Morning Thoughts

I don’t know what has been going on lately, but for the 2^nd time in about a week I woke up with a pressing visual in my head.  Last week it was “Feliz, David? Nah?”, and now, last night I woke up thinking about my dad.  He was a remarkable guy.  Kind-hearted with a caring and sweet disposition.  I’m not sure he ever had an enemy or an unkind thing to say about anyone.  He died at a pretty young age back in 2013, and every once-in-awhile I’ll have a dream that features him.  These dreams are mostly inconspicuous events in which he happens be hanging out with family and friends.  Despite the lack of excitement, it’s always tough to wake up from dreams like that because they remind me of how much I miss him.

Last night wasn’t so much a dream as a passing thought as I awoke.  It wasn’t even a specific thought so much as a vague impression of his existence.  The experience had me thinking about his impact on my apprecaition for the outdoors.  Right after he died, I was impressed upon by three symbols that represent three major contributions he made to my life and my perspectives on life.  It is worth nothing that at the age of 22 he suffered a brain aneurysm that left him paraplegic (more specifically, hemiplegic on the right side) for the rest of his life.  He was never defined by his disability, and at no point did I ever consider him to be disabled.  His abilities were all I ever knew, and they left a lasting impression.

The passing thought I woke up with reminded me of those three symbols, and I thought it might be worth sharing. 

As I understand it, after the aneurysm he could never communicate as efficiently as he once could.  There were times when his ability to express himself was stymied, especially in emotional situations.  This loss of expression would lead to frustration in the heat of the moment and manifest itself in anger.  Usually short-lived, but intense, nonetheless.  As I was growing up, he discovered means by which to recalibrate his frustration.  Specifically, he would remove himself from the moment by stepping outside to organize his thoughts.  Some of my most vivid childhood memories come from sitting next to my dad in silence on our front porch.  It was my first exposure to meditation, and more importantly to the meditating powers of the outdoors.  I still rely heavily on silence in nature to restore my emotional balance.

I don’t know how old I was, but I couldn’t have been much older than 6 or 7.  My dad and I had a boy’s trip to a nearby campground.  Just the two of us in the woods tent camping for the night.  He taught me how to build a fire, set up a tent, make dinner over the coals, set up our sleeping bags, and pack out once we were ready to leave.  I’m not sure if this trip was a calculated calamity of trials or if we were just fortunate to fall upon a series of unfortunate events.  We had no lighter for the fire, we forgot the tent stakes, and brought no can opener for the food.  It’s challenging enough for little boy and a dad who can only use the left side of his body to set up camp, but forgetting essentials makes it that much more of a challenge.  I learned on that trip that challenges are to be met head on with solutions and not complaints.  You couldn’t hear a peep out of any either of us, we tackled each problem and had a blast doing it.  We found a book of matches in the car and used every last one to try and light the fire.  It eventually lit!  We scavenged the woods for sticks in lieu of our tent stakes.  The sticks worked perfectly, and we were able to sleep like babies.  Finally, I learned how to open a can of beans with a pocketknife.  Being a kid, having the chance to play with fire and knives in the woods was a dream come true.  I remember asking my dad how he knew these “tricks” would work?  He hit me with a quote that he since repeated several times and surely relied on to get him through life.  “Necessity is the mother of invention.”  We needed a stake, so we invented one, same with the can opener and to a lesser extent the fire.  There was a point later in life that I broke my hand and struggled mightily to button up my shirt with my left hand.  It made me appreciate just how many challenges my dad had to overcome in order to approach a life that I regularly took for granted.  When I asked him how he managed to figure out how overcome all these little obstacles like buttoning up a shirt with one hand, he hit me with the same quote.  After he died, I learned that the quote he had relied on throughout life was attributed to one of my favorite philosophers.  In The Republic, Plato wrote: “our need will be the real creator”.   Touche! 

Around the time that I started to know everything, a time just before I realized I didn’t know anything, my dad slapped me in the face with another life lesson I try to hold onto.  I must have been 13 or 14, and we were spending a week in the woods of da UP (Upper Peninsula Michigan).  It was a spectacular week just living it up in the forest, surrounded by nothing but trees and eternity.  When the week came to an end we were cleaning up, just abiding by the leave no trace mentality.  On the final pass before departing my dad told me to pick up a small piece of trash, no bigger than a cigarette butt.  I responded begrudgingly, the way teenagers sometimes do.  “WHY DO I HAVE TO PICK THAT UP, IT’S NOT EVEN OURS!”  He didn’t need to take a moment to collect his thoughts this time.  When he responded, it was clear, thought-out and something that I still try and live up to!  He told me it didn’t matter that is wasn’t ours, and that we should always try and leave things better than found them.  I may have kicked my heels when I picked up that trash, but I did it, and in return, it felt pretty good to know that such a small act could make a difference.  At that moment, he may have been referencing a small piece of trash, but I knew right away that he was talking about something much bigger than that piece of garbage.  I’m far from perfect, but I try to live up to that lesson whenever I can.

I have each of these three symbols hanging in my office, I see them almost every day, but it sure is nice to be reminded why they are there and what they represent.

Cheers to our dreams and morning thoughts!