Me, my first glasses and my first view of the world clearly.
From birth to the back end of 2nd Grade I was visually challenged. This picture is me and my Beginnings of seeing the world Clearly, if that is possible. Maybe because of the combination of being somewhat blind and and a foreigner I have spent a significant part of my life playing catch up – learning to read in my late teens, finding my K – 12 Education a transitional nightmare and feeling, for the most part, I was coming up short – wanting.
In horse racing there are riders that win, place and then the “also Rans” – they participated, raced, were there, but for the record book they’re only insignificance was they “filled out the field.” I have often felt I Ran insignificantly. In my dotage, now, I wonder…..
My friends have been the best teachers in the Church; My bosses have grown into Apostles and Seventies; I have worked with some of the best professional writers and speakers produced by the BYU speaking circuit and true I was there, I Ran, I taught, I spoke, but, in my mind – so what?
And then there are my kids, each of them better than their Dad. I marvel at their talents, in righteousness, in service, in scholarship and wisdom. But hey, I am their Dad, but, then again, look at their Mom! Wow! But I won or maybe conned her heart.
She is mine – FOREVER
The Grand Guyboo in Venice, heading for the Rialto Bridge.
When the dilemma of comparison of ourself to other comes up we should alway remember the two great examples –
Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey
Ebenezer Scrooge
George was too harsh, had no idea how good he was and Ebenezer was in desperate need of an assisted look at himself.
My experience at 74 is my assessment of my life performance tends to reflections of regrets and fully visualized moments and days I disappointed myself – there are days when I really wish I could have a do over. I don’t live in regret, but wish I could go back and fix some stuff – am I a George or and Ebenezer?
Honest, I am grateful that God let me live my life as me. Me and my Camel Phil. Clarence the Angel won’t need to intercede in my life – I know I have lived fully and I am a blessed man.
But a couple of Thoreau’s quotes give me pause –
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”
“Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.”
But Henry David Thoreau didn’t worked two full time jobs, marry and have six kids. He lived alone and thought deep thoughts, but he did make a better pencil. And being fair he died when he was 44. We all have our niche, our hand filled with some gift and Henry Dave handed his to Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
Thoreau Pencils paid for his Harvard education, made him secure and covered the $28.50 for his year at Walden Pond
So divine discontent nags, but not for long. Life is still here and I am living it.