A Man's Worth...

It has been said that a man's worth can be judged by the quality or character of his friends. Or some such thing. I have had friends come and go, and what continues to amaze me, are the friends that return.
This introspective has come from an experience on facebook. Friends that I assumed were long gone have for some reason sought me out. Acquaintances from more than 10 years ago suddenly pop up to say hello. And while I sit and communicate with them through a bunch of ones and zeroes, the thought occurs to me...why?
Are we never content to merely exist within our own sphere of the here and the now, or do we always reach into our past for those people that had an impact on our lives, no matter how small? I am quite certain that some of them are only interested in accruing as many e-friends as possible, a sort of digital cheering section that may or may not justify any feelings of inadequacy, or dare I say loneliness. It would, however, seem to make sense that a person who has or had many friends, also has many friends in the digital world, and also that a person who is reluctanct to make physical contact can use this medium as a surrogate for intellectual contact.
We are all of us struggling for survival in way or another. Whether it be through the peaks and valleys of a personal addiction, the loss of someone close to us, or the uncertainty of what may or may not happen tomorrow. Some of us face our day to day challenges almost as an afterthought, as things seem to stay on a pleasant course for awhile. But unfortunately, as the odds even out and the math catches up to us, we will face a day where our protective shell is stripped rather forcefully away from us, to lay bare before us that which is most vulnerable, and personal. It is the few people that dwell there with us, in our innermost Holy of Holies that are the blessed few to grab our hand and pull us up out of the black mire that seems to have an endless appetite for our suffering. It is those blessed few who offer of themselves completely and without guile. It is those blessed few who seem to find us at just the right moment, those that we can truly call "friend".
A man was walking along a dirt road one night and was having trouble finding his way. Before he knew it, he was slipping and falling and landed at the bottom of very deep and dark pit. He could not see and tried again and again to scramble his way up the side of the pit. But the rocks were jagged, and the dirt and mud too loose to support him. He called for help all night long, but none came.
In the morning, he woke to the sound of footsteps drawing nearer to the edge of the pit. He yelled for help, and a man appeared on the lip of the pit. "Hey!," yelled the man, "can you help me out of here?! I've been here all night!" Upon closer inspection the man noticed that it was a priest looking back down at him. The priest said, "I will say a prayer for you," and walked away. The man in the pit yelled and yelled but the priest did not return. Nobody came by the rest of the day and the man spent another cold and lonely night in the dark pit. He tried to climb out again but had to stop when his fingers started to bleed.
The next morning, the man again awoke to the sound of someone's footsteps drawing near the pit. With a slightly hoarse voice the man yelled for help. A doctor appeared at the lip of the pit and listened to the pleas of the trapped man. The doctor said, "I'll write you a prescription." and dropped the piece of paper down to the man, before walking off. Again the man yelled and screamed for help, but the doctor didn't return.
The man in the pit began to lose hope. Nobody came by the pit the rest of the day and now he was very hungry, cold and lonely. He spent another night in the dark pit and wished bitterly for someone to help him. As a last ditch effort, he tried to climb out again, but his fingers began to bleed again and he could not find sure footing. The man cried himslef to sleep that night.
The next morning the man awoke and heard nothing. He despaired and resigned himself to a miserable death, alone and afraid. As the man stared hopelessly at the clouds above him, tears streamed down his face and he thought of those that he would miss.
Just then the man heard footsteps near the edge of the pit, and with his hoarse voice barely able to make a sound, he yelled pitifully for help. The man's best friend appeared at the lip of the pit and said, "There you are! I've been looking for you for two whole days!" The man in the pit was relieved and said as best he could, "Can you get me out of here?!"
And with that, the man's best friend jumped down into the pit with him. "What are you doing?!" Said the man, "now we're both stuck down here!"
The man's best friend looked back at him, and noticed how his friend had been suffering. He saw his friend's injured fingers and the traces of tears shed on his friend's dirty face. He reached out and, with concern and love evident on his face, put his hand on his friend's shoulder and said, "It's alright now, everything is going to be okay. You see, I've been here before...and I know the way out."



This is for my friends, and most importantly, my wife, who is my best friend. Thanks for jumping into the pit with me.



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Listening to: Loreena McKennitt - Beneath a Phrygian Sky
via FoxyTunes

We will not waver; we will not tire; we will not falter; and we will not fail

I was at work in the Government facility I was working at, at the time. I was listening to the radio at my desk when they broke in and said that a plane had hit one of the towers. They said they thought it was a cesna that was messed up or something.
Right after that a lady came running to my desk with tears in her eyes and said I needed to get to the media room. It's a room with stadium seating where all the important people make their presentations, and there are two wall sized screens. They had CNN on both screens. I walked in and couldn't wrap my brain around it. The place was packed and the sound was turned up and here is this smoking tower on a screen that goes from floor to ceiling. Then we all watched as the second plane hit. The people were like zombies...just frozen in shock. Some were crying, most were just staring with their mouths slightly open. A call came over my radio and I left to answer. Our Lt. came over the radio and said that they were ordering an immediate lockdown of all facilities, nobody in or out, and each post was to acknowledge. I acknowledged and ran to secure the building. I then came back to the media room, and started feeling very inadequate. It dawned on me that if something were to happen here, and we survived, people would be turning to me for help and direction. I was numb. I felt like one of those people that you hear about that watch someone get attacked and don't do anything to help. I was small...

I found out later that a good High School friend of mine lost her husband in the attack. He was on the plane that hit the Pentagon. During the running of the torch for the 2002 Olympics, she was the person that ran the torch up to the White House and handed it to the President. Her name is Elizabeth.

I hate that they show the footage every year. I hate that Hollywood made a movie about it, even if Nick Cage was in it and it was done tastefully. It's still too close for me. I don't need reminders, because I'll never forget.

May God Bless you guys (and girls) in our military. You serve so we don't live in fear of this everyday, and you never get the credit, respect, or treatment you deserve.

The Fallacies of Adulthood

So here's a quicky because it's late and I'm tired and my brain has had it's share of overloaded...brain things.
Just a moment ago I had actual digital proof of the fallacies of the word "adult". When you hear the word "adult", what springs into your mind? Go on, think a minute..I can wait.
Some of us think of drinking alcohol, some of us think of having responsibilities like family and work and religious type stuffs. Some of us think of certain kinds of movies, while others think of drinking alcohol while watching certain types of movies despite responsibilities like family and work.
The point is that there is a line, or a point, or a pointed line that we cross at some point in our lives that defines when we grow out of childish acts and behaviors and take upon us the mantle of "adulthood." We have decided that it is high time we stop thinking of just ourselves and start to actually see the world around us. We decide that we need and want certain relationships. We decide to take on those things that we otherwise thought unimportant. For some of us, it is the time that we flee with all abandon from the collective ranks of "The Oblivious" (see prior posts for an explanation)
And while some of us retain certain childish qualities, such as a need to "play", or a need to rediscover something we thought lost within ourselves, there are still others who, though they may qualify physically and sometimes mentally as an "adult", still have not shed the protective shell that is our childhood. And with that, they retain some basic belief that they may still do, say, or act as they wish and because "I am an adult, I therefore cannot act childish."
I will admit that I still sometimes long to waste the day playing in a sandbox filled with small toy cars, tractors, and sand shovels used for flinging out the cat poop from that damn siamese that lives across the street. I, on occasion, wish to debate the benefits of having a chainsaw for an arm over a sword or a pair of nunchaku. And yes, innocently enough, I still yearn to roam the neighborhood at three in the morning trying to find a place to hide from the police who, strangely enough, are patrolling the streets looking for the person who set fire to Mrs. Finklestein's favorite lilac bush.
But of course, none of those compare to the occasional longing to be running naked, helter skelter, from my best friend's mother whose eyes I have just graced with a view of my own particulalry hairless buttocks...or ass, if you wish.
I suppose, with yearnings such as those, that nobody can blame me or wish me ill for reflecting upon the early years of my life that were the veritable building blocks of the "adult" that I am now.
But despite all of that, I still do not wish to "act" childish....usually anyway.
Think about those around you. Do they act like "adults"? Or are they merely kids, or teenagers, wearing adult clothes (or not!) and pretending to have outgrown the very personality traits and behaviors that they exhibit on a day to day basis?
This post is dedicated to a person who will never realize that this post could ever be about them.