A Beginning

 I have spent a good deal of my adult life, like many others, asking '...why?...' or more to the point, "what does it mean?"  

The the first part of the 'what does it mean' is fairly easy...you know the '...what...' part.  You see or experience an event, a film, a book, a meal, or a friend, and you report what happened or how it took place.  Photos and travel journals are simply great to share what happened on a trip, for example.  We find ourselves drawn to good story tellers, because they draw us into a world of their thought - a kind of voyeurism into their consciousness.  Yet, what underlies our appetite for the '...what's...' is our true desire to understand the '...why...' - the meaning of it all. 

We might say we simply want to be happy; simply want our fair share; simply want to be loved.  If we were able to put it more clearly into words - the poorest of methods for communicating real feeling - we might say, we simply want to know what it all means...does it have a purpose...is there truly a place, as the founders of the American Constitution wrote, of "...life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness..."

The musings contained in this blog pretty much reflect my sense of meaning, or rather my growing sense of meaning - for surely meaning is not a destination, but rather a process of transcendent growth interspersed with long dry spells on plateaus of understanding that often seem endless.  Like every other plateau in life, whether it be sport, understanding or relationships, the key is to simply keep going - not to give in to the monolithic wall that seems insurmountable.  BECAUSE...when that plateau is overcome, the reward is worth the frustration, hopelessness and fear that nothing will change, that none of it makes sense, that there is no meaning!  

Hope for overcoming a particular plateau can be embodied in the faithful words, "...ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened..."  Action, action, action...life rewards only one thing and that is action.  Action in the face of defeat, action in the joy of growth, action for the sake of action.  Moving water has life - otherwise it stagnates.

I am not sure how this will all sort itself out, for this blog is a living document.  If you are looking for stories of my life, or who I am, or what I think about the politic of the day, this is not for you.  If you are interested in sharing a bit of my journey in my struggle to understand, welcome aboard.

If you have thoughts, I am extremely open to hearing them.  Please let me know what you think.  On the other hand, if you are interested in simply expressing a dogma or a ideology, don't bother responding.  Dogma and ideology are simply the safe place we huddle that give us permission to no longer think.  Dogmatists and ideologues can be found in the newspaper columns, our churches and the 24hour news cycle...I'm not interested.

I will try to add to the blog at least on a weekly basis, maybe more frequently...