Bits and pieces...

“What separates privilege from entitlement is gratitude.”

Brené Brown – Academic and social worker

Sometimes it seems there is so much to say; that words arrive at the front of my mind like a large group of people trying to all get out of a crowded room through a single door – grunting, groaning, pushing and shoving with no particular direction.  On the other hand, sometimes ideas and thoughts come smoothly, as though they are winding lines of folk queued up, patiently waiting their turn to slip from brain to keyboard.

Then there is the occasion when both of these circumstances occur at once.

Traveling around…

For the past couple of decades, when traveling overseas, I've written a travelogue that by now is distributed to 150 people. It's about the little things that capture my attention, or heart, as the days and experiences accumulate.

Sometimes the eye-catchers are small paintings on the museum walls of my life, which are internally recorded before being committed to electronic paper and placed in the artificial hard drives of my computer. I try to capture them as closely to the events as possible, because I have come to understand memory is often an unfaithful mistress, creating inaccurate reflections of events. I have discovered this when getting together with old friends, fondly recalling a shared experience, only to find their remembrance is NOTHING like mine. Somehow the incident changed in the ever-shifting neuro-synapses of my mind...of course, I suspect my accounts are more accurate…maybe.

I'm on the final leg of a three-week working tour through Europe. It began in Prague, then to Poznań, Poland, on to Aberdeen, Scotland and as I write, Aalborg, Denmark.  At the end of the week, I’ll go to Sheffield, England and on the weekend, fly home from Manchester.

An artificial marker…

Today is my birthday, and here I sit on the cusp of my 69^th year trying to make sense of the privileged life I have lived. I did not pick my parents, the era into which I was born. I had no say as to the color of my skin, nor the country into which I emerged. There was no preplanning as to the capacity of a mind that to this day has remained curious about the things around me.

I had no say in the relatives going back as far as one might imagine that somehow avoided death from wars and famine and disease and murders and accidents and other fatal events, long enough to produce offspring that also happened to survive long enough for me to find myself breathing and exploring planet earth. Winning a lottery? There has never been one with such high odds for me, or anyone reading this. Yet, here we are alive; creatures of active and accumulated thought - ARE YOU KIDDING ME???

It is hard then to fully appreciate why others have found themselves arriving at a different place on earth…to a different circumstance…to poverty and fear, to oppression and complete loss of control of their lives.

How does this happen? It is, of course, a rhetorical question, one that resonates right up there with, what is the meaning of life? Why do some find themselves with access to so much, and others so little?

It’s about the thanks…

So, on this day, I feel a sense of awe and gratitude for the gift of life I have been given. I also wonder what obligation comes with this freedom…the freedom to think…to express…to listen…to disagree…to embrace…to love who I desire. Surely, in the balance of things, there must be justice.

One might think I feel guilty for the accident of my birth and circumstance. That would not be correct, but gratitude for the safety and freedom of my life cannot be entirely separated from the larger tapestry of the humanity of which I am a part.

Maybe this is the reason I find myself talking and listening to as many people as I possibly can. Maybe it is because, in spite of my inability to understand any of it, I still find a commonality of life and love, unrelated to circumstance. Maybe it's because I want to believe, and in fact do, that it is the touching of another soul that reassures me, not the circumstance. We are fellow travelers through the world together, and the artificiality of culture, gender, education, financial status, are but weak reflections of the human spirit that inhabits us all.

Yeah, it’s my 69^th birthday today, and what I know of a certainty, after all, these years, is that I know very little…of a certainty.

- ted