Inspiration

I sometimes think there is a dimension beyond the four of experience and Einstein: insight, that fifth dimension which promises to liberate us from bondage to the long, imperfect past… …For a moment, the unearthly stillness of the desert enveloped us.

Then Newman said, “My father once told me a story I always think of, when the going gets rough and things look hopeless. It’s about Destiny….Destiny came down to an island, centuries ago, and summoned three of the inhabitants before him. ‘What would you do,’ asked Destiny, ‘if I told you that tomorrow this island will be completely inundated by an immense tidal wave?’

The first man, who was a cynic, said, ‘Why, I would eat, drink, carouse and make love all night long!’
The second man, who was a mystic, said, ‘I would go to the sacred grove with my loved ones and make sacrifices to the gods and pray without ceasing.’
And the third man, who loved reason, thought for a while, confused and troubled, and said, ‘Why, I would assemble our wisest men and begin at once to study how to live under water.’”

I, too, never forgot that story. When our cause seems doomed and the future lost, when despair becomes unbearable and the heart is on the edge of breaking, let men summon hope and honour and high resolve in yet one more stubborn affirmation: Come, let us assemble our wisest men and begin at once to think, to study, to try to learn – even to learn, if we must, how to live under water…

– excerpt from Leo Rosten’s Captain Newman, M.D.

Cheers, Darlin'...No, Really

I am stunned.

I am shaken.

I am completely taken aback by all of this.

For a moment in time, this aspiring writer was without her words.

…

But I am happy for you, so very, very happy.

I trust that you know what you’re doing. I trust that you are happy, that this makes you happy, and that you will be happy. You have always struggled against the current while at times I could only pretend to, or want to. I have always admired you for that. We are not the people we were once upon a time. Nor are we the people we thought we would be during this time. Do you agree with me that this is a decidedly good thing? I hope so.

We may not always see eye to eye on a lot of things, and I may be at times the unwelcome critic (with your best interests at heart, of course). Well, sometimes you can be my “censor bleep”, whether good or bad, and you may think I overstep my bounds in certain situations, and occasionally, I agree.

But I was my own censor bleep tonight. I realized that you are happy.

I realized that that’s what I would be arguing against. And I can’t do that.

You deserve to be happy more than most anyone I know and when all is said and done, it is not the words that are said that we remember but the actions, the fact that we share in each other’s joys and sorrows and all the stuff in between.

You amaze me. Thank you for letting me share in your joy.


…and as much as I support you, if I have to wear pink, we will have problems…