April 12, 2023
For those who celebrated over this
past weekend, I wish you all a belated Happy Easter, Ramadan Kareem, and Happy
Pesach. I hope the celebrations you enjoyed and the moments you shared with
loved ones were meaningful and pleasant for you. Most of all, I hope that you’re
at peace.
I have no problem giving good
wishes to my fellow human beings, whatever their beliefs or however they
worship. I believe that we are all deserving of best wishes and happy times. We
truly are deserving, all of us, of the very best that life has to offer. And I
have learned something very important over my nearly seven decades. Words of
edification and kindness will never come back and bite me in the butt.
April is now fully in swing,
and yes, the temperatures have risen nicely. For some folks I’ve noted that the
temperatures have risen more than nicely; they’re more like swelter of summer
than the freshness of spring. For those
of you who with one hand turned off the heat and the other turned on the A. C. you
have my sympathy. We’ve had a few springs here that were not very spring-like
at all, and it wasn’t anything to wish as the norm.
Sadly, I’m coming to the conclusion
that most of the things I’ve come to think of as norms—and not just as that
word relates to weather—are nothing more now than the way things used to be.
My writing continues to trundle
along, and I know that I just need to do my best to jettison the flotsam and jetsam
cluttering up my life—or at least pack it up and put it into a trunk in the
back corner of the attic of my mind. This last week has been a challenge in the
area of pain management. That for the most part is done, and I am determined to
hold on to my positive attitude with both hands and a meat hook.
Writing for the most part is a
solitary affair. I do have a sprinting group, writers who, twice a week, join
with me on Zoom, that magical place where we can be together virtually. We
state our goals for each session, and then report our results. The group of
which I am a member celebrates the achievement of every word written. There is
something motivating about having to answer to someone for what you’ve done
with your time. That was a principle I learned early in my career. Sadly, I
haven’t always been able to do so.
One of the reasons that I have
written the essays I have over the last fifteen plus years was a pure desire to
demonstrate to anyone who’d read them that we are, none of us, alone. There is
a sense of relief to be found when one understands that one is not the only person
to have experienced (fill in the blank).
I can’t say that I have
accumulated a whole bunch of answers when it comes to facing the dilemmas of life.
I have, however, gathered baskets full of questions. All sorts of
questions that cover nearly every single subject you could name and likely on a
lot more subjects than you’d ever image I’d want to know about.
And maybe, just maybe, I have
stumbled upon something truly amazing. Something that could be compared to the
Holy Grail or the Fountain of Youth.
Despite everything—or maybe
because of it—I remain curious. I’m curious about almost everything. I can
barely watch a YouTube video without wondering about something. And I often
pause that video as I go in search of the answers I need.
No, I’m not ever likely to
strap on a backpack and go exploring in the bigger, badder physical world. My
traveling days are, for better or worse, pretty much over. But my mind yearns
to go on journeys of discovery. The more I learn, the more I realize I don’t
know. And that, more than anything, keeps me putting one foot in front of the
other, day after day.
That is, in essence, the
reason that I get up each day, and excitedly do so.
Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
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