In a world that once was in a place few ever visited a king visited an empty castle and found a note he had written that said the letters T & R come after S & Q.
He smiled and remembered how angry he was when he wrote it. He wasn’t wrong to have been inflamed or irked at having been mistreated. Another wouldn’t have tolerated it from him and the double standard chapped his hide a bit but he let some of that go because changes were coming.
What those would be like and how they would materialize wasn’t entirely clear though he had his ideas. He had thought things would go particular ways and had been proven wrong more than once.
That irritated him more than the refusal to engage in real conversation and the ideas about why that might be. He wandered into the bedroom and stared at the places on the bed that still held indentations.
He saw several notes that he had written exactly where he had left them, undisturbed and unseen. One of them was to himself and said it could be a great learning experience or a horrible waste of time or maybe something entirely different.
You control your destiny…mostly. You can do whatever you choose to do, make a choice.
I drive by my old apartment in Grapevine on a regular basis and sometimes think about what it was life to begin a new life there.
In some ways it was among the loneliest and hardest moments of my life but I knew what was going on was necessary and that if I wanted to get to the other side I was going to have push through it.
A few weeks back I drove by my old apartment in Fort Worth and thought about how much hope and joy were part of that place because it came at what I thought was the tail end of some very turbulent times.
It came when I thought I had figured a few things out and I expected things to go very differently than they did. I could argue it set the stage for some other things and launched me on the path I am on today though I couldn’t have seen it then.
That was the beginning of understanding there would be conversations and decisions about what life would one day look like.
It was where you’re not part of this future was in a sense born.
The Lessons We Learn Along The Way
I took a picture with a man who is 6’8 today and laughed at the difference in height between us. When I was a kid I always figured people who were taller than me had to be older, but I have almost 30 years on this gentleman.
Two days earlier I had lunch with a different former college athlete. The first was a basketball player and the second had played football.
They had interesting stories about how they had gotten to where they were and how they had found themselves in the jobs they had.
Both asked good questions and one was very engaged in learning more about me so I ended up sharing far more than I expected to.
He said he thought my background was really interesting and I smiled. It was a sincere remark and it led to some deeper conversation. He asked for my thoughts and then inquired how I got to a specific place and I told him it came from the lessons we learn along the way.
Later on I thought about how I had periodically asked the older guys I worked with for their advice and how suddenly I am one of those older guys.
I don’t really think of myself that way but if you asked me to lay out my life in a linear fashion I can say I have seen and done quite a few things. I have had the kinds of experiences that change and shape you.
The kind of things that give your voice some gravitas and make people recognize you might be someone worth listening to.
That sounds more egotistical than I mean it to, but there is more truth in that than saying the smart Virgo listens to a Taurus or I know things.
I think one of the things I like best about writing is that it provides an opportunity for a recounting of what was, a look at what is and a chance to consider what may yet be.
And it enables you to do it against the backdrop of experience and to consider what you have learned and who you have learned it from.
There have been moments when I have written about experiences and ended up enraged by what I saw because it forced me to take a harder look at particular situations. I saw patterns of behavior and wondered if I was stupid for not recognizing it before.
But it also has provided the opportunity to put certain things into context and to realize upon reflection that it was better than you think.
Change Is important & Ok
One of the athletes asked me if I still think about living in Israel and I told him I could see it happening. He asked me if I thought that it was unrealistic based upon my not being 25 anymore and that I might find it harder now.
I told him change is important and ok. I said that some of things I had once thought might happen would be different, “chances are I am unlikely to get married there and raise a family. Not sure that I want to go through raising young children again, but it doesn’t mean there isn’t a world of opportunity.”
We went back and forth and I asked him to tell me about the various cellphones he has had. He asked me why and I asked him if he ever didn’t learn to use the phone he had.
He laughed and said “of course not, I always figured it out.”
I smiled and told him I have always figured it out too. This would be a different a scope of change but not different in the sense that I would need to adapt.
“Not everyone we know or everything we have gets to come with us in the future we build. Some of those people and some of that stuff gets left behind because we have outgrown them/it or they have no interest in growing with us.”
He said that sounded really harsh and I shrugged my shoulders, “life has its moments and if you don’t allow yourself to grow you might miss out on the best of them.”
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