Magic

 

February 14, 2022

 

Greetings from the mystical,  

 The tiny theater was dark now, only the outline of the seats could be seen from the stage.  He sat on a prop box, tipped sideways on stage, lit a ragged, hand rolled cigarette.  The blue smoke curled around his face, held him like a loving wraith.

 The manager had taken down the show bills and rolled them up, and they lay on the floor next to his feet, curled and water stained.  He could see the top edge where it read ‘The Amazing Alessandro’. He laughed a little, chuffing wisps of smoke as he did. 

“Not particularly ‘amazing’ in this moment.” he muttered, pushing the paper away with his foot.  And then he heard her.

“You are amazing in ways that words fail to capture.”

 She spoke from the shadow of the red velvet curtain, a voice he knew in any crowd.  She walked out of the wings, graceful, regal almost, and moved across the stage to where he sat.  She leaned over to kiss the top of his head, and then sat next to him. 

 “We can start again.” she said.  “There are other places we can be.”

“No. People are too cynical for magic. Even the children mock us now.”

She didn’t argue, except to say he might be part of the problem.  “You let them talk you out of the magic, Eddy.”

 He shook his head.  “It’s all changed, now there’s movies and telephones.  No one wants to go to a holy place like this,” he waved his arm at the empty seats, “and see us create the impossible right in front of their eyes.  They are too consumed with the flickering electricity.  Ach.”  He ran his hand over his eyes. 

 He had to admit, his props were looking a little tired.  And, while he was admitting things, the mirror wasn’t doing him any favors either.  He looked down at his hands, his long slender fingers knotted with swollen joints, the fingers yellowed from too many thousand cigarettes.  He slid his cuff up slightly, notice that the sleeves were frayed, the fabric of his tuxedo jacket shiny with age. 

“Lily, my final illusion was to fool myself.”  He held up his hands.  “How did I get old?”

She laughed, a glittering sound, and the place was changed.  She held his face and looked at him.

“I remember when you came into the diner.  I had only been there a week and already knew I wouldn’t be there much longer.” she said. “And I saw you, still wearing your top hat, and that cape.  I saw you in the doorway and I thought the word; ‘magic’.”

He smiled at that.  The years parted like the heavy stage curtain, and he saw their life whirling around them.

They got a sparkly sequined costume from a burlesque dancer he knew, cut off some of the more dramatic tassels, and she became ‘Valentina’, his Beautiful Assistant.   She was his ‘box jumper’, a phrase she told him not to use.  “I’m not a prop,” she said, “I’m part of the magic.”  He didn’t argue.  They did their act, made a little money, made a life.  She put herself in boxes and he sawed her in half and slid swords through her and she emerged smiling.  And she stepped into the Infinity Box and disappeared, and the audience gasped in awe.

 Even today, he marveled at how she could fit through a small space, still lithe and willing.  He did illusions and card tricks, made things disappear, balls and handkerchiefs and rabbits and doves.  She whirled around him, glistening and beautiful, smiling, making the magic possible.

 They did their last show in front of empty seats, the only people who witnessed was the stage manager who slipped into the alley before they finished.  The cages where he kept the rabbit and the doves were empty now.  He’d sold some of the other things, the sword box, the saw box.  It hurt him to do it, but they had to eat.   

The woman who ran the boarding house where they lived had locked them out, kept their last puny possessions as payment of the rent.  They slept in the theater on a bed of excelsior, held each other curled up under their coats.

 He pinched the ember from his cigarette and tucked the remainder in his vest pocket.  He looked at her, still a little bit in awe that such a creature could care for him. 

They sat in the dim light of the stage, and spoke in the old language, the one made before words, before magic was a separate thing, before it needed to be understood until it vanished.

 “We need to go.” she said softly.

“Go?”  He laughed, with no smile.  “There’s nowhere left to go.  The world has moved on without us.”

“Thou.” she said, her voice deeper now, “Thou hast the magic, and the word cannot exist without thee.” 

“Thou.” He looked into her, saw their truth.  “Thou made me possible, made us, made me thine.”

Time was enchanted by them, held still with them, pushed away the impatient moments that waited.

“We need to go.” she said again.  The look in her eyes said all he needed to know, which was to be wherever she was.  She stood and took his hand and led him across the stage to the Infinity Box, looked over her shoulder at him, and opened the door.  Still holding him, she stepped through the door.

 He saw the place inside, saw it surround her, felt himself pulled with her.  She locked eyes with him, told him all he needed to trust, and he followed her into forever.   In the shadowed place on stage there was a puff of light, which fell about the old boards like living sparks, and the box, and the living inside it, went to where magic would never be doubted.

  

Hope this finds you believing,

 

David

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright © 2022  David Smith

Life Wish

 

February 7, 2022

 

Greetings from the peak,

 Yesterday I went for a run in the winter, a twenty-mile loop in our arctic mitten.  I left home in the dark, the sky was scoured clean by pitiless winds, and only a few stars braved the blackness.  The world outside my balaclava was covered with snow, held in place by brittle cold.

 The first miles gave me no reason to be optimistic, which I knew better than to pay attention to.  Knowing better doesn’t always matter.

 By the time it was light I was in the farmlands, where the wind sliced over the open places and erased any register on Fahrenheit.  It reshaped the snow, sending sensual shapes over the icy roads.  The condensation on my mask froze solid, and my legs went numb from the relentless cold.

 I stumbled across the snow, slipping on the ice underneath, moving so slowly it might not record as running.  I’ll admit, if I hadn’t been ten miles from my front door, I would have given in to the temptation of a warm fire and steaming cup of coffee.  I was tired, the week’s miles stacking up in my legs, now two leaden trunks under me.

 I was fumbling with my water, frozen slush in the bottle, when the sun finally crested the horizon.  In that moment the light painted the white canvas with a brilliant gold.  The sun found  a range of tiny peaks in the snow thrown off the road, a tiny replica of giant mountain cousins around the world.  When I just focused on them, I could have been watching the sunrise on the Himalayas; the stark white, the blue shadow, all burnished in the warm light that seemed to only exist on the peaks.  Then I remembered something. 

 A few years ago, I watched a documentary about a group of alpinists, mountain climbers, a small cadre of world caliber adventurers who decided to summit Meru in India.  It’s not the highest mountain to climb, or the most famous, but it has been nearly impossible to accomplish.  The story is compelling on its own, but the foundation of it tells something else.

 Conrad Anker led this team, a world-renowned climber who has summited Everest three times.  He has climbed some of the most challenging peaks in the world, and for every ascent, there are at least as many failures, some of which nearly cost him his life.   Most of Anker’s friends have died by falling off mountains, which led someone to wonder if they all have a death wish.

 “It is not a death wish; it is a life wish.” he said.

 I wrote it down when I heard it, and seeing it later by itself on the page, it seems a little dramatic.  Except I know the context.  The answer was to say: we have found the edge of human endurance, the most demanding challenge to our abilities, we have tapped the essence of our human experience.  When we are there, we are fully alive.  Since we have been there, we have to go back again, not to tempt death, but to call to life.

 My adventures never take me to anywhere close to death; at worst, maybe some sore legs and a numb face.  I don’t live that life, not this time around.  Once in a while, though, I realize how any of us, even plodding runners, can scrape away the dullness.  We find ourselves touching what is in us, sometimes undiscovered, and it grabs us by both wrists and demands we pay attention: it is a life wish.

 Occasionally people will hear about my running and shake their heads, wondering what I am running from, or if there are some masochistic tendencies at work, or perhaps I am trying to prove something, or maybe some other experience from the template of their own life.  But in truth, it’s because that’s one of the places I find my life wish.

 Conrad Anker said: “Meru is the culmination of all I’ve done and all I’ve wanted to do.”  It took three tries, monumental efforts, which nearly killed a good friend.  And they went up because that’s where life is.  And he says this: “The summit is what drives us, but it’s the climb that matters.”

 In ten weeks, I will run Boston.  These long runs are building blocks for that challenge, but I need to remember that they are also part of the climb.  It’s the climb that matters.  The climb, the miles, the hours of practicing the violin, or raising a child, or teaching or hacking at words to make them say what you want heard.  It is the climb, that’s where the life wish is.

 We have to invest ourselves to find it, we have to reach past the easy, the expected, or the status quo.  That’s why sometimes it looks dangerous or reckless or crazy, or worse, like a death wish.  So, we do it, because from the moment we are created, and every time after when we are shown where it is, we wish for life.

  

Hope this finds you wishing,

 

David

Sweet

 

January 31, 2022

 

Greetings from the edge of the water,

 A few weeks ago, I heard a song that reminded me of another time, back when our children were so small and helpless that there was not other choice but to protect them.  When the instinct to keep them safe was never more than a breath away, so close to the surface it ruled every moment.

 I remembered taking them to the pool so they could take swimming lessons, because they had to learn to swim to be safe.  I watched them, with little to offer, except this urge to keep them from drowning.  If I could do nothing else, then I wanted to be the buoyancy that would make that possible.  I would be close enough to grab their hand.

 I’ve seen my kids get hurt, sometimes seriously, and it’s probably the same heart wrenching pain all parents go through.  When they were broken, an arm, or their heart, when they were lost, when they were afraid.  Without anyone ever teaching this connection to me, it is there, a principal part of my essence, placed there when I was created, I think.

 I will confess I was not the parent I would wish for my children, but thankfully my influence was softened by my wife’s.  No one comes to the job completely prepared, and that was never more obvious than my experience. 

 When my daughter was an infant, I trimmed her nails for the first time.  I accidentally snipped a bit of her finger, and tiny bead of blood appeared.  She looked at me, right into me, and for an eternity before her first cry, she waited to see if I could explain this pain.  Just now, over three decades later, I feel the question, and the soul piercing ache it left in me.

 Our children had the same bruises and setbacks that most kids do.  But I knew then that these things would pass, and that they would add up to be experiences that would protect them in their future.  When they were independent, strong enough and smart enough to have a life of their own choices.

 I’m a terrible swimmer.  I have no example to give, no technique to teach.  All I can offer is this passion that says “I will lift you up.  I will make it possible for you to swim.  If you need my hand, grab hold and I’ll do anything I can to keep you safe.  But paddle, dammit.”

Ann Lamott said: “We can't arrange peace or lasting improvement for those we love most in the world. They have to find their own way, their own answers. You can't run alongside your grown children with sun screen and chap stick on their hero's journey. You have to release them. It's disrespectful not to.”

And so, we release them.  They move into their own lives, making bigger and bigger steps completely independent of parental direction, until one day they are capable and smart and resourceful and self sufficient.  They are shaping their own days.  It’s then that parents are asked to do the hardest thing; nothing.

 Even then I watched and tried not to worry, tried to give their life over to them.  They check in with little things, and fewer of those, until they are clearly on their own.  Years go by and it simply becomes the norm that they are independent of you.  You see them like a friend, perhaps. They are like any other adult you meet in the world. 

 No, not really.  Not ever. 

 We do all there is to do, to teach them, to share the lessons that seem to apply, to give them the example that you hope will matter.  And it works, mostly, and they are ready for the world.  Except they go to war.  They get on planes.  They go for a run on a lonely road.  Or something else.  Or something else that wasn’t even on the list of things we worried about.

 Last week we saw a family we know come crashing into that reality.  When the random chaos of the universe intersected with a well-ordered plan.  A son’s routine eye exam led to terrifying news, and then brain surgery, and the agony of waiting.  And then the scrim was torn away, that gauzy pretend barrier between the parent and the child, where they are all grown up and we are content with their independence. And we all felt it, not just because Jackson is my sons’ friend, but because we all share the terrible, wonderful burden and privilege of being someone’s parent.

 My children know how to swim, some better than others, but they are all capable, and not afraid of the water.  I am proud of them, each for their own lives, and I can see they are strong and self-reliant.  But I know, and maybe they do, that for as long as I am alive, I am never going to be too far to reach out and grab their hand.

 

Hope this finds you watching,

 

David

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright © 2021 David Smith

Incredible Time

 

January 24, 2022

 

Greetings from the future,

 Every once in a while, I will stop muttering long enough to realize what an incredible time we live in.  This usually takes place in a situation where I am explaining the world to my younger self, of which there are myriad versions.  You might think that is a strange pastime, but it is a beautiful gift for both of us.

 I have a few things that made the list this week.  I shared some of this with my younger self on a long run, one of those mystical times when the idea wasn’t impossible.

 We have four refrigerators.  We could have more, we have the room, and we have more electricity.  I am not exactly sure where we get the electricity, which is another incredible thing.  When I need it, I turn a switch or clap my hands, and lights come on or a coffee pot brews, and when I don’t need it, I just stop using it.  It seems to just wait patiently in the walls, loyally, like a very practical Golden Retriever.

 We have three microwaves.  Granted, one of them turns itself off in the middle of whatever important thing we are cooking, for no apparent reason, other than perhaps judgement on how often I eat nachos.  We ordered its replacement by touching a picture of it on a little screen, and it was delivered, free, a few days later from some faraway place.  In fact, it was so free, it was delivered twice, which is why we have three microwaves at the moment.

 We have nine remote controls.  I’ll be honest, there are probably more, but I have more respect for you than to go look for them right now.  The nine that I know about exist primarily for the delight of a little girl named Ila, who is also one of the reasons that I would describe this time of existence as incredible.  One of the nine remotes, I could not testify under oath as to which, turns on our TV, of which we have only one, I say gratefully.

 I have not seen any of ‘Walking Dead’, ‘Games of Thrones’ or even the ancient ‘Breaking Bad’.  I’ve done my share of binge watching, a term that should alarm us a little, but as tempted as I am to catch up, I was stunned by a report from the omnipresent Nielsen, which estimates that last year Americans streamed 15 million years of content.  When I explained this to my younger self, it was incredible that the content exists, but even more so that we watched it.  Made me want to stay outside.

 There are billionaires who have built rocket ships to travel to Earth.  I suppose that’s not their ultimate destination, but so far, they have been successful in reaching their target.  I am sure that one day this kind of resourcefulness will turn to something that will matter, but for now, it’s this.

 Suddenly millions of people are working from their bedrooms.   I tried to explain this to my younger self, and realized that taken out of context, it sounds ludicrous.  It’s not all good, but it is incredible. Working from home, for many, has become living at work.

 Seventy-two years ago, the federal government specified what French dressing is.  It might seem strange to you that the government would have an opinion, and it turns out it’s a rare one.  The FDA only has three salad dressings that it deems to regulate, French being one, and they have a strict definition of what can be sold as such.  The Association for Dressings and Sauces petitioned the FDA to revoke the standard of identity for French dressing, and after two decades of consideration, and another year of edge-of-the-seat drama, it was lifted this week.  What’s incredible to me in this, isn’t simply the ludicrous regulation, but rather that there exists a body of lobbyists who speak for the Association for Dressings and Sauces. 

 We have a woman as vice president, and a person whose color, and, by the way, her gender, once might have kept her from voting.  There is a pandemic wreaking havoc in every corner of the earth, which has inspired incredible response, both good and bad.  We can buy sushi at the 7-11.

 Technology, medical advances, athletic achievements, amazing books have been written, someone thought to put a fried egg on top of a hamburger.  Racism is not solved, but people are talking.  Poverty exists, but there are more who are sharing what they have.  Hearts are broken and people find love and hearts are healed.  And the artists and the poets and writers and the song writers pave the way toward beauty.

 And the sun comes up every morning.  And our hearts beat and we breathe in and out, and our eyes see and our fingers touch and we are alive. And it’s the little things, not expectations, that make life worth living.  And coffee.  And the world keeps spinning in greased grooves.  Incredible.

 

Hope this finds you talking to yourself,

 

David

 

 

 

Copyright © 2021 David Smith

Newspapers

 

January 17, 2022

 

Greetings from the lede,

 I bought a newspaper last week.  It is such a remarkable thing that I can also tell you the last time I bought one.  It didn’t just dawn on me, I have been aware, but the newspaper has nearly vanished from my life, and I miss it.  So, I’m telling you, because I think you do too, sometimes.

 I don’t have a favorite newspaper, but if I did, this one would not be it.  Not because of the writing or the editorial stance or the quality of the layout.  It is missing some personality.  Comics, for example.  Commentary on the opinion page that obviously comes from the writer’s personal experience, with no apology.  Even so, it was good to have my hands on the news.

 I grew up with newspapers in the house, piles of them.  I loved the Sunday comics, in color, spent time looking at pictures and reading the shorter pieces, curious but not engaged.  Later I learned that the people who made the paper were important; not celebrities, but legitimately important.  I began to read with more respect for the ideas there, and how they were presented.

 When I was young, maybe ten, I inherited a paper route from a neighbor kid.  There was no contract, no orientation, just a list of addresses that expected the paper to be delivered.  A truck would come and unceremoniously drop the efforts of hundreds of people in a bound cube of newsprint at the end of my street.  With even less ceremony, I would open the cube and fold each paper into rolls that could be more or less efficiently flung at people’s porches, from my ink-stained hands.

 On Sundays the papers were gargantuan and had to be wrapped in rubber bands.  There were more sections, with more pages, and then there was giant stuffers that went in every paper, advertisements from Kmart and Hamady Brothers and Radio Shack.  Once the papers were rolled, I filled an enormous canvas bag with the results, hoisted it over my bony shoulders, and then staggered under the weight of journalism for an hour every afternoon and a bit more on Sunday mornings.  I can’t say I represented the vocation proudly.

 This little window of time captures how newspapers mattered to me and I didn’t know why.  It was easier to take them for granted, resent their presence, even.  They were heavy and dirty and distracted me from my fun.

 When I had my first address of my own, I ordered a newspaper delivered every day.  Later I took two a day, a frivolous excess, but I liked having the contrast of writing, even when the papers covered the same stories.  I felt grown up, responsible, paying attention to the world in this way, even if I didn’t always understand it.  It wasn’t long before the papers piled up and automatically were recycled, most unread.  I rarely missed the comics, if that tells you anything.

 Years rolled on and then the days came when I thought the newspapers were a silly expense.  If I wanted to know the news, I would watch TV.  On the off chance I wanted a paper, I would buy one, read it while I was eating lunch.  The world rolled on, made news, it was written about, and explained and made relevant, and sometimes I knew and other times I didn’t.

 This little window of time captures how newspapers mattered to me and I didn’t know why.  It was easier to take them for granted, resent their presence, even.  They were heavy and dirty and distracted me from my fun.

 One day, maybe eighteen years ago, an editor of the Flint Journal took me to lunch and asked me if I would be interested in writing a column for the paper.  Which I was, and I did.  For five years I was a tiny, trivial part of the character of our newspaper.  I wrote funny things to distract people from their horoscopes or the weather, which coincidentally were on the same page as my column.  It was interesting and challenging and led to very rich and satisfying moments. 

 It also meant I was paying close attention when the newspapers faltered, when the world no longer saw them as relevant or fast enough.  My perspective was like a stagehand, holding the scripts, while the main players stood under the lights and watched the audience get up and leave during the second act.  Watched the boards dissolve around them, watched what mattered to them become an empty space.

 I have been around long enough, and have been aware enough, to know that when newspapers began to fail, something changed in how the news of the world reached us.  In truth, I didn’t know it until after, which is the worst time to learn that kind of lesson.

 I’m not naïve, I know that the motives of the publishers and editors and writers of the newspapers were not always simple and pure.  But I suspect that the ethical standards, the values that were imposed by the people who brought us newspapers were more carefully considered than what we experience today.  I will also add that there is value in having the news shared by people in your community.  There is a contract, and a sense of responsibility, in that connection.

 I won’t apologize for the bit of newspaper nostalgia here, and the similarity to the poetic nature of listening to good music on a record album.  I like the feel of a newspaper.  I like looking at the words in print, especially when it’s clear that whoever wrote them, and edited them, cared about the reader.  Respected us.  There is a relationship there that is missing in some other media.   That came back to me last week when I bought a newspaper, that heavy, dirty, portal to another time.  I miss it.

  

Hope this finds you licking your thumb to turn the page,

 

David

 

 

Copyright © 2022 David Smith

Winter Words

 

 

January 10, 2022

 

Greetings from the open places,

 It’s winter here, which means something different, perhaps, where you are.  Where I live, the world freezes in various forms, sometimes on the ground, or in the water, and often in the air.

Nature paints everything in cold.  Ice on the eves, snow lining the branches, frost on the glass, small creeks heal over in crystal scars.

 I’ve watched this happen for countless winters, and still I can be surprised.  Usually while I am in the middle of resenting the season’s presence.

 Yesterday morning I left home hours before the sun came up, intent on running a dozen miles.  On top of the layers of things I thought necessary to keep unfrozen things unfrozen, I wore a headlamp that poured a circle of light onto the places in front of me.

 There is a feeling you probably know, when life suspends all of what you thought you should be thinking, and gives you something else.  Usually something better.  For me, a long run invites this to happen and I am rarely disappointed.

 I crunched along the old snow until and then turned into the wind, felt it’s hand against my chest.  We didn’t need to be introduced, we are old friends, although we rarely agree.  I could feel the force explore me, seeking open places to sear with cold.

 I lowered my head against the force and drove into it, trying to be aerodynamic, a comical idea which inspired the wind to laugh in gusts.  I know better, and I relented, and Nature gave me a gift, not as consolation, but to show me it could.

 The wind scoured the world and gathered snow in its grip.  It sliced down the road toward me and created art in the air captured by my light.  Snow was coming at me like galaxies of stars, and I felt like an astronaut hurtling through the universes. 

 I let go of my struggle against the headwind, and simply watched the snow stream toward me.  It was hypnotic;  I lost track of time, and for a few miles, forgot the few worries that I left the house with.

 After a few miles I turned north, and the wind created new art.  Now the snow formed nearly solid lines of grey in the light in front of me.  If I’d had a snow pencil, I could have written a note to the Nature there, sent it on the wind.

 In the dim light I could make out the shapes of animals racing across the snow, their dark silhouettes bold against the crepe of winter.  Thudding across the snow and then up onto the road, their hooves clattering on the icy pavement, and in a few bounds, they were flying across the snow in the fields beyond.  I slowed long enough to shine my lamp in their direction.  They were nearly invisible except for the glowing green eyes, floating in the dark.

 Miles passed and I ran west again.  The wind bullied the temperatures down.  Out here the farms push back the trees so the wind can dance, wild and unfettered.  It howls across the open places, scours the narrow ribbons of road, seethes between the low shrubs, the few thickets of oaks.

 I ran past bare fields coated with snow, a few houses dotted the road, each with a stand of trees to divert whatever the seasons brought.  I could feel patches of ice form on the clear pavement, little surprises to keep me on my toes, or send me on my back.  I came to the road where I would turn east, already eager to feel the wind behind me, when it would be an ally again.

 As I ran onto the crossroad, I lost touch with the earth.  In the moment I thought: “This is impossible.”  Which it was not.  The road was coated in black ice, a nearly perfect frictionless surface.  My momentum carried me across the two lanes, somehow I was able to stay on my feet, and I slid sideways over the road and into the snowy ditch on the other side.

 I laughed out loud, amazed that I hadn’t fallen.  I ran again, stumbling along in the snow, occasionally testing the pavement, still slick with invisible ice.  I gave up on thoughts of pace or training, and simply ran, clumsy and awkward on the edge of the road.  I turned again, tiptoeing across the slick road, now back onto hardpacked snow, glazed with ice.  There was almost nowhere to run without slipping.

 I felt the frustration build, knowing it was foolish to let it take hold and still fought to keep control where it didn’t belong to me. 

 I finally stopped, breathless, and struggled to keep my feet under me.  I was in the lee of a copse of pines, and the wind went elsewhere to play.  I looked up into the light from my lamp, watched the mist from my breath writhing in the air, like another living thing, but part of me.

 I said words into the dark air, watched them form into calligraphy in the beam of light.  The letters swirled in white form, mingling with the others, then becoming new things.  The cloud formed a prayer of sorts, an exhalation of fear and worry.  I said the words that matter most, and sent them into the world.

  

Hope this finds you open,

 

David

 

 

 

Copyright © 2022 David Smith

Ascend

 

 January 3, 2022

 Greetings from the new leaf,

 Most of us are considering the new year with various versions of expectation or apprehension.  Many of us will attempt, again, to shape the outcome of the whirling calendar, by adopting a purpose, or a philosophical theme. 

 My own approach in this effort often centers around a word, something of significance I can hold as a talisman, to form my feelings in each day.  It’s helpful, I’ve found.   This year, I chose the word ‘Ascend’; To rise up, to climb, to move toward a peak.    It’s an ambitious word to carry around, which is what I want.

 It won’t surprise anyone who knows me, but as soon as I chose the word, it attracted other words.  I didn’t have the heart to disinvite any of them, and by the magic of Monday, an acronym formed.  So, ‘Ascend’ gave me a nest to keep these words together

 Awe.  Whatever is exciting in this next day and those after will be framed by our response.  Some days it means waking up and saying “Prepare to be amazed.”  Being astonished at what the day holds means we have set aside cynicism, we have laid down grudges, we have pushed aside our numbness to the beauty of our world.  Wonder and amazement are within us, and when we cross paths with the incredible things that exist, we only need to let our awe take over.

 Seek.  Very little on this list of words will happen unless we search for the intersection of our lives and the great possibilities of each day.  We need to make it our duty, to ourselves and the people who care about us, to seek out what is waiting to make our lives richer.

Celebrate.  Another companion from years past, but a word that I need close by to remind me to look for the reasons to honor.  And to do it with the unbounded energy of an eight-year-old on his birthday.  The happiest people I know look for reasons to laugh, to sing, to dance.  It isn’t driven by Hallmark or anniversaries, but rather the passion that resides in all humans.

 Enthusiasm.  It’s a lightweight, overused word, easy to disregard. And yet, I’ll keep it.  A great eagerness to be involved in something you enjoy, that you think is important.   It is at the heart of passion.  Years ago, I met Bert Jacobs, one of the founders of the ‘Life is Good’ brand.  I said then: “I want what that guy has.”, which was passion.  It was expressed in pure, unmonetized enthusiasm.  Enthusiasm is not artificial.   It is born when we connect with our best selves, and when we allow ourselves to give in to the emotion that whirls inside us.  The Greek root of this word is ‘entheos’; with God or of God.  It may be we were born to live in this state, and simply forget, or allow other things to exist instead.

Nature.  One of the most important lessons of my life is that Nature, a real living entity, holds the restorative powers that many of us seek in our chaotic lives.  Nature is a host of life, it makes possible all manner of existence, and in that process creates boundless beauty.  It is a partner with us here on earth.  Nature has its own agenda, but it will share with us the lessons we need and the solace we desperately seek.

Discover.  A word I’ve carried forward from other years.  Discover what awaits, about me, about others, about God, about history, about art.  The challenge in this word is that it’s harder to do it by accident, and it’s easy to resist.  It means asking questions, looking around corners.  We have to be open to the possibility that still exists in this fully explored world.

Ascend is not the perfect word, it is meant to inspire other words too.  Ascend: aspire to your best self, to the person you sometimes set aside so you can pay the bills or make someone happy.  Ascend: challenge to do what you are capable of.  

‘Ascend’ because there will be challenges and surprises and disappointments, and it’s best for me, for us, to rise above them.  We will meet people who will be discouraging, and the choice will be to join them or to aim higher.  ‘Ascend’, not simply to be better but because it’s necessary.  We are not meant to coast, or to settle, or to find our level.  We are meant to explore our boundaries, and test them, and struggle and try again.

One of my mentors is the philosopher/runner George Sheehan.  He captured the essence of my message years before we crossed paths, when he wrote the essay ‘Why I Run.’  At the end he said this:

 “Excellence is not something attained and put in a trophy case. It is not sought after, achieved and, thereafter, a steady state. It is a momentary phenomenon, a rare conjunction of body, mind, and spirit at one's peak. Should I come to that peak I cannot stay there. I must start each day at the bottom and climb to the top. And then beyond that peak to another and yet another.”

 Sheehan’s commitment to living was to Ascend, every day.  It was to press to find his ‘arete’, his best self, and express it in his writing and running and thinking and learning.  And each day, and with each victory or stumble, begin again. 

 This year holds great promise.  All we need to do is pursue it, to rise up to it.

 Hope this finds you ascending.

 

David

 

 

 

Copyright © 2022 David Smith