some thoughts!

So I was cruising through some other blogs today and found this particular one very interesting. I hope when I'm almost 50 I can have the same view on life as this man does.

"I was born at 7:36 a.m. on the 12th day of July, in the year of Our Lord, Nineteen Hundred and Sixty. According to my mother, I nearly died at birth. Due to some complications (which my mother would have to explain), I wasn't breathing. The nurses dipped me in warm water and then in cold in order to make me breathe, as the traditional fanny slap just wouldn't do the trick. But breathe I did, screaming out at the top of my lungs. I haven't shut up since.

I was born in the tiny community of Clayton, New Mexico, about a mile above sea level, about 35 miles south of Colorado and about ten miles from the borders of both the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles. I opened my eyes to the world of the Great Plains. Looking north across those plains, a person could see blues skies and the Rabbit Ears. And that's about it.

I was born to working class parents, Baptists and Wesleyan Methodists who were married in a Pentecostal Holiness church. They were border dwellers of the Hi-Lo country, living in Texline, Texas, but working (and bringing me into the world) in New Mexico. My Dad quit smoking while driving my mother to the hospital for my arrival.

I was born fortunate enough to know all my grandparents and five of my great-grandparents, losing my last grandmother only after I myself had become a grandfather.

I was born on July 12. Which means that I am honored to share my birthday with Julius Caesar, Henry David Thoreau, George Washington Carver, Buckminster Fuller, Pablo Neruda, and Van Cliburn.

I was born nine minutes before the same doctor delivered another baby boy in the same hospital. I have wondered, once or twice, who this other fellow is, nine minutes my junior, and how he's doing in life.

I was born for a reason and a purpose. We all are. One of the great joys in life is in coming to a peace about who you are and why you are here. I'm still on the prowl for the meaning of it all. And perhaps the search for meaning and joy is a good chunk of the point. In Surprised By Joy, C.S. Lewis writes about "..the quality... of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction."

I was born, if for no other reason, for the journey."

I think my favorite part of his whole post is, "I was born, if for no other reason, for the journey." We so often get caught up on the here and now, and we get frustrated when what we want doesn't happen NOW. I think that by living for the journey, rather than for the destination or the origin, we can be more content with where and what they destination is.

Just a thought :)

~S