NEXT, PLEASE!

     How do you stay positive when everything is opposite to what you imagine? How do you keep your head up when every day ends up with you making no progress? Where do you find strength to stretch amid stress lest it break and you bow to circumstances? How long can you go without advancing before you surrender to your fears that what you desire will never appear despite your passion to achieve? These are just some of the questions greatness asks in order to screen applicants and supplicants together. Only those who answer ably are permitted to go further. The rest are returned to living a life wherein they yearn to know the answers.

WHAT KIND OF AMERICA?

    

     I loathe the nostalgic appeals to a mythic America that only served the interests of elites whether democrat or republican. I repulse the perspective that says anything to get elected, erasing history in route while forging a route toward an ideal that will repeal democratic safeguards and human rights. I marvel at the people who fear the evil of President Obama (or Governor Mitt Romney) because they believe that we need to “take our country back.” From whom and to where, that’s what I wonder when I hear voices thunder from political platforms around the nation. President Obama was elected through democratic standards and republican process. The same can’t be said about the previous administration’s last term. Even so, what kind of America indicts all republicans as morally depraved because of the wave of insidious slander coming from a few loose cannons? What kind of America are we creating because of our political leanings?

     That's what I ask with each insult that insists only one party cares for and is capable of leading America. That's why I find it troubling when citizens aren’t bubbling over the insolence that has defiled President Obama’s reign and previous campaign, whether through outbursts by an angry Congressman or via a retort by a party cohort --Bill Clinton’s comment. In referencing President Obama, President Clinton blurted, “Just think, a hundred years ago he would have been getting us coffee.” Where is the outrage about these remarks and similar reminders, which suggests some people think that America only belongs to one kind or class of people? Where is the outrage over Michelle Obama recently being depicted as a slave on the cover of a French magazine? I’ve experienced more disgust over a bad call at a sporting event than I have over these neo-American politics, the sentiments of which we inevitably export.

     What kind of America (and American) gives a consensual silence to the growing practice of linguistic violence, which no other Administration has faced, because of its fears and misguided loyalty to a party? Why have alternative parties when we have the same kind of willfully blind people perched therein? We need new people more than we do new parties as far as I’m concerned. But it all depends upon what we have learned from history, whether contemporary or ancient. That’s why I strive to tread lightly because I want to pledge rightly my allegiance. Maybe that’s also why I’m neither democrat nor republican, libertarian or independent.  I reject any wholesale allegiance that requires me to abandon my duty to reason. Else my support merely supplants those principles we claim to hallow. What kind of America would this yield –one that is admittedly shallow.

SETTLLING FOR SUCCESS

     Settlers do their best until circumstances push them to buy a piece of property they never intended. Doing so is hard to understand if you haven’t been winded by circumstances. If you have, then you understand the salve that settling provides, usually temporarily ultimately, because settlers still ogle at the tract they for which they could have traded. But the need to make a living became overwhelming. Secretly, however, they wish that they could bid of these premium parcels, especially after the salve no longer soothes. Then more than most they desire to move. Yet they are land-locked and grid-locked together because they didn’t read the fine print on their deed, which many traded for their dreams.

     The perks and peace this provides discourages them to becoming serious about buying another acre despite their desire to be greater. Their plight is hard to understand unless you have been wounded and overwhelmed. Inwardly, though, they know that they could’ve done better. But they could only take so much bad weather, bad news, and the high dues associated with pursuing success. So they settled to save themselves the hassle of trying to haggle with it. This doesn’t mean that they aren’t successful. It just means that life was more stressful than they could bear. Thus they bought a plot and cast their lot with their neighbors who also chose to settle. Meanwhile a small few are deeply mired in trying to acquire the peculiar piece and thus refuse to cease until it is theirs. Whenever they consider settling, success dares and greatness draws them beyond themselves.

SILENCE PLEASE!

     Who do you call when desire gnaws and time stalls, indifferent to your desire despite the fire that inflames? What do you do when you’ve said your prayers (and a few swears) yet things remain and desire pains beyond expression? Have you ever experienced this depression, the kind that cuts, carves and consumes leaving nothing but more room for itself? Do you know what it’s like to spend your life waiting for the knife to be pulled from your back or trying to find a way to extract the desire that drives you on? If not, you can’t understand when greatness groans. On the contrary, you are apt to confuse its angst with an unwillingness to give thanks for all things. Perhaps this is true of some people. But there are those that, after they’ve exhausted gratitude, they still remain undone and prone to brood. What do you tell these? Do you have the words to ease what aches? If not, be thou silent in the presence of the great though they have yet to make their appearance or gain clearance to ascend as they intend.

A NORMAL LIFE

          A normal life isn’t the type that leads to greatness. Normal in fact is its nemesis, especially during the genesis when Destiny decides who will ride success’ heights. Then while others sleep, we work through the night, often against our wills because of what Destiny wants to reveal to others to help them discover their own potential.

          The task is compounded because we lack credentials other than uncommon courage and desire indomitable, the combination of which makes us formidable. Characteristically formidable is fundamental to success. Without this we will wish rather than work as we should, especially when circumstances stifle. But that’s when we should reload our rifles, metaphorically speaking, and become even more determined to obtain what we are seeking.

          So many people, though, let circumstances make them fold. Yet these same souls will watch the Olympics and ignore the template for success that they illustrate because every contestant endured something adverse solely for the opportunity to become great. In failing, however, the passive enthrone normal and berate the banal; indifferent to how their indifference controls both the channel and the flow of their lives.

         Others assert that it’s too late because they don’t know how to become vicariously great by supporting others in their dreams. Even so, life has innumerable schemes and designs that can help us achieve what we have in mind. Yet the character of a normal life we must first be willing to decline. If we do this and diligently persist, our gifts will grow and our talents will eventually show themselves, taking us we know not wheres!

If we don't fulfill our promise we owe others an apology.

        If we thought the impossible were so, life would cease. Yet none of us believes in the impossible.  We acknowledge it but we don’t believe in it. To believe in the impossible is to reject our passion. Yet our passion stirs us nightly and sustains us daily. The moment we believe in the impossible life passes. Only by rejecting its myth do we master.

GRASPING GREATNESS...

         The grasp for greatness grows when someone previously unknown and unnamed emerges to achieve glory and fame. In doing so, each of us is reminded that we too can be blinded by its lights if we are willing to fight for our spot and to promote what we’ve got no matter how many times we are rejected and ridiculed. What matters is our commitment to rise and to rule. Yet so many people are simply unwilling to grapple until they are captained accordingly. These behave as if gifts are rare and as if they are afraid of “there,” the place that represents what they spend their time dreaming about. Meanwhile they watch as each season a new soul sprouts from the soil of toil until it triumphs. After which, they label these giants –perhaps. In reality, however, they aren’t giants but they are generous, ambitious and unwilling to be suspicious of greatness. So they chase this until they achieve it. If only we could get others to believe in it for themselves!