Excerpt from my Journal

When someone says, “You never cease to amaze me.”   What they are really saying is, “You consistently outperform the expectations that I set for you, which are too low.”

Next time someone tells me that I never cease to amaze them I will say, “Quit underestimating me.”

Integrity

People have prices. It is the point where they are willing to trade in their beliefs for something else. That something else is usually in the form of money, power, or recognition.

To become acquainted with a man's price is to know to what extent he is to be trusted. Integrity, I fear, has become diluted to mean someone with a very high price. But that is virtual integrity. And virtual means, "not actually". To approach integrity is not sufficient. There is no rounding up in this case. Integrity cannot be diluted and remain integrity, it simply becomes a very weak form of dishonesty.

Integrity means being a man without a price. It means that there is no persuasion, bribe, temptation, desire, will, or lust that is stronger. It is the impregnable citadel that holds what is right and true. I know men of integrity, men who have no price.

To be a man without a price is to be powerful.

Favorite Book

A chunk of the cover was ripped off and taped back on, but despite the tear the words are easily readable.  There at the top in small fine letters are the words. 

Over 1,000,000 copies in print.  That’s Dandelion Wine.

But that’s not true.  It must be a lie.  There is only one copy and it is mine.  I am holding it in my hand right now.  How many times have I read it? At least half a dozen.  And it belongs to me, it is my story.  Yes, there is only one and it is in my hands.

The cover is worn and ready to fall off.  It will not last through this reading.  The worn green and yellow with its black writing will be sloughed off like a leaf from the trees in fall.  For as summer leaves when leaves fall.  But this book will become bare and coverless before summer has expired.  But that is alright. The cover is ugly.  I won’t miss it when it goes.  It is ugly.  What artist thought, in his pride, that he could capture the innards of this book and put it into one single frame on the front?  No picture nor photograph merits the prominence of the front of this book.  A picture may be worth a thousand words, but not here.  The magic that is in this book can’t be seen with the eye nor be captured with a brush and feeble faded paint.  The colors of the imagination are more vivid that the plain color of human invention.  A picture is perhaps worth a thousand words if that picture is painted on the gray canvas of the mind.  It is in imagination (or memory for those lucky enough to have lived it) that the true pictures are made and hung.  The words unfold in the mind a thousand moving scenes complete with sounds, smells, feelings, and life.  No photograph could replicate that. And certainly no painting.  The cover is ersatz.  It is cheap, and if this book is judged by this cover that I hold in my hands then I pity the shallow mind that loses forever the treasure for the packaging that holds it.

A million copies and then some.  All printed and shipped out to a thousand cities and countless devouring eyes and hungry imaginations longing for a reminder of the past, for the good times that made and defined character.  My copy though—the only real copy—is twenty six years old.  It was printed in the same year I was born, 1982.  How many more copies printed in over a quarter of a century?  None.  There is still only the one.

We are the same age and it tells the story of my childhood.  The names are different as is the setting.  But the truth of childhood is universal and it is mine.  I am Douglas Spalding and he is me.  Crack the pages and they come to life.  An invisible hand reaches out and pulls you in and you are held captive by the power and the page.  It holds you and the world around fades into nothingness.

It is a dream but more real than life.  Living momentarily in this dream makes the real world seem the creation of a sleeping mind.

So as the smell of summer returns I again pull from my shelf, and from hibernation, the book that I love.  It wakes up to a new summer holding the promise of adventure and mystery.  It comes alive and so do I.  And I hold the power in my hands, the only copy of a book that belongs only to me and a million others.

Drifting in Ambiguity

Part of life is dealing with the ambiguity that arises in our relationships, interactions and dealings. There is a frustration that comes when answers don’t. Or when the answers aren’t as clear or clean-cut as we might like them to be. We often demand to know if something is black or white when it happens to be one of a million shades of gray. That degree of inability to know something with certainty is unavoidable even though we may curse ambiguity.

And yet there are areas where we find great comfort in the same sort of inability to know. Far more often than we may notice we will navigate into the comfortable murky gray waters of the indefinite. This blindness however, is self imposed and is curable. Rather, it could be cured if it were seen as a problem. But the sickness is such that we don’t even recognize the illness.

Take the average person for example. He will likely be neither hideously ugly nor wonderfully handsome. If he is average he will know this. He will accept that he is not movie-star-handsome by using the justification that he is also not an unfortunate creature with disfigured features. The thought is something like, “I’m no Brad Pitt but at least I’m not ugly.” The average man will sigh with relief that he is on neither extreme of the spectrum. The black and the white cancel each other out—but in doing so make the gray.

Intentionally staying in the gray gives leverage to self-deception because it’s not absolute. Light gray and dark gray aren’t distinguished. Why should they be? They’re both just gray. The average person tells himself, “I’m not ugly.” What he doesn’t ask though is how close he is to being ugly. Is he the difference between white and very, very light gray, or white and very, very dark gray? That question will not be answered because it is more comfortable left unanswered.

The ambiguity that is most easily dispelled is the kind that is most welcome, even desired, in life. The kind of which we would love to rid ourselves is much more difficult to remove.

My fear is not that we sometimes take comfort in our ambiguous self-deception. My fear is that we start to dream in the gray. Dreams that are ill defined and lack details, plans and action are doomed to fail. For a dream to turn to reality it must be an absolute in the mind of the dreamer. Otherwise it will forever remain in the realm of the nebulous.

There is only so much comfort in ambiguity. It is not enough to fill us and if we glut ourselves on it we will be left feeling sick with a bitter aftertaste in our mouths.

Yesterday

Fall is here.  And so is mine.  My downfall rather.  I found something out about myself today.  The kind of thing that would better remain unknown, elusive or hidden in the shadows.  I am unfaithful.

I walked out the door this morning at 10:30.  It took less than a hundredth of a second to realize that the air was different.  I was expecting a welcome from a constant friend. Everyday that friend had been outside to greet me as I went about life.  I had grown accustomed to the consistency.  It was a part of me.

And then this morning, no friend.  Summer, that has greeted me daily was not around.  The heat, the bright sun, the smell and feel—gone.  In place of summer was something altogether different.  I knew it by the feelings invoked.  Autumn. 

Then I found that I was happy for the arrival of fall.  The sun was still shining and the air had a new quality and a new smell.  I liked it.  I found myself excited for the change.  I looked forward to what fall had to offer.  But then came the guilt.

I love summer.  Sumer is my love.  What does it say of me if I am so fickle?  The first day that summer fails to appear I try to replace it with a new fancy.  One morning without summer and I am suddenly enamored with fall.  This new figure who shows up as if out of nowhere.

If summer is my love then autumn must be my mistress.  Exciting for the moment and yet wrong.  I knew that summer would leave to spend time in the south, for me it would end.  I felt remorse even while I enjoyed the last of the season because I knew it was soon to end.  But shouldn’t I be mourning now?  Isn’t it too soon to find a replacement that makes me laugh and smile?  I’m sure there will be the inevitable awkward moment when summer shows up again for one last goodbye before leaving for good.  In a few days summer will be back and fall will skitter off to a safe distance.  What will I say?  “Oh, it’s you.  Why are you back? No, I’m not disappointed to see you.  Yes I still love you.”  Pause.  “But there is someone else…No, nothing like you.  Not better.  Just different.”

Summer, I love you.  If I could keep you here I would.  But I know you have to leave.  You always do.  And you leave fall.  You know I can never really be happy with fall.  Fall’s friend winter is always close behind and I don’t like winter at all.  Winter and I have never gotten along.  We just are too different.  I have tried to change, but it’s never enough.  Winter is cold and heartless, unchanging.  But I’ll put up with winter so that I will be ready and appreciate summer when it again returns.  

Until then summer, know that my heart is yours.

Excerpt from my travelogue

July 8, 2009

            We made it to Spain.  All three of us flew first class both to New York and then to Barcelona.  That was about the greatest thing ever.  There was so much more space and luxury.  They treated us like kings.  The international first class seats were much more spacious that the ones to New York.  They gave us hot towels to freshen up with.  The drinks kept coming and they fed us so much.  The food was fancy and kept coming.  We had real napkins and chilled silverware.

On the first leg I turned to Brad and said, “I know this is totally irrational, but I feel like a superior human being for being in first class.”  He was drinking a glass of orange juice at the time (yes it was really a glass and not a plastic cup) and almost choked on it.  We laughed and laughed about that.  It was funny but I think mostly we were giddy for lack of sleep.  I had only three hours after working two days at the ranch.  Since then I still haven’t had much time to get good rest, just the restless kind on a plane, car and bus.     First class over the ocean was classy.  The seats were like recliners and had all power controls.  There was so much space that sitting in my seat, belted in, I was unable to reach my things stowed in the back of the seat in front of me.  That gave plenty of room to fully recline, which was made all the more comfortable because they gave us full size pillows and blankets.  We had individual screens at our disposal to watch movies and TV and nice headphones.  Each passenger got a little hygiene bag that had slipper-like socks, eye mask, pen and notepad, and toothbrush and toothpaste.  On that leg I turned to Brad and said, “That feeling of superiority I had on our first flight, well it’s even bigger now.”  There really was no end to the jokes about the poor fools in coach.  Also fueling the fire was the fact that the section was called Business Elite.  That’s enough to make someone feel top notch, call them Elite and exclude hordes of others who aren’t enjoying the same benefits.

            It did make me think of the economics involved in different degrees of services.  One comment that I overheard was by a woman who said, “I should have done better in graduate school.”  I took that to mean that she wasn’t making the big bucks and was therefore flying the cheaper class.  Allocation of goods and services by price has never seemed so silly as when the contrast was so stark.

            I was also surprised at the dramatic and almost immediate change in my way of thinking, all due to my circumstance.  I was about to take a nap.  I was reclined and snuggled up in my full size blanket.  I had kicked off my shoes and glanced down to where they were laying in front of me.  I had a momentary concern for their safety as they were my only pair of shoes.  If they were stolen I was out of luck.  I immediately became suspicious.  A thought jumped into my head so quickly that I didn’t have time to check myself.  I thought, “I bet somebody from coach would steal my shoes, that’s exactly the sort of thing they would do.”  As soon as it popped into my head I was shocked at myself for the broad, general, and unfair judgment.  Being elite will do that to you.

            Ironically on my return journey I was not so lucky as to get a first class seat.  I was back to the real-lifeness of coach. Luckily, I found that I didn’t have any urges to steal anybody’s shoes.

Friendship

I believe in friendship.

To me friendship is sustaining power.  Not for what can be taken, but for what can be given.  My sister, in jest, once said of relationships, “Don’t ask what you can give, ask what you can take.”  It was funny because it was such a silly notion, but was said with such seriousness.  We laughed and shrugged it off as a joke, but perhaps at some level we believed it at the time.

True friendship often comes when it is least expected and least looked for.  It will sometimes catch us off guard and one day we will realize that a friendship has blossomed where we scarce knew a seed had been planted.  We might find ourselves thinking of doing things for people because we know that they will appreciate it.  The feeling is not of what will be earned in terms of future favors, not about the image that is being created, and not even about the feelings that come by doing something nice.  True friendship is knowing that a friend will appreciate what you have done because it helps them progress and become better.  And while the friendship isn’t about what we gain it is often the case that the result of a true friendship is a benefit to us, because friendship is mutual.  It grows as it reciprocates.  As you seek their interest and they yours you both are made better off.

I remember feeling alone and isolated.  I thought that there was no one like me, no one that thought and felt like me, no one that could understand me.  But then out of the normal and mundane there appeared a friend, then I found another.  Others soon followed.  In striving to love and serve them I have found I have been loved and served back. I trust my friends and sacrifice for them.  I want them to be happy.

I am who I am because of the friends that have come into my life.  Some of them I rarely or never see again.  But while their presence is not a part of my life, the impact they made will always be a part of me.  It is through friendship that I have become better and happier and helped others to enjoy the same.

No one is an island and nobody can be truly happy without friends. I believe in the power of friendship and that is why I try to be a friend to those I know.

(I wrote this in May of last year.  It was at the invitation of a friend to write an I Believe piece.  I just came across it and decided to post it.)