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On November 22nd, 50 years ago I went out from school at lunchtime and tried to jump from one big rock to another over at the river. I landed short, with my right leg jamming up against a sharp nodule in the limestone rock and puncturing a hole in my shin bone. Mr Couey didn’t like the looks of it, and sent me home for my Mom to decide whether or not for me to go to the Dr. My Aunt Shirley and my Grandmother Stewart were spending the week with us, and Mom was pouring peroxide on my wound when Cronkite came on TV saying the President had been shot. My Mom dropped the peroxide bottle, and my Aunt started to cry. I didn’t get to go to the Dr. that day and I still have that scar on my shin. I call it my Kennedy scar. I got another scar that day too…the scar that occurs when you are hit hard by the realities of life at 13. Things would never be the same for the rest of the 60’s. I loved that decade, and those wonderful youthful years, but there was always a seed of caution resting in the back of my brain somewhere, just waiting for some dire announcement to cause it to germinate into full blown cynicism at the world in which I lived.

Don’t let what others say about you rule your life. Don’t let how other people act towards you make you bitter.

Don’t let what other people think about things make you change your ethics or your beliefs. No matter what your belief, it is just as valid as any other.

Stand up for yourself even when other people won’t.

Don’t be afraid to take on the whole world if it’s for a good cause.

Believe in yourself.

Don’t always choose to be a follower when you get the chance to lead. The world needs more leaders with the values to change things for the better of all people…not just the elite few.

It’s blustery, gray and quite cold this morning, so I guess my walking will have to wait until this afternoon. I’m somewhat tired anyway, after a night of vivid dreams, some disturbing….some more docile and sweet.

I don’t claim to know much about the mind. In truth, I think I don’t know too much at all in reality. Our human knowledge is limited, and although we think we are constantly expanded it, I wonder if our expansion of said knowledge is in the wrong direction. For the most part, we are always looking outward with our research and development. I think we should be looking inward. After all, we do not even know what it is inside of us which leaves us at some point, and causes us to become inanimate objects instead of animate living things.

For sure, science has their own explanations, but for me they are incomplete. I just have this nagging and unexplainable feeling that we are missing something about life which is right there in front of our face, but which we cannot quite grasp, or quite explain.

Sometimes I even wonder if dreams are our actual reality, and what we live in our “waking” hours is something else entirely.

Silly isn’t it?

Well, it’s just a thought.

Hal 9000, the super computer, asks Dave in “2001: A Space Odyssey” right before he turns him off: “Will I dream”?? It’s an honest question.

I wonder if we will when we are turned off?

I wrote this a few years back….and this years going to be the year it really happens.

It’s going to be an Old Fashioned Christmas this year….everyone is getting a paper bag filled with penny candies, oranges, apples, peppermint candy and nuts…..I used to enjoy these when I was a kid, but I suppose that was a “lifetime” ago.

I remember sitting at the foot of a Christmas tree which was just a spruce that my Grandparents had cut down, and opening a few presents…but I still loved that ol’ “brown bag” of goodies that the “Old Zion” Baptist Church used to give all the kids. Christmas seems to be so much more complicated nowadays, what with “Black Friday” and all the emphasis on shopping and gifting.

I always enjoy the “kick off” being the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade and watching “Miracle on 34th St.” NOT, Halloween and “It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown” We can’t seem to see the forest for the trees anymore… As for me, I’ll take good health this year….and oh…a brown paper bag of goodies…that’s about it.

When you get older, you develop cracks in your spiritual self. People you love grow up and “grow away” from you. Its a natural part of life, but it leaves cracks.

People that you love, both family and friends, die…and that leaves cracks. Never to hear those voices again. That’s the thing which gets me. If the eyes are the window to the soul, the voice is the soul’s connection to others. I miss the voices of my loved ones who are gone so much. I miss their touch.

Of course we can spackle some of the cracks with new relationships, new friends. Beautiful little grandchildren. New interests. And of course we can still cultivate the garden of love we have already growing with those who love us, and whom we love. Every garden needs a little fertilizer and water, and it’s up to all of us to provide it. If a move needs to be made to shore up a relationship, be the first one to make it. Don’t wait. If an apology is in order, don’t be the prideful one, be the humble one. Do it. If somebody needs help, do it without expecting anything in return. Do the hard things that need to be done to help, don’t just pick and choose the easy stuff.

Life is not about money, or fame, or being right all the time. Life is about relationships. Good relationships put fuel in your soul’s tank. Loving and being loved is what makes life worth living.

I saw some friends today I went to school with. Most of us for the entire 12 years. It reminded me that I learned how to care about other people by being close to these classmates. It set me up mentally to prepare for life’s permanent relationships by relating to them. Plus, I still care very much for all of them.

In closing I’d just like to say I think my cracks…the empty spots which have been left by life’s inevitable flow have been pretty well filled, and will continue to be, as long as I keep an open heart to change.

Our Fathers, and some of our Mothers went off to World War II, and then came home and created us. The baby boomers.

Our parents had hopes and dreams that we, their precious children, could change the world to be a better place. That we could change the world to be a world with no more war. That we could change the world to be more accepting. That we could change the world to be a happier place. That we could enrich the world with the knowledge and science that comes with a college degree….one which most of them did not have a chance to get.

Most of our parents, being children of the depression, wanted more for us then they we’re able to have. So they gave things to us. Our Christmases were like Ralphie’s in “A Christmas Story”. We had our ball gloves and our baseball games. Football became a major force in America during our lifetimes. Hell, all sports did for that matter. We concentrated more on being good athletes, than we did being good citizens.

We were expected to get good grades in school, and to be polite. We did….we were.

We owed it to our Moms and Dads to succeed in our quest to change the world. It has been changed, but we have not changed it for the good.

Instead, we became the “me” generation. We became the “lost” generation. We became the generation who’s motto was “make love and not war”. We were the generation who protested the “Vietnam” war.

We created wonderful music. We wrote great books. But in the space of all this time between the “then” of our birth and the “now” of today, we became divided. We diverged in the late 60’s onto two separate paths. Some remained liberal children of the flower power movement , while others made a choice to move on to more conservative norms.

I don’t pretend to be able to reduce all the complicated reasons we are where we are now into a few paragraphs. It’s impossible. But the gist of what I am trying to say is that my generation was many. We were the majority of voters at one time in this country…and we failed. We failed to do all the things we were supposed to do for our Moms and dads.

We failed to heal. We failed to unite, and we failed to erase hatred and prejudice. Now it is too late for us. Our time to effect change has been lost like the long hair we used to wear.

All I can say is “Dad and Mom…I’m so damned sorry I failed you, I am so terribly, awfully sorry”. I did not realize that my civic duty was more important than “feeling good”. By the time I have realized it……..

There’s millions more out there, Baby Boomers….who owe their folks the same apology. We let the chance to change the world into a better place for our children and grandchildren, slip away like sand through the hourglass of our era.

Now we reap what we sow….or more appropriately, what we failed to sow. We deserve what we get for betraying the sacred mission with which our parents entrusted us.

Make the world a better place to live. Leave more than you found.

If I did not still have hope for the future, I would just lay here and die.

Listen…..almost anything you fear will not be as bad as you think it to be. We can and will find silver linings in all the storms which are facing us.

Take care. Take precautions. Be slightly paranoid. I always have been, and it’s kept me out of some bad situations.

Interact with those among you with open minds as much as possible. Like minded is even better.

Support the people you love and respect by word and by deed, and financially if possible.

You don’t have to broadcast your beneficence, it will be known by those who count, those who need it.

Quietly change the world from the inside out, and it will remain changed for the better.

As I walked today I looked through the large plate glass window at a plastic Coffee cup with a black lid being played with by the wind. First it stood at a near impossible 80 degree angle on its bottom edge, and wiggled for a few seconds. Then it suddenly just flipped over on it’s top and landed as flat as a gymnast sticking a dismount.

It then blew about 10 ft down the parking lot, suddenly stopped, reversed course two feet and swirled round and round three feet up into the air along with a nest of dry oak leaves. It fell back to ground and circled slowly like wagons getting ready for an Indian attack.

I cannot see the wind, but I know its there and that it exists. I wonder often what it does look like to the ones who can see it. It must have dainty white hued hands, and powerful big red mittens to be able to do what it does.

But, I cannot see the wind that moves the plastic coffee cup. The same wind that moves small things so cleverly but can blow away entire towns if it wishes. And if I cannot see the wind, what else am I overlooking? What more things, both benign and powerful exist side by side with me that I cannot detect, because unlike the wind they choose not to make their presence known?

I think of the years in which my generation grew up and I am simultaneously very sad and very angry. I weep because my grandchildren will never know the kind of security, safety, and naitivity we knew. I am angry because my generation did not do the things we needed to do in order to keep them safe.

I can see, in hindsight, where the critical mistakes were made. They were mistakes mostly of omission. They were mistakes that could have been helped if we as a people had thought a little harder, and fought a little harder to make the difficult decisions.

At one point after my first semester in college, I wanted to major in political science and go into politics. I took two Poly Sci courses my first year. I was gung ho to get things straightened out! I dithered. I sailed through life without much of a course set. I don’t think I was the only one though. There were lots of us who could have done a lot more. Life happened how it usually happens. Quickly. You start something, and you turn around…and it’s ten years later!

I wish for all the world I had gone forward with that wish to go into politics. Maybe I could have made a difference. Newt Gingrich was there at WGC at the same time….maybe I could have just offset him. That would’ve helped a little.

As it is, I just have to say how sincerely sorry I am for the world we are handing off to our Children and their children. It’s not the world our parents gave us. I hope that your generations will be wiser than we were. I hope that by studying our mistakes future generations won’t repeat them. Is that possible? I hope….

I guess there comes a time in life when you realize you are becoming irrelevant. I think at some point during the space between my 60th year and my 61st year it has begun to happen to me. I dream almost every night of working…some job, and yet I don’t know whether I could physically do one if I could get one. That’s a feeling of inadequacy and uselessness I haven’t felt for 40 years. Things I used to look forward to have receded somewhat into the distance. Enjoyement of past activities are slightly beyond reach, just at my fingertips. I really think when they split you open and your body is operated by a machine for about an hour…something goes out of you. I talked with a couple of guys today who had the same thing done, and they both feel the same way about it. Did I die, and lose part of my soul….part of my will? Sometimes it feels like it. A lot of days I come off as being in a fog, or a funk. Who likes that? I see a lot of guys at my age still able to run marathons and play sports. Well, since I couldn’t run a marathon even before last year, I guess THAT’S irrelevant too. But..I could do a lot of things then which I can’t do now. I’m not old though. I’m not losing my mind, and I’m going to make sure that THIS year between my 61st year and 62nd year I prove that to myself. I am not quite ready for my elegy yet.