-every-item-in-the-weekly-flier.  I mean, before the let the cashier take an item, she had to find it in the weekly store flier she brought with her.  I don’t know why.

And her debit card failed to work after everything was rung up, so we had to wait for a manager to some round to set up something.  I don’t know what.

I didn’t mind the grocery store wait, because I had my grandson with me and we talked and played and the time was precious.  Sure, I had colleagues at work waiting for me to log back online, and I’m planning to scrape the ground bowing forgiveness, but it’ll be worth it.

Parking Lot

Then there was the parking lot.  One particularly significant event took place that told me that all the lack of fussing while waiting was definitely for a good reason.

I was almost at the truck, with my goods and grandson in the cart.  A man started to quickly back out of the spot I was walking past.

Startled, I pushed my cart and grandson forward past the back of his car.  He did see me and hit the brakes hard.  I wasn’t in any real danger.

Still, my heart raced – and I still can’t think about this without choking up.

What happened?

At the same time the man in the car started quickly backing up, a little boy had broken free from his young mother’s grasp.  The boy was about 4 years old.

He was too small to have been seen by the man.  And the mother had been crouching, leaning forward to try to grab the boy.   She also would not have been seen by the man backing out of the spot.

The only reason certain tragedy was averted was because he happened to see me in the exact spot I was in and had stopped to avoid hitting me.

The tragedy would not have been the man’s fault.  After all, he could not have known these two were out of his line of sight.

The tragedy would not have been the young mother’s fault.  Children are wiggly little creatures when they want to be.

The tragedy would not have been the boy’s fault.  At four years old, he hadn’t the experience to foresee the danger he had put himself and mother in.

And, the tragedy was NOT averted because of some quick and clever thoughts racing through my brain.  I didn’t even know the situation had happened until it had passed.

So why am I writing this?

I wish to thank One who placed the cat lady and the coupon lady at the lines at just the right times to put me in the just the right place and time… and also for allowing me to see how the pieces fit in this particular puzzle today.

My bowing and scraping at work tomorrow will be done with humility and thankfulness.

The photo you see here is of a statuette that sits in a special place in my home and heart.

It represents a long struggle followed by a triumph of teamwork.

This was once placed in my family’s home, before that home was shattered.  Not physically shattered but still, the end result may as well have been the same.

My wife (at the time) had purchased this piece at a local shop.  She’s good at picking out attractive items.  The piece was a gift to me for (I think) Father’s Day.  It was to represent “Dad and the kids”.  You can see “Dad” at the top, hugging the kids.  It sat on a nice shelf, looking pretty like gifts do.

One day something happened when I was at work and this fell off the shelf onto the tile floor and shattered into small pieces.  “Ah, too bad,” said my wife, “it’s broken.  I’ll toss it out and get another one.”

My kids had a different opinion.

They painstakingly sought after all the pieces, looking under the desk and chairs until they found every one.  Then they worked as a team to glue each piece together to make the statuette whole again.

When I arrived home, I got the full story.  This moved me to tears, knowing my kids would care enough to put this back together.

I always thought this piece was pretty, but after knowing what went into re-building it, it has become beautifully stunning in my heart.

Things have happened since then.  I’m praying the kids are still working to put pieces back together.

As they do, I shall hold steady and keep this masterpiece safe for them.

It’s an interesting fact that 67% of internet users will believe what has been posted on public internet sites, research from an independent consulting firm of the Pennsylvania Institute of Science has found.

Surprisingly, when the words “interesting” and “fact” are included in the post, the number increases to 72%.

“Adding a web link to the post,” adds researcher T. Roland Larph, head of the research firm Veridian Dynamics, “will then boost the factuality ratio to 83.7%.  It’s an incredible phenomenon.”

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Veridian Dynamics, located in the hills of Western Pennsylvania, is not an unknown player in the search for understanding human interaction.  The team challenged the often-quoted concept that “85% of statistics are made up on the spot”.  The actual number is actually much smaller than this, hovering between 30 and 45%, according to the team.

More information about how the study was performed can be found in the following journal entry: Human Interaction on the Internet.

In my genealogy research i see a lot of examples where all i see are names and a set of sparse dates next to them – birth, maybe death, and some scattered census recordings. That’s it. And a spouse’s name maybe, equally bare.

That’s it, for what represents maybe 40, 50 or in some cases 70 years’ worth of the daily grind you and i face.

Haha ok, maybe no facebook or telecommuting (or tele-anything for that matter) but they had their equivalent for sure.

Point is, we’ve a new world to conquer every morning and rejoice in every evening – and in the end may have no way of showing what it was we actually did for that day.

This doesn’t mean what we do doesn’t matter.  Truth is, it’s actually the exact opposite.  Unseen forces that we can’t see or don’t think about much do impact our lives daily.

Think about things like gravity, time, and  – if one is spiritual in nature – all those mystical energies wafting about.  Without these, our world would be unrecognisable by us.  Our daily – and i dare say, minute-by-minute – existence is as much a part of the “external world” as are  items like these.

What we present to our family and friends exerts an energy and force that affects them, just as morning sunlight on a  summer sidewalk warms it, or rain on a slippery slope creates powerful mudslides.

A hundred years may pass.

No one may recall or have recorded our daily activities.

But they existed nonetheless, and moved others to act or think in ways they may not have done otherwise.

An article came across my desk related to how “poorly” Houston did regarding work commute times, in relation to other cities across the nation.  I found the article – while brief and objective – to be misleading, nonetheless.

Here’s why.

The article states that Houston (at #6) ranked below Abiline, TX (at #1).

The longest time in the time range specified for Houston was 29 minutes.  By comparison, Abilene was clocked at a speedy 14 minutes for the commute time.

While it seems pretty bad to have to drive twice as long to get to and from work in Houston than in Abilene, let’s consider some factors that were obviously not part of the ranking:

• Total city land mass in Houston = 601.3 sq. miles.  Abilene = 110.6 sq. miles.
• Total population in Houston = 2,099,451.  Abilene = 117,063

Given that for relative baselines, we run these times through the calculatron:

• Houston is physically bigger than Abilene.  Meaning there’s more area to drive from points A to B and back.

  But the commute time average in Houston is 0.04 minutes per square mile (29 mins / 601.3 sq. mi) whereas for Abilene it’s a whopping 0.12 minutes per sq. mile (14 mins / 110.6 sq. mi).

  That works out to be more than 2.5 times faster in Houston than in Abilene on average.

• Houston has more people living (and driving) in the city than in Abilene.  Meaning there are more cars/trucks/SUV/busses/donky carts on the road to drive behind, around, and through.

  But the commute time average in Houston is 0.00001 minutes per person (29 mins / 2,099,451 people) whereas for Abilene it’s a whopping 0.00012 minutes per person (117,063 people / 14 minutes).

  That works out to be more than 8.5 times faster in Houston than in Abilene on average in this regard.

My conclusion?  Houston still wins hands-down, especially when you consider the  sheer size and scale of infrastructure in the city.  The numbers in the survey and my viewpoint on them show me that this is really a nice place to be.

Not that there’s anything wrong with Abilene – as long as I don’t have to drive to work there.

Smileyface.

References:

http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2012/01/05/houston-has-one-of-texas-worst.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene,_Texas

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston

Being a hopeless cynic has actually helped me enjoy happy moments in life
to their fullest extent,
because I know they won’t last very long.

~ Awake ~

His heart was still racing, pounding with the occasional off-beat rhythm it sometimes did when he was under stress.

Her gentle but firm grasp of his head and shoulders helped tremendously, and he could feel his heart starting to slow and fall back into its normal pattern.

Still, the tears streamed freely down his unshaven cheeks, dripping from his closed eyes onto her silken nightshirt.

“Shhhh,” she murmured softly, adding the very very light rocking motion she had employed with the children when they were younger, “shhhh… it was just a dream, it’s ok…”

He sighed heavily, calming himself now, but didn’t disengage his middle-of-the-night grasp on his wife.

“You can’t imagine…” he started, then halted as the terrors threatened to envelop him again.

“No rush, my heart,” she whispered softly, “no rush… talk when you’re ready, share it when you can.”

They held each other for a long quiet time.  He ventured out with a single sentence after collecting his thoughts.

“We had – you had decided to leave me.”

She was taken aback.  “What?  No never…!”

“It was hell,” he continued now, wanting to purge this thought from his mind, “you left and the children were traumatized.”

“I left you and the kids?  What?”

“No – you left and took the kids.  I was stranded so far from home, alone.  No one would tell me what was going on at home.  And the kids went through their own versions of hell through our court fights and…”  He stopped as his mind and heart recalled the other things he’d experienced and seen what his previously-loving dream-wife had put all of them through.

“…and it was just too much.”  He finished weakly, not wanting to share with her the thought that he’d even imagine her to act in such a way.  What would she think of him then?

“O God, I missed you so much,” he continued more strongly, as this was so true.  He had experienced years’ worth of being away from her in the span of less than a few hours’ – or perhaps minutes‘ – sleep.  Dreams have a funny way of altering one’s sense of time and place…

As she reassured him, his mind and thoughts swirled back into the darkest places in his dream, as one would use one’s tongue to poke the spot where a recently pulled tooth had been.  Like a missing-tooth gap, it hurt, but there was more to uncover, he felt.

The loneliness, he recalled.  The dark dark moments of self-doubt.  Certainly he couldn’t have just come up with that on his own.  Maybe a recent movie or story had impacted him more than he thought it had?

Then came the sweetly bitter after-taste of whisky and the dangerous memories of  standing just a little too close to the train as it rushed its way into the station.  Dark and murderous ice fell on his heart again, just like it did back when…

“No no no no nonono…!”  He shouted, and this was out loud, as he pushed back hard.

And with that, he wasn’t in his bed any more.

~ Awake ~

His wife wasn’t there.  He wasn’t married; he was something else.

He fought to get an understanding of where he was, of what he was experiencing, of who he was.

“Back out” came the cold, tinny voice somewhere in the left side of his skull.

“Wha?” came his confused, spinning reply.

Things became clearer now that he’d time to feel his real body now, stretch his hands out and slowly shake his head.  The wires connected to the backs of his arms, his hands, and on his skull tugged a warning as he moved about.

…”Hey, no, listen….”

He couldn’t believe he’d been so careless.  That was just too close.

Now his head cleared nearly fully, but the tears he’d shared with his dream-self still clung wetly to his cheeks, dampening th sides of his face.  Some had worked their way into the corner of his mouth and he tasted the saltiness, like the taste of the sea when he’d taken the plunge months ago for the first time.

The experiment was thrilling and heart-wrenching at the same time.  To experience another’s life was almost too much to bear.  But like eating potato chips,one can’t consume just one.  How many times had he immersed himself, he wondered.  And wondered what these experiences were doing to his sanity.

“Back out” came the cold, tinny voice again.  His head started throbbing.

Confused for a moment, he gave this warning some further thought and examined his situation.

Ah. Ok.

He was still in there, in the experience.  Just a tiny bit, but still there, nonetheless.

His heart was still in there and was aching from the pain his dream-self was enduring.

Like a fisherman working a stuck lure from a tree, he carefully mentally tugged, felt something give way, then pulled sharply, to fully dislodge himself from that place.

He could feel his consciousness retreating, gaining speed, coming back fully to him now.  He was awakening.

But something changed, and the feeling of free-fall enveloped him as his mind retreated too far, and shot past him.

“Gaaa” was all he could say.  The sobs from his heart shook him as he opened the eyes of his mind yet again.

Again his heart started pounding – and the now-familiar feeling of confusion racked his mind.

“No no no nonononooooo….”

~ Awake ~

It was dark and quiet, save for the fan he had turned on before going to sleep.  The familiar whirring of the blades helped him sleep, and the slowly-oscillating fan also kept the mosquitoes off him every night.

“Ah what a dream,” he murmured, “I actually dreamt I was in a dream.  Haha, so weird.”

He rolled over to see if his wife was still sleeping.  If not, he could share his dream with her before it ran off, forgotten in the night – which happened often.  She was used to his nocturnal story-telling by now, so he reached out.

…and was a little shocked to feel the flatness of the sheets next to him.

It wasn’t just the flatness of the sheets that shocked him, as she often awoke in the middle of the night to visit the toilet.  Usually this is what would wake him in the middle of a dream like this.

The bit that shocked him was the fact that the side of the bed was cold.

He felt upwards, to check the pillow.

There was no pillow.

Then it hit him.

She wasn’t there.

She hadn’t been there for years.

As a matter of fact, this wasn’t even the bed they had shared o so many years and nights ago.

The sickly feeling of loss came down like a hammer.  Again.

It was him in the dream-within-a-dream he had experienced.  With one major exception.

All those things he couldn’t believe had happened, had indeed happened.  There was no wife of many years to comfort him in this place.  The woman who had replaced her, but occupied her too-familiar body had indeed done those things his dream-self had dreamt, said those awfully painful things, and was sleeping somewhere far away, or perhaps out even now with those new friends she had taken on to replace him.

The fan whirred on nonetheless, even as his blood turned to ice in the hard, distant bed of his.

The morning took a long time to arrive that night.

When I was a child I used to hold my breath hoping my mommy would let me have my way.

Thankfully she was more mature than I was, and taught me that playing well with others goes a lot further in reaching the goals I was trying to achieve.

These childish protesters who are figuratively ‘holding their collective breath’ until Momma Obama gives them their way are no different than I was when I was three years old.

They also need to grow up and learn how to function as adults and learn how to work inside a system instead of like spoiled children who drag their feet until someone spanks them or lets them have their candy or toys.

Then again, I’m certain many who are participating have learned it’s easier to blend into a crowd of collective thought and protest a general idea that requires no individual effort on their part other than to simply “be” and object to “greed”.  Very spacey new-age philosophy but very short-sighted.  So maybe these folks have moved beyond infantile behaviour and are moving into junior-high concepts of communal living.  That’s progress then, I guess.

This was a response to a comment posted by a friend.  I slightly altered the post here as I had forgotten to include my experiences with unmarried women when responding to the original comment.  But this is the full text otherwise.  O and I added pictures because hey, i can, it’s my blog, haha

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Comment

Two things can happen if you finally figure someone out, 1. You see that their genuine and a great person and you begin to care about that person then that leads to lust or envy which is a sin or 2. You find out their fake and living a lie then you begin to feel sorry for them then hate comes in the picture because you see what a waste it is of a good life….

My response

Ah this is one I can speak on with authority – or well, experience at least 🙂

Fortunately there are more than the two options suggested, yay!

In my line of work as a software consultant, I often work away from home. This last stint in the UK started off as a year-long contract. Ended up being a three year tour when all was said and done. Family were there with me for about 8 months during that time.

The rest of the time was just me, stress, lots of work, a lot of free time, eating, drinking, and scores of young attractive co-workers hanging on my every word, just waiting for any opportunity for us to get to know each other better. Nudge nudge wink wink.  Or cruising for “friendship” from girls in the red light districts if I didn’t want an office scandal on my hands.

Ok, that was the imagined life. The reality was that there was indeed stress, lots of work and *some* free time when I wasn’t working 10 to 12-hour days and wasn’t trying to hail my family on different frequencies. The co-worker/working girl thing? Well thankfully I’d prayed some prayers years ago which God was all to willing to grant.

I didn’t ask God to keep me from temptation, nor to deliver me from evil. Those are part of life, so I knew I needed to know how to deal with both. Instead I prayed He would to turn the scent and thrill of unfaithful desire into a rancid taste. And prayed that I would see past a beautiful face and personality to see the wonderful home and family she was building with her husband.

And I prayed that as and when a counseling moment might arise where she’d ask for input, I’d respond in a way that would honor the precious life she and her spouse were crafting before their children’s eyes.

And if she wasn’t married, had no kids, or was in an unhappy marriage?  Fortunately God had given insight into how relationships are more than what is shared with the family members.

Actions we take that “would never be found out” still ripple down our family lifeline, shaking things up and tossing the ship asunder.  Or they can vibrate down the family lifeline, creating the music we’ve promised to create with our spouse, soothing and encouraging our children and parents.  Or a combination of both.

So no, thankfully any temptation to “go out for a coffee maybe”, “sneak off for a quick quiet nip at the pub”, or “say love, how’s about a little excitement tonight” was water off a duck’s back.

That’s probably been the best set of prayers I’ve ever prayed for my life guidance – in this way I protect many hearts from despair.

As for option #2? Heh Shakespeare said it best – we are indeed merely players on the vast stage. Fortunately we’ve an earthly and church family who can help us stay on queue, and realise we’re still beautiful – even after the greasepaint comes off and we think no one’s around to peek at us.