Tracks In The Dust

14 May 2012

Your Love Story

My wife will tell you I am a sucker for a love story. Old movies in particular always showed up in my life since I was a kid. I used to watch the classics and the not so classic black and white movies from the 30s and 40’s every afternoon after I got home from school. Not very masculine I know…but the “arts” have been my life since I was a kid so it just stuck.

Even as I got older I kept watching. Compact 2 hours or less of a story about a man and woman in love, out of love, after someone else, coming back to the one they loved from the start. Sometimes they were musicals, sometimes dramas, some where what they call “rom-coms” these days, romantic comedies. They weren’t all good, some where predictable, sugary sweet, silly plots with little to do than filling up the time it took to watch it.

Yet some were works of art, with famous people like Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable. So many names that mean very little now to the young movie goers today. Yet as I grew older I remember falling in deep love with Ali McGraw in Love Story. Just because she dies at the end it made it all that harder to wonder what things would be like with someone like her.

The saying “Love means never having to say you’re sorry” became famous as the book and movie. The romantic notion that life is like a movie wasn’t passed on me. But I knew better. Life is more than that compact couple of hours. It has more ups and downs, and may not have those fateful meet-cute scenes where the star meets the starlet and they fall in/out/in love. And those silly mis-understandings that make up so many of the middle parts of the plot with that secret that the viewers know; and eventually the love interest will know and make for the happy ending. Or the sad one.

Love is more than that in the movies, it takes commitment beyond the final reel where Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan meet at the top of Empire State or in the park with Barkley (references you may not know if you don’t like these kind of movies). I have learned that- but then I always knew that even back when I was in grade-school watching those classics. It takes an effort to be in love, give and take, some good days and some bad. Creating memories and making plans. God willing you get enough time in your life to capture it and spend it wisely. Some days are diamonds, some days are stones. Some people say that it us all part of your own life’s movie, others are not so oblique- they don’t see it that way at all.

In the end, love means what ever you need it to. Not everyone ends up with the “girl” or Mr Right. But love does conquer all…well sometimes. And it can move mountains…maybe just not the mountain you want moved. You may meet the person of your dreams, or you may dream about the person you meet. The real Love Story’s are ours to make. Get out there and make them.

What is your favorite love story? Book or movie? The one that captures it for you. You have one? – share.

Posted in Learning Lessons Along the Journey Of Life and tagged Ali MacGraw, being remembered, Cary Grant, Clark Gable, entertainment, Favorite Movie, Love, Love Story, Memories, moments, Spencer Tracy, Tom Hanks

11 May 2012

2 Comments

Stopping to Look at the View

All around us there are things to see. Yet so often we are in a hurry to experience the world around us. Sharing some views I love in nature and the world.

Whether it is in the backroads of the US or around the world or in your backyard, stop and look.

Glass Winged Butterfly

Lavendar Fields in France

Ladybug Lands with Style

: The Edge of the Earth Austrailia

Posted in Doing Things That Will Change Your Life and tagged backroads, cherish, glass winged butterfly, Joy, life is precious, Reality Check, Slow Down

10 May 2012

3 Comments

Compassion

I have always believed that one of the most valuable things you can posess in life is compassion. What comes of that is the heart of the Spirit that is “love,joy, peace,forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,gentleness and self-control.”

Here is one of my life’s songs. Compassion (Todd Rundgren)

You want more, and still more,
Until you get more than you ever bargained for.
Now its plain, clear as rain,
I’ve seen your symptoms many times before.

Lying on your bed of pain
What will you have now?

What are riches untold in a life without compassion?
For there’s no winter as cold
as a life without compassion.
There’s no prescription that’s sold
that can heal you like compassion.

Well you tried and you cried,
And let your disappointment make you hard inside.
You have doubt, you reach out,
Still you’re the only one you care about.

Hiding in your sack of woe
What do you need now?

For there is nothing so sad
as a life without compassion.
And even love has turned bad,
it was love without compassion.
And you don’t need what you had
‘Cause you did not have compassion.

Dying on your bed of pain
What will you have now?

You’ll get no judgment from me,
I can only feel compassion.
And if that’s what you need,
I will give you my compassion.
Just don’t forget about me
‘Cause we all need some compassion.

Open up your heart
so you can start to feel compassion.
Get down on your knees,
pray to heaven for compassion.
Everybody needs compassion.
If you want to be healed
then you know you got to feel compasion

Posted in Learning Lessons Along the Journey Of Life, Life's Sound Track (Music) and tagged Acceptance, Compassion, Galatians 5, God, Grace, Health, Joy, life is precious, Sprituality, Todd Rundgren

08 May 2012

8 Comments

Your Life’s Song

Can music come down to just 6 songs? Can it be that simple? What is your one most special song in your life?

I am reading “The World In Six Songs” by Daniel Levlin. It takes a small jump to understand that there are some fundamental ways that songs communicate: songs of friendship, joy, comfort, religion, knowledge, and love. There seems to be a pre-historic yet beautiful process at play when we sing and dance at weddings, cheer at a concert, or just emerge ourselves privately on headphones full of music.

Just the other day my wife had mentioned how emotional she would get at certain times in our lives when she would listen to music. Not just one particular song or artist, but music itself. Why can a song make you cry in a matter of seconds? Like all of our senses, we trigger emotions ( and memories) around songs that emit emotion and intensity.

With so much music in my life, I can tell you that there are a lot of emotions tied to those songs that make the journey like a soundtrack in my life. Even if I forget they exist, as soon as I hear them it paints a picture and derives and emotion that is unique.

My daughter once asked me that “if I had to pick a theme song” that would be the song for the start of the movie of my life, what would it be? Oh man, that is such a hard one.. is it for you? Do you have that significant song that says it all to capture the important emotions of your life? No, not that song you can’t get out of your head (earwig songs Stephen King called them). No, not just the song played at your wedding or graduation party. But the song that has meaning because it is therapeutic, or bonds you with a moment or a cause, or bridges the emotions that you struggle with.

What is your song?

Posted in Learning Lessons Along the Journey Of Life, Life's Sound Track (Music) and tagged Emotion, Favorite Song, Music, Personal Soundtrack, Theme music

04 May 2012

1 Comment

Time Travels Forward, Are You?

Choose: Forward, Backward, Standing Still.

That is what one of my bosses years ago used to say. Either you are making forward progress, looking backward, or you are standing still (side to side is still standing still).

Forward motion is desirable it so it would seem, most the time. The movement is your life’s path, the path that will end when we meet that fateful day somewhere in the unpredictable future. Some days however it is an inch by inch progression forward, other days it can move miles ahead. And then there are those days that seem like things are standing still – even that can be welcomed. No change, no bad news, no good things either- but that could be just what is needed. But generally forward progress keeps pushing you on…

Looking backwards on life’s path is educational, there may be times and places that you want to return to in your life, but time only moves forward (unless you are in one of those wild time travel movies). You have to learn from your past, but you cannot return to it even if you try, it will always be different from it was as time has made it so.

You may be like some of my younger friends who are in a hurry to move things along. For them it is almost urgent that things change at the fastest pace possible. Running toward the future can be healthy, but it can mean you have the chance to miss some genuinely great experiences along the way, or run into things that can stop you cold. Other times it can feel like you could be running to the end to the end of the path (end of life) much too quickly. I have had close friends that were like that… like almost in a self-destructive way they would do whatever it would take to rush the day along by drinking it way, or smoking it away, even sleeping it away. ( play “Working for the Weekend” song here for the soundtrack)

There are people I know that really want to make things stand still in their lives. No changes. Like being in a comfort-zone, enveloped in a place the is safe. While moving forward for others is urgent, these people are some that are urgently hoping for things to not change…like they are dependant on it. Co-dependant with the lack of change, years later frustrated , they ask themselves “what happened”? Since time and progress was moving all around them. They can’t get that time back, others in forward motion have passed them by, and they start looking backward. Which is never going to be the same as it was. Of course the best choice is forward, but after so long it is hard.

I can tell you as I grow older there is comfort in having those slow, unchangeable days where progress forward is almost a stand-still. But progress forward is good… spiritually, mentally, physically, intellectually. There is always time to grow.