"And like that bully on the playground,
when you finally take a stand
and call him out when you've had enough
and really have nothing left to lose,
you know it can go 1 of 2 ways ~
he will either back down and leave or
stay and fight. But you've come too far
to back down. And you realize,
the choice he makes is insignificant,
just like him. This moment
is about you and the choices
you make, not about his voice,
the one rattling around
in his pockets along with the change he
stole. His story doesn't define you.
The only power he has is that which you've
given him. And suddenly, in your heart,
you feel your strength,
pounding through the tips of your fingers.
And being brave becomes less about
fighting and more about being able to
follow the quiet road that is being
laid out before you, the road
only you can see.
And the question becomes,
will you follow it?" - Casey Kurz, from her blog
My wife, Poemfish, asked me long ago to read a book called "Five Wishes." Although I said I would, I really really really didn't want to. My negative side kept telling me that it's utter self-help crap, and I believed it, and I refused to read it, even knowing it would probably only take me a few hours to complete, and it would bring a smile to my wife's face.
Instead, whenever I thought I might pick it up, I would fire up a video game or read some vaguely interesting and incomprehensible scientific discovery on the internet. Or I'd organize some photos, aimlessly putting them in folders, or I'd just waste time in some other way, probably watching some horrible show on TV. Anything but read that damned book.
Yet today, as she was away for the entire day at a creative workshop, and I decided to follow her lead and give it a go.
Let me say that, at first, I didn't enjoy it. My inner cynic kept screaming at me to stop. I kept picking apart the guy's words, asking myself how much money he's made so far writing this book.
At one point I said, "I could write a book like this and be rich - jerk!" I think I used stronger language than this though...
But for some strange reason I forced myself to stop that nonsense.
I sat down and read old posts from my wife's blog. Her words are filled with inspiration and hope. Her posts always seem to relate to this one theme, or message:
This world is what we make of it. Let's fight our fears and struggles, our insecurities and our demons - let's let them all go and see what we can make of this life.
I took time to pull out some Howard Zinn books, and I listened to his message:
Yes - this world is full of darkness and evil. Of oppression, hatred, and fear. Yet we can as individuals make a difference, and as an individual in a movement - we can change the world.
So I took a deep breath and decided to sit down and give the book a shot. I had to put aside my sometimes-not-so-hidden machismo and see if this book could do me some good.
...
And it did.
I hope.
As always - what I get out of this experiment will only be as powerful as I let it.
The five wishes I made could change my life.
They could be completely ignored.
Although I have an abundance of confidence, I'm not always the person I project to everyone around me. There are times where my confidence, my anger, my temperament, and my intellect are only disguises and distractions to the real me - the one who sometimes fears so much for the people he loves that he steps back away from them - the one who sometimes has so much hope for the world that he would be devastated if he couldn't change it, so he doesn't try - the one who still feels like he could have made a difference in his friend's life if he would have paid more attention - the one who feels his love of teaching fading as he focuses on the small, unimportant things - the one who finds it far too easy to find mindless solace in video gaming and aimless pursuits - the one who far too often fails to build on his wife's endless enthusiasm for life and, by taking the road most traveled, destroys opportunities for growth and living life to the fullest.
So allow me to end Memory - the blog I founded based on this idea:
We live in fragments of time, in a reality in which time passes so quickly, it's almost impossible to grab hold of what we are experiencing. Even thousands of photographs over a lifetime amount to mere minutes... in the end, memory is all we have.
The thing I now realize is that memory is not all we have. Thousands of photographs over a lifetime do not measure that person's life.
Instead, we have this moment. Right now. What we make of it is who we are.
