I don't blog for you.
I blog because I have something to say or a photograph or artwork I want to share or (ideally) both. This is my blog. This is my path. This is my walk. This is my journey. This is my life.
Don't get me wrong--sharing this with you is a lot of fun. If some of you are enjoying it, that's lovely. & if you're not enjoying it--stop reading! Do something else. Do not feel obligated to read this because you know me or someone you know told you that you would like it. If you don't like it, don't read it. Seriously.
We each have our own individual perspective. You can imagine a mile in someone else's moccasins, but any mile you walk is still your mile. (Plus, what are you doing with their moccasins anyway? Their moccasins probably don't fit you & (unless they are my son Nick) they probably need their moccasins.) (Nick is the king of barefoot.)
Yesterday we took a lovely walk, each in our own moccasins, err, hiking boots. Nice temperature, great foliage (the mountain laurels are blooming!), etcetera. We'd been carrying a philosophical conversation from one venue to another, & this path was no exception. One of the topics was happiness, & how waiting for some external thing to happen for it to be able to arrive (a different job, a bigger house, a (fill-in-the-blank)) meant that whenever (fill-in-the-blank) happened, there would still be a new (fill-in-the-blank) required. You just had to get happy here. You just had to get happy now. Pre(fill-in-the-blank). As we were leaving the walk, we loaded up the conversation into the Nissan Cube (cute car!) that the dealer lent Derrick because his truck has been in there since (practically) the Cube was invented, & set off for home.
Only to stop so Derrick could buy a pair of Carharts to replace the ripped pair he was wearing & I could buy me a cool Columbia shirt to replace the shirt I was wearing. It's my favorite summer traveling shirt, since it has a collar which keeps the seatbelt from rubbing my neck & woven rather knit & lightweight--& Carol Fosdick gave it to me years & years ago when she cleaned it out of her closet & the fabric has begun to disintegrate from overuse...
Only to stop again to eat at this (used to be Chinese & now is Japanese, with brand new decor & a TON of waitstaff) buffet. As we sat down, I made my totally brilliant statement for the day, distilling the entire philosophical conversation into one bite-sized unit:
If you aren't happy hungry, you're not going to be happy when you're full.
In other words, enjoy the creation of appetite. Enjoy all the other ways you're getting fed--through your other senses, through your thoughts & feelings. Enjoy knowing that hunger passes &--thankfully--so does satiation. How boring it would be to never want, or anticipate, or desire a meal, or anything else. Ahh, hunger. Ya gotta love it.
(We shall not be going back to that buffet, by the way. The food was okay, but more expensive than it used to be, not too surprising, given the decor & extensive waitstaff, & our waiter was extremely ingratiating, shaking both of our hands not once, but twice, & smiling super super widely. Then when he got the signed check, he instantly looked at it to see how well he'd been tipped (it's a buffet--he brought us iced tea & carried away 2 plates & we gave him 10 percent) & then gave us a pointedly lukewarm "thanks for coming" as we left.)
Blog alternative:
209. Think about the things you do for other people. If there are any that you are not doing for you as well, can you revise them so they serve you? If not, consider not doing them...
