Saturday, February 28, 2009
Sunday, February 08, 2009
Puzzles
Funny how time flies; or even sad, depending on how you choose to view life.
Who doesn't remember a parent telling you to "enjoy it", because it passes quickly? PinF need only think of his father's passing a few years ago and contrast that very real heartache with the blossoming of his own prodigy as I literally see a little girl blossoming into a beautiful young lady before my eyes.
Try as I may to truly soak in and appreciate such life changes, I'm as guilty as the next one of taking my eye off ball from time to time only to wake up and wonder where have all the years gone? We all do. Trying to squeeze the emotion, the love, the pain, and the triumphs from our daily lives is hard. We all get caught up in the "moments" of our existences, occasionally allowing the brief lapses of cognition to remind us just how quickly our lives pass us by.
Two summers ago I took the time I needed and indeed deserved, to get off the spinning-top my life had become through personal set backs, losses, and changes to amble through my past and sort out some old memories. I went back to England, and then onto Denmark and I touched base with a few of my "blue" pieces of my life. This trip was as rejuvenating as it was nostalgic, and many hours were spent laughing, talking, sightseeing and walking through the windows of my youth.
Still, in the back of my mind there was an incompleteness to the trip. Friends are the glue that binds the frays of our lives, often in ways family cannot. I was reminded of this when I sat in Copenhagen with a friend of over 25 years and sipped coffee while reconnecting as if we'd never really separated. Same too with my many special friends in England, walking along the English coast, popping in and out of pubs, just the everyday simplified life that England represents is a big part of who I am. I'd like to think that one day I might live in either England or Europe, as I often feel more at home there than here, maybe due to it's ancient feel, something I miss about living in the north.
Finding anything that was lost is always a joy. Who hasn't rejoiced in finding that old twenty dollar bill in a coat pocket, or maybe a lost photo-- long since forgotten? Small triumphs go a long way. A few years ago I stood in busy Brighton train station with my old friend Phil as we bought flowers for his lovely wife Linda--another dear friend who like me went through a rather tough end of life ordeal with her father too. I quietly reflected on how little had changed physically with the place I was in, and yet so much had changed literally with the "place" I was now in with regard to my life. Twenty years earlier I was wiping tears of goodbyes and sadness from mine and a special person's face as I made my farewell from Brighton not to mention a certain "place" in my life.
You're occasionally afforded the wisdom in life to recognize the profoundness of special moments as they occur. I wish I could be so wise to say this was the case on August 22, 1987--unfortunately I was far to young, inexperienced, and out of touch with the true blessings of my life at the young age of 24. Wisdom in life is like wisdom of the heart, you have to be burned, disappointed, and often "lost", until the day you awaken and can be "found" to truly drink in the special significance of such moments.
It took me many years; years that rushed by like a freight train for me to attain a certain wisdom, still even today, I recognize I have far to go but at least I'm now able to recognize what's really important---it isn't what we have, what we do, - though these were always lessons I had instilled from my parents. Material wealth is as fleeting as the wind--what truly sustains and multiplies in our lives are the relationships and love we have. I know that now because I see my greatest wealth in my daughter's smile, not my bank account.
I recently found something that I too had been missing for a long time, or shall I say it found me? A piece of who I was twenty-two years ago. Circumstances have changed, lives have blended and become more lives, parents have died, separations have caused years to be lost, yet the one thing that remains always is the love---and emotional connection to each other. You can't fake that. It's either there or isn't, I always knew it was, but time has a way of covering up the cold of loss and heartache. Like a puzzle that is missing a piece, my visits to England had always been missing that one piece--a blue one. PinF found that piece, and he's a lucky man for it, realizing full well that twenty years lost is nothing compared to what has been found. The friends of our lives are like the photos of our youth; yes, the person in the photo changes, but the true essence of how we feel for them, and what we remember never does, it remains visible only to our eyes and heart.
I look forward to putting this missing piece in its rightful place in the puzzle we call life.
Who doesn't remember a parent telling you to "enjoy it", because it passes quickly? PinF need only think of his father's passing a few years ago and contrast that very real heartache with the blossoming of his own prodigy as I literally see a little girl blossoming into a beautiful young lady before my eyes.
Try as I may to truly soak in and appreciate such life changes, I'm as guilty as the next one of taking my eye off ball from time to time only to wake up and wonder where have all the years gone? We all do. Trying to squeeze the emotion, the love, the pain, and the triumphs from our daily lives is hard. We all get caught up in the "moments" of our existences, occasionally allowing the brief lapses of cognition to remind us just how quickly our lives pass us by.
Two summers ago I took the time I needed and indeed deserved, to get off the spinning-top my life had become through personal set backs, losses, and changes to amble through my past and sort out some old memories. I went back to England, and then onto Denmark and I touched base with a few of my "blue" pieces of my life. This trip was as rejuvenating as it was nostalgic, and many hours were spent laughing, talking, sightseeing and walking through the windows of my youth.
Still, in the back of my mind there was an incompleteness to the trip. Friends are the glue that binds the frays of our lives, often in ways family cannot. I was reminded of this when I sat in Copenhagen with a friend of over 25 years and sipped coffee while reconnecting as if we'd never really separated. Same too with my many special friends in England, walking along the English coast, popping in and out of pubs, just the everyday simplified life that England represents is a big part of who I am. I'd like to think that one day I might live in either England or Europe, as I often feel more at home there than here, maybe due to it's ancient feel, something I miss about living in the north.
Finding anything that was lost is always a joy. Who hasn't rejoiced in finding that old twenty dollar bill in a coat pocket, or maybe a lost photo-- long since forgotten? Small triumphs go a long way. A few years ago I stood in busy Brighton train station with my old friend Phil as we bought flowers for his lovely wife Linda--another dear friend who like me went through a rather tough end of life ordeal with her father too. I quietly reflected on how little had changed physically with the place I was in, and yet so much had changed literally with the "place" I was now in with regard to my life. Twenty years earlier I was wiping tears of goodbyes and sadness from mine and a special person's face as I made my farewell from Brighton not to mention a certain "place" in my life.
You're occasionally afforded the wisdom in life to recognize the profoundness of special moments as they occur. I wish I could be so wise to say this was the case on August 22, 1987--unfortunately I was far to young, inexperienced, and out of touch with the true blessings of my life at the young age of 24. Wisdom in life is like wisdom of the heart, you have to be burned, disappointed, and often "lost", until the day you awaken and can be "found" to truly drink in the special significance of such moments.
It took me many years; years that rushed by like a freight train for me to attain a certain wisdom, still even today, I recognize I have far to go but at least I'm now able to recognize what's really important---it isn't what we have, what we do, - though these were always lessons I had instilled from my parents. Material wealth is as fleeting as the wind--what truly sustains and multiplies in our lives are the relationships and love we have. I know that now because I see my greatest wealth in my daughter's smile, not my bank account.
I recently found something that I too had been missing for a long time, or shall I say it found me? A piece of who I was twenty-two years ago. Circumstances have changed, lives have blended and become more lives, parents have died, separations have caused years to be lost, yet the one thing that remains always is the love---and emotional connection to each other. You can't fake that. It's either there or isn't, I always knew it was, but time has a way of covering up the cold of loss and heartache. Like a puzzle that is missing a piece, my visits to England had always been missing that one piece--a blue one. PinF found that piece, and he's a lucky man for it, realizing full well that twenty years lost is nothing compared to what has been found. The friends of our lives are like the photos of our youth; yes, the person in the photo changes, but the true essence of how we feel for them, and what we remember never does, it remains visible only to our eyes and heart.
I look forward to putting this missing piece in its rightful place in the puzzle we call life.
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