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Will You Answer The Gentle Knock?
'The long and winding road, that leads to your door.'
A sweet thought, that. Our lives essentially are the roads that we choose along the way. Seems like monumental decisions change our worlds. Fork in the road kinda thing. No disagreement, there.
What we sometimes fail to understand is that those choices are not few and far between. They are many, they are often and they all matter. Every day we make choices that determine the next step on our individual roadmap. And each of those roads we select, and sometimes create, intersect with others. Other folks on their own journey on their own map. That is indeed the very beauty of being an individual in this crowded world of neighbors. It's the intersections.
The long and winding road. Sometimes, it will lead to your door...will you answer the gentle knock?
Thanks, Cowboy, for my thought tonight.
Comments (9)
Nothing?
July 14, 2008 11:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Cause and effect.
Too "mechanistic" for you? Hope not - our actions, even the smallest ones, are how things take shape around us. The people we know, the things we have in common, they lead us in some ways, to some things, and away from others.
I'd been told I would have made a good engineer. I'm not, either good or bad. Except sometimes...
One of my favorite essayists, the late Sydney J. Harris, described a good college education thus: It propels us farther and faster along the roads our talents would lead us to travel anyway. He left out the little side trips along the way, although from reading him, he knew.
Learning even more later in life than I'd have thought, and it's all good in some way. The trick, if we might call it that, is in learning what of it is good, and in what ways.
And ideas and inspirations come from everywhere and everyone. What frozen moments reveal if we can capture them. (I've been working on this in ways I'd rather discuss elsewhere.) The implication of a word emphasized just so, leading to a new insight. The synergy of two minds reaching a conclusion neither might have found alone.
I could go on. Unfortunately, I have to be on a plane tomorrow morning.
'Night...
July 14, 2008 11:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Amazing insight, have a wonderful flight. Hope to see you on your return.
July 15, 2008 2:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Good Theme.
I've learned that with every path we choose, we also create ripples that effect others. Good or bad, right or wrong, consequences or benefits -what steps we take - we lead and others follow (sometimes without the same awareness we had with our first steps down that windy road).
It's everything - seemingly benign choices as in the way we greet others (or not)to other more serious actions.
For every one of our actions - there is a reaction. Some we'll never know about and others will be all too apparent 'down the road'.
Each of us impacts so many other lives and the world we live in.
July 15, 2008 1:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
Absolutely. Cause and effect in real and apparent ways. Even when we refuse to accept it, the smallest consequence can lead to another's peril - or salvation.
Simply put, we all make a difference to each other. We just need to remember that, and take responsibility.
July 15, 2008 2:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Saw your note to me on a thread that's gone: Where The Elite Meet to Tweet. Thanks for your kind remarks. Left my compliments to you one in reply. This is like playing telephone.
July 15, 2008 4:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
Confused as to continuity? Sorry. This was a misplaced thank you to Aunt Sam.
July 15, 2008 5:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Exactly.
Hope all is well and weather is good there. It's windy, cool and moist here. Don't think we'll get much of a summer this year.
Thanks for doing these 'nightly' posts.
Can't wait to see what's on 'menu' for tomorrow.
Must bid good night - have to get up early and attempt to finish too many projects left undone.
(Perhaps you could do subject on procastination - in hopes some wise person has cure or at least some helpful hints on how to 'quit putting off what has to be done sooner rather than later'. )
Take care. God Bless.
July 15, 2008 2:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
Melissa --
Timely topic. I cannot sleep tonight, again, because I am at a fork in the road -- tempted by an apparent opportunity but uncertain whether, in this case at this time, it represents wisdom of folly.
In any case, I owe you an apology. I am not adept at scanning up and down threads as a discussion is going on, and therefore made the assumption that you had left the discussion last night. So I chattered on, not aware that you were still there. I'm sorry for my apparent rudeness which, though unintentional, may have felt like a slight.
I was thinking today that you have provided a such restful haven, here, within the wilds of TPM. And I know you've been wondering why more people have not joined in, or stayed.
One answer may be that when people talk late at night, they tend to reveal more than they would in the light of day. And the recognition of that may create an apprehension, or fear, of inadvertently revealing information that is personal enough to make them identifiable outside of the site.
I'm haven't been particularly worried about that, as everyone who has participated thus far is someone known and respected from their posts on other threads; therefore, however illogically, he or she feels like someone actually known as a friend. But I was telling someone I do know in real life today about your recurring thread, and what a gift it is, and he, a cyber pro, said: "Just be aware that most threads have lurkers, particularly those on which people relax and talk about personal stuff."
Not trying to alarm you, just wanted to pass that on, for what it's worth.
With that in mind, you've built a field and good people will come. We just need to be aware that others might come along for the ride, without participating.
July 15, 2008 4:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
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