Step Into the Room

"It does not matter how many breaths you take in your lifetime.  What matters is what takes your breath away."  


Getting caught up in minutiae and small worries every day can steal away our precious time and deprive us of opportunities to be awed, to stand in wonder.  Big things happen every little moment of the day, but are we prepared for them?  


Unfortunately, no.  


A young person may not know this so well -- although I know some who do -- but a lifetime is only so long; we never know really, exactly know how long, but the clock is ticking.   


Here we sit in front of the TV, spending our precious time, using our lives up.  Here we sit in our cars, stuck in traffic, not taking any opportunity to stand in awe.  Here we are thinking we are useless or inferior or unworthy when, in truth, we are none of those things.  Here we go believing ugly things about ourselves and sit, shriveling up and sad, blinking fearfully over in the corner of a bored-out-of-our-minds existence.  


Sitting there waiting for something good to show up in the day, or our whole life long, is a really big gamble, and the odds are stacked against us.  The chances are pretty slim that a magical fairy godmother is going to tap you on the shoulder with a golden wand and grant your wishes and whisk you into a different existence.  


Haven't you heard that when a person is told they only have six months to live, they cut loose and do what they've really always wanted to do?  They realize that the time is now, the gift is there before them, and they finally decide to open it up and take a good look at what's inside.  


But you -- what about you?  What are you waiting for?  


Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. - Seneca


If you stood in the doorway of a very large room filled with gifts and never opened them, were timid, afraid to go over and pick one up and hold it, wouldn't that be the same thing as never doing the things you say you've always wanted to?  


If you wait and wonder, sit and mull it over, do not go forward with what you imagine, it is as if the play is over, the audience is leaving and the cleaning crew is beginning to sweep the floor.  


Be bold, try on that new hat, go out into the day and take notice of what's really before you.  Your gifts are more plentiful than you can possibly imagine.  The room of unwrapped surprises is limitless, infinite, and has nothing to do with fear.  Fear keeps you standing in the doorway, unprepared to take the opportunities within you.  Step into that room, reach for the boundaries of your imagination.  You'll never succeed in finding them.  And that is just plain good luck.  

Raising the White Flag

I've been watching spandexed bodies flying, spinning, flipping, running, skating, and flashing by so fast I can't see them unless I see it all again in slow-mo.  I am held willing captive by my television, white flag held high, taken prisoner by the scenes before my eyes.  It happens to me every Olympics, this surrender.  This is bad.  I have yielded heart and soul to the fantasy of Olympic endeavor even though I know it is a representation of only the most elite, most talented and gifted athletes the world has to offer in an arena created at extreme expense, leaving out the vast majority of humankind who also strive and compete.  But, then again, maybe they aren't left out.  Not totally.


It's true I've never come close and never will come close to being an elite athlete, but I need to know that those flying-squirrel ski jumpers are out there gently floating down long slopes to settle lightly and gracefully as you please 140 meters from liftoff.  I need to see a girl readying herself on a pair of skis before she slides down, and then up, and then way up into the cold sky where she does turns, tumbles, flips, and somersaults and lands again back on earth.  I need to see two people dancing with impeccable grace and flair on razor sharp skates to a cacophony of corny music and see them look effortless and fine.  I need to see an icy toboggan chute that barely contains a heavy sled with four muscular men crouching down, slashing downhill at 90 miles an hour.  


I need to witness it all that because I believe it's impossible to do those things.  I need to see the huge cauldron of fire set alight after a million-mile relay all around the country because I am small.  I am small, and I have attempted to live a good life, and my life has been safe.  I live in a small town where a few of our citizens can run pretty well or swing a golf club respectably, but from which no one has really distinguished themselves to Olympian heights.  


I swim and I think of Olympic swimmers who seem to have some ungodly ability to accelerate from an already insane pace.  I run and I think of diminutive Kenyan runners with the lungs of a whale who are so fleet that 26.2 miles is the same to them as my 1 or 2 miles are to me.  I ride my bike up Forest Avenue and I think of Tour de France riders storming up the slopes of Mt. Ventoux in France, a severe and horrible climb created by Lucifer himself.  


I need inspiration and hope and all my heroes, every one of them.  They are the gifted angels who fly among us, tapping us on the shoulder, nudging us to give it another shot, try again, go a little harder next time.  They have bitten off more than anyone should chew, swallowed it and grown up to be nearly immortal.   



Their movements are beautiful and they make it all look so very easy, so simple.  The simplicity is deceptive, but this is good.  A simple deception is beguiling and alluring, tempts us to believe that if we really do give it one more shot, maybe we'll do better, overcome a bit of adversity, prevail somehow.  The coolest part of it all is that when you believe you have the possibility of prevailing, beating the odds, sometimes you actually do.  


I will keep watching the Games, fascinated by the wild abandon represented in each arena, the attainment of rarefied glory because I need to.  I know this is a very specific groove, probably the most stirring and exciting one around.  However, you think this is bad, you should see me when July comes along and the Tour de France commences.  I'm gonna be soooo gone then, and happily so.  I surrender!