Reflections.

Not the usual fare, but then again there was neither content or pattern to be found here.

A lovely lady, who visits this place has recently contacted me in what seemed like a brave face and ended in tears. Ladies and Gentlemen, love and its pursuit is a war zone but do try to be kind. This is not any gender or role specificity, it is a result of being hurt and wishing to bite back. Human nature regretfully and none of us, myself included, are above it.

This not written to brow beat anyone. We are all adults here (I pray to god on that account), but sometimes the act of it escapes us. There is some hope that by penning this, for a flash of time, these words will come to mind and allow cooler heads to prevail.

Hurt will come. For those of you unfamiliar consider researching the hedgehogs dilemma, a brief half page read that fantastically demonstrates human interactions. At the very least it allows one to temper expectations, and contemplate their own place in things.

I encourage everyone to consider what they will get by responding to pain. If they are in the correct state of mind to respond. What they hope to gain and what they are likely to gain by responding. If any of those contemplation's lead to making a jab or saying something that could hurt the originator...then don't. You're pain will not go away and its likely to come back to you by teaching or reinforcing through example.

We can have better dialogs. We can wait until barbed passion is capable of being forged into constructive passion.  We can also part on better terms, even in the worst of times. Rather than put more spite into the air or allowing someone a further platform to spite you, consider the block feature available on most all apps today. A very useful tool in cutting bad conversations forever short.

We have to try to be better so that all of us can be better.

My favorite word to this day is one I know not the name but the definition of. The word, is a name for the exact moment when a child learns that what they know is not what others know. For example when a very young child puts a toy somewhere and expects the parents to know where it is. Until they don't... and they learn what it means to hide the toy.

"Do you understand?" is a rhetorical question. "I do understand" is a lie. Two statements whose only common ground is proximity.

Its fair to say that its generous to call the previous statement a misleading perspective but consider the following: "Why did the chicken cross the road?" As child I knew the answer: "To get to the other side." A silly stupid kids joke whose comedy existed in the obvious answer and the resulting soft slug to the shoulder. Twenty years later though I contemplate the phrase again over cereal, my dumb jaw going slack as I realize the "other side" was the after life from the common phrase "See you on the other side" right before a hero in a cheesy movie shudders his last breath.

The words didn't mean the same thing anymore. I did not understand.Or did I? Perhaps at the time? Am I the child just now and again reliving the word I recall not the name of? A grown man of thirty? It may surprise you now to learn that some college was duped into graduating me with honors.The fools.

Somewhere wandering in my years I learned to see the world differently. The chicken is a lighthearted example of something I look back on with an empty profoundness. Countless times I have said "I understand" and indeed I did, and at the same time I didn't. I knew the words, the nouns, the subjects, the verbs the spelling the definitions....I did. All of it. But now...lessons from my father, mother, teachers and friends come back to me and at times they hit harder. They mean so much more, and I ponder: "What have I missed?". The brain gnaws on itself.

It is impossible to know what they meant. The real meaning. The decades of perspective and experience each person knowingly or not tried to cram into words. Things I lacked the living part of yet.

So when I foolishly ask "Do you understand?", I expect you to wisely say back "No."

Three cheers to anyone who knows the name of my favorite word, of which I've foolishly misplaced.

A boy should have the chance to know his father as man.

A quote that to this day I cannot properly cite even as it haunts my hollow mind. I was near my father well past the age of 18, but I neither new him as a man or while I could be described as a man. I failed the quote in both of its intentions. Growing up was like a contest between us. A contest I understood little of then and understand less of now. I learned little from the man, and threw away more.

After years of being thousands of miles away, I return to my father now a man.I understand him as I never could have growing up. I can look back and measure the years of devotion and love lavished on our family not through the gentle touch of a mother but as father pouring everything he is into providing. I see now the sacrifices he made for his wife and children, how he carried himself without complaint under his burdens knowing they were his choices, his weight to bear and others depended on him carrying it without falter.

I raised myself, my own character. I picked what I thought would make a great man. On some details I was correct, others needed and still need frequent erasing and rework. Now after decades of effort I realize myself to be a pale imitation of my father. That I have arrived at the same conclusions as him after inventing and solving the problems rather simply reading the book before me. I should have emulated my father, now I have to work hard to simply catch up. I can only hope that in thirty more years I can compare myself to him more fully.

My ingratitude's are known to me through an exchange we had. After hours of conversation, an unheard of detail in my youth, I let slip " I never appreciated you enough as a kid" and my father stumbled through his next few syllables. A slight slip in the wall of control he has always demonstrated to me, fractured by a single comment.

Every boy should have the chance to know his father as a man. To look back and reread the chapters of his own life from a different perspective. To realize the value of having a father, a model of how to be man. How to lead, make hard choices, be responsible, face reality, work hard, love, and through it all still be a human being.

Perhaps the title should have been "Wasted youth".