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| What's better than a picnic? |
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| Trees are for climbing. The artsy looking soft filter effect is a result of having grubby three year old finger slime applied to the phone camera lens. |
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I explained that it was sweat. "I just finished working out and when I work out I sweat a lot. Sweat is good, it keeps you cool and shows that you're working hard."
"I don't like it," she said. She's at a place in her life where she makes major and important pronouncements about whether she approves of things or not.
I am so enormously blessed. I never had any idea what loving children was like, and never would have known had I not met Alexzandra.
I had no idea what loving another human being unconditionally was like until I suddenly found my world completely changed by loving Alexzandra completely and without condition.
These are things I would never have experienced had life not put them in my path, and had I not taken that path and instead chosen the other fork.
Which reminds me of an old post I found while searching for a different old post. It's titled as a Corpsman Chronicle yet it remains a formerly lost post which does not appear in the CC Sidebar Pantheon.
Searching blooger via the search feature is a hopeless task. Therefore I did not yet find the post I was looking for. But I did find a lost and largely forgotten post about forks in the road. Perhaps you'll enjoy the tale. I enjoyed the living of the thing.
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I may or may not have mentioned that Alex's birthday was June 13. I didn't expect it to be as hard as it was. I was nearly frantic as seemingly fresh waves of grief washed over me. To my great good fortune I do my livin' in a place where I can easily convert hurt energy into physical exertion. And I can do so in a place where, in mid-June, nature displays a gentle and beautiful canvas of her circle of life work.
Baby Mourning Doves.
Scarlet Globemallow(Sphaeralcea coccinea) or Cowboy's Delight.
Baby Lark Buntings. Or Larks Bunting?
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I've been on an incredible journey of discovery these last few months. The immediate, shattering shock of losing Alexzandra has eased. That's not the right word by any means, but I'm at a loss to find a right word. Anyway, I'm finding myself doing actual livin' these days, especially since weathering the emotional storm of her birthday. Actual livin' (the proper phrase I think) as opposed to reactin'. The indescribable shock of loss will always be with me, but I'm beginning to understand that the presence of the thing will be bearable.
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I've written at length here about the first and foundational principle of America; that all men are created equal. That all human being are equally human; that none of us are "other." None of us are airplanes or tomatoes or wuhandromeda viruses. The contract we Americans have with our government -- the Constitution of the United States -- stipulates that not only are we all equally human, we are each and every one of us sovereign human beings. We are not the property of the government.
But this argument isn't about the government. It's about the principle of human equality and the responsibility which attends this principle.
In simple formulation we're talking about the Golden Rule. "Treat others as you would yourself be treated."
A lot of people I encounter -- many of them having achieved full adulthood and some having extensive higher education (there's your problem!) -- read that simple dictate differently than I. Their golden rule reads something like, "you have to treat me the way I demand you treat me, because I am me and you are not me."
Another way to write the concept is the way Emanuel Kant did in his Categorical Imperative, which says that one should always seek to treat oneself and others as an end only, and never as a means to an end.
Trolls stop by this place from time to time. Mostly to tell me how wrong I am and how victimized they are by my writings. I guess being a professional victim is hip and cool.
I mean c'mon, what do you even do with that?
The Golden Rule comes to mind.
The other thing that comes to mind is how very blessed I am to not be mired in a nasty pit of certainty and resentment. My days are filled with livin', and in livin' my life I find myself loving people in a way I didn't even know existed not so long ago. I've won the life lottery. Blessed.
The point of livin' seems to be to keep exploring and discovering new and important things, regardless of the quantities of shit sammiches you encounter along the way. Finding and learning about life's important lessons is the proper path, and along that path is indescribable beauty.
Walking dogs.
Doing the slide the hard way.
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Be well and embrace the blessings of liberty.
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