It seems that we have some vague and rather ethereal sense of where we’re going in this thing called life.  For the more contemplative soul, that sense might be quite refined.  For the casual traveler, it might be a bit more nebulous and scattered.  In many cases where we’re going is far more rigorously defined by all the places where we don’t want … [Read more...]

We’re a terribly independent sort.  There’s a bedeviling, yet fundamentally inherent need to be free of anything that we might have to be subservient to, or pass any degree of credit off to.  We want to pen the lines as the single and sole author of the text. Yet, despite our convictions to the contrary we all worship something.  We all have our … [Read more...]

We always have, and we always will have the intrinsic need to believe in something.  Life is a journey whose demands will always exceed whatever personal assets we might possess in an attempt to meet those demands.  Life always has and life always will require more of me than I have within myself to give it.  All of my accumulated resources … [Read more...]

“Thank you for talking to me!”  His words were surprising, direct and intentional.  Yet they were woven warm with all of the enchantment and depth that makes a human being unlike anything else in all of existence.  His words were heavy and labored, being nearly lost in his thick Hispanic accent.  His smile lit a face deeply etched by the lines of … [Read more...]

Larry Elder said, “A goal without a plan is just a wish.”  How many of us have a bunch of wishes that are nothing but wishes and become nothing more than wishes?  As time goes on we get tired of wishing because they come to nothing more than wishes.  We assume that wishes remain only that and that they are not capable of being moved from the vague … [Read more...]

“That’s good enough.”  How many times have those words come out of our mouths?  The idea of this lackluster commitment to the living out of our lives has become so prevalent that we’ve learned to articulate it in a whole bunch of different ways.  The rather robust vernacular that we’ve created to wave off responsibility and say “that’s good enough” … [Read more...]

Most of us are quite familiar with the old saying about ‘assuming.’  In fact, the rather biting truth about that saying has likely bitten us more than once.  Yet despite this rather endearing bit of truth (as well as the scars that we carry around with us that evidence it as true), we nonetheless go through life making a sizeable amount of … [Read more...]

We all have our monsters, whatever they may be.  For some, it’s fear of failure.  For others it’s lack of self-confidence.  And then there are other monsters like fear of relationships, or fear of risk, or fear of being vulnerable, or fear of rejection.  Then there’s the more obvious one’s like fear of heights or confined spaces or crowds.  The … [Read more...]

We would all prefer perfection . . . I think.  Somehow perfection frees us from failure and pain and struggle.  It just sets everything straight.  Perfection makes the road smooth and always sets it in the right direction at just the right speed.  It eliminates the fear of failure because failure’s simply not a part of it.  Uncertainty vanishes.  … [Read more...]

Ever feel empty?  I mean that drug down, tapped-out, bottom of the barrel, the well’s dry, running on fumes kind of empty.  Most of the times when we’re exhausted we can reach way down and pull up some morsel of energy to get us through.  There’s that reserve, that back-up that we can typically reach into when we need to in those desperate … [Read more...]