Launch

Someone once told me that an airplane is off track 90% of the time it's in flight... yet it still lands exactly where it's supposed to. 

It's easy to look at other people's lives and assume great performance comes easy. It is a lot harder to see the real struggles we all encounter, to notice how we're all off track much of the time, and understand that it's the self-awareness and minor corrections along the way that help us find our way home.

Launch bold. 

Correct along the way.

You will get there.

trade

consider
how easy it is to trade our
daylight for deadlines
sunsets for salaries
moonshine for monuments
to other people and places

remember
what matters
what + who
will remain
after you're gone

37

Do you remember one sunny day biking home from Gosselin's Market on the far end of town? Stopped by a girl you went to school with -  Jackie was it? Do you remember this day brother? 

Do you remember refusing to lift a finger to this angry girl with a knife who wanted a fight? Do you remember your resolution: "I will not fight you." You would not touch the weapon she offered. She threatened me that day to get to you. Your calmness was infuriating. Do you remember protecting me from her? You wouldn't let her get close to me. One sunny summer day etched in the folds of my mind for all eternity. Your gift of empathy that completely disarmed her. Someone with nothing to lose rendered powerless inside of your insight and compassion for her condition. You diffused the situation just long enough for me to get on my bike and pedal off. 

Did you stay behind or were you right behind me all the way?

I ask myself the same question every day.  

Your courage and compassion will never fail as a beacon to me.

Thank you once again for all the strength you give me still. 

Happy birthday brother. 

Evolution

Life is a series of moments. Some we forget in an instant. Some stick with us for a lifetime.

A month ago I witnessed a dying man living a life fuller than most of us could ever dream. This weekend I saw the body of a man in one place and the essence of his being everywhere else. They say that, "when the heart weeps for what it has lost, the spirit laughs for what it has found." The great spiritual leaders talk of a life somewhere else after death. What I saw this weekend tells me that immortality starts right here and now. To become an original worth copying. To begin in one form, to evolve into another; in stories, in memories, in laughter, in lessons taught for generations to come. To become part of the fabric of a collective unconscious. What man would ask more from life than this?

Albert Einstein once wrote,

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

Like you said Uncle Frank, "there is only one way."