Treasure

I dance very poorly, but I still love to dance - a blessing and a curse I suppose. One of life's very small obstacles that I have repeatedly stepped over, around and on the feet of so many to enjoy. I guess we can learn from even the smallest things, that we are better off to know the joy and feeling of dancing even, rather than never trying it at all. I would even go so far as to say that I am somewhat reserved and a little shy at times - an unbelievable statement I know! However, sometimes I have to push myself to speak first or join in - but it never stops me.

Life is a collective process of which we are always learning and growing - simultaneously adding to our wisdom and our persona. A process that so few expose - our motives, our insights, our passions, strengths and weaknesses. The things that we know and often never share make us mind boggling creatures to think about. We begin our lives knowing nothing and we end it knowing "only" everything that we allow ourselves to learn and experience. The lives that touch us so ordinarily throughout our time here make us who we are. The things that we come to understand help us to develop our own perceptions of the people and places that surround us. Uniquely, we create our own ideas and personalities, no one is the same. Isn't that wonderful?

Saturday night I enjoyed time with friends as I often do - thank goodness for friends. I laughed so much and felt so happy to be alive. The company definitely had a great deal to do with it - maybe the weather added to it too. Maybe the atmosphere, who can tell? Regardless of any of these factors, days and nights like Saturday stand out to me as days that I lived fully from the time I opened my eyes until the time I closed them to sleep in the evening. And if I could go back through my mind and remember every conversation I have ever had, if I could remember the long talks I have had with strangers on bar stools or in waiting rooms - what would I do but smile. To go into that thought and march around a bit like it were a room with furniture and pictures hanging on the wall. If I could go there and think more about those conversations I would realize that it was these scenarios that taught me or even made me force myself to open my mouth and speak first. The thought of missing something. That same desire to know and hear and live that keeps me up at night reading one more paragraph or talking to another friend a million miles away. I realize sometimes that on a daily basis we push ourselves to go farther, to think harder, to overcome certain insecurities that would normally hold us back. We often refuse to let that happen.

I am more proud of my friends and family than they know. I am proud to know them, to share in the experience of life and to be a part of the time period that we all share. Knowing that ages from now when the pages of history open to a section of time that we call "now", a section that will be thought of as an ancient "then." I know that I would not want to walk life's path with any other group and this time will be marked how we live and how we progress. The sadness of knowing that we can't go on forever evaporates in the idea of the things out there that I have yet to know. The people that I have yet to meet and the laughs I have yet to have.

It shouldn't be a challenge to live life - it is our treasure. Every day I know that there is more out there, but I don't know exactly what is out there for me. What will be there for me today? And if goodness and mercy have followed me thus far, why should it not keep following me? As I type these words I listen to music created by a friend. I hear in that music her vision - her insight and her love for music (Molly). The magic of it is too splendid for me to put into words - although my excitement is very deep. The thought of creating something that would urge people to dance…amazing!

Words, what can I say about words to magnify my love for them. My love for the poet who can pour his or her heart into phrases and imagery that change lives and spawn romances. The writers who describe dew drops on a lilac leaf - something so pure yet insignificant. Why do they bother? It's beautiful, that's why! My Grandfather is a poet - words spinning in his mind that are also spinning in mine. Do we share that gene? Should I even put us on the same plane? Probably not - but the thought of it makes me proud. The well spoken phrase - there's nothing like it. Changing sentences into perfect compilations is a wonder to me. And should life be explained in this way it might resemble a picture of little pieces of paper spread out on a million tables with scraps of fortune cookies lying about. I hope someone takes a picture taken by someone who refused to forget the moment. Or maybe not. Life being the mystery that it is, keeps ups running the race - fighting the fight - working hard for all those passions, using our strengths to fight our weaknesses. We blink, October is gone and now November, what next? I suppose the only thing we have to learn is not to bury our treasure - there will be no joy in that.