Downstream...

     As I sit today, pondering over my past, present, and future, I have yet again called to consciousness the rivers that I have always correlated my life with. I cannot truly recollect the accurate number of times that I have watched as leaves floated listlessly past me, through a riffle, swirled in an eddy, and disappeared around a distant bend in the river. I've never honestly considered, until now, however, the arduous path that may lie before them, of which, each leaf has no knowledge of. Will it be blown astray of it's course by a sudden gust of wind? Will it be forced to veer wildly off track in an unnoticed eddy, into what seems a state of swirling, rushing limbo, only to be returned in time to it's original course? Will it be devoured by an invisible, yet ominous, undertow, dragged hopelessly to depths unknown? Or...will it continue on it's path, unhindered, undaunted by the ever-changing river around it?     Day by day, we face the same possibility of unknown turmoil as we move down the course of the river that is life. Individually, our course on the river will never be the same as that of the people around us, though we are all on the same river. Tomorrow may bring a gentle, everflowing forward momentum, or it may drag, push, pull, or blow us at will into innumerable directions with each having it's own very unique obstacles and outcomes. We know not where the river may push us, nor do we know when, or how rapidly these changes may occur, for we know not what lies downstream of us. What exists, and what will occur, downstream is forever unknown, for we cannot look around each bend that lies in the river. We may have a clear line of sight to each bend, or riffle, or eddy, but beyond that, our view is generally obstructed. The sun may be shining and the winds may be calm, but as we pass the next obstacle in our course, violent winds and storms may arise with an unpredictable burst of fury, changing our current course forever. Perhaps the course will be better than the one we were on. Conversely, the course could send us into yet another obstacle, another less favorable outcome. Until we have each seen where our own personal, unique course leads...until we have seen what is downstream...we do not know what is downstream. In the words of Heraclitus, "Everything flows, nothing stands still, nothing endures but change."     The point I have come to realize, and am attempting to convey, (in my own warped context, of course), is this: Because we can never fully know or understand what lies downstream in the river, all we can ever have certainty of is that all things lie downstream. Where, when, how, why, good, bad...all unknown, but always downstream. The only way to ascertain what lies downstream is to ride the river, accept it's uncertainty, roll with the eddy, allow the wind to move you, for while your course may be unknown, it's outcome will be downstream. Hope this made some sense to someone other than me, if not, it's only interpretation, right?
Thanks for reading!                                                                                                                          -M

New Waters...

Everyone that fishes has their home water, the place that they love to go perhaps because of their successes there, or the aesthetics of the location, or maybe it's because it is the place where they find the most comfort of all the places they visit.  I, myself, have a few of these locations that I seem to frequent repeatedly, where I may go to, day after day, even though they may never be as successful as they have in the past.  Often, afterwards, although I know that I felt very comfortable and content at the time simply because it was a water that I had known, I realize it was not true comfort, simply complacency with the same path I had taken, the same waters I have fished repeatedly. More often than not, this complacency, in turn, negatively affects the successes that we might have found by venturing outside of our comfort zone, by taking a new path and delving into waters that we had not fished.
Finding comfort and becoming complacent is our downfall in many of our life's ventures. We reach a point where we are cozy with the way that our life is going, whether we are successful with it or not. We begin to limit ourselves in the excursions that we take outside of our own little box and into the realm of the unknown. We trade the prospect of adventure, and of new opportunity, for the promise of mundane comfort, of uneventful humdrum. We forget that we are able to see, smell, touch, and experience new things with every new endeavor.  We often decide to give up the chance of exposing ourselves to the extraordinary by accepting the ordinary.  
In the past few months, I have, myself, realized that I had become very complacent to the new life that could exist around me. Much of this was brought on by bad casts that had brought me only failure in the very recent past. I became very comfortable in my day to day life, and began to accept that new things were not going to come my way. Although things were not going my way, and I had many obstacles in the path to finding happiness and success in my life, I accepted the fact that I would just make the slow trudge over and around the obstacles, instead of going through them headlong, and never make a cast outside of my comfortable waters, if you will.  This lackadaisical approach had begun to take it's toll on me, and had begun to wear me down to the point where even the comfortable felt uncomfortable, where peace could not even be found in the most peaceful of my home waters.  
Just this past week, I decided it was time to break out of my recurring path, and make an excursion into waters that were unknown to me. I took a path that led me into a place I had yet experience in my life.  It felt uncomfortable, and awkward. It conflicted with all of the mundane events that I had allowed to edge their way into my life, and pushed me outside my barriers to take a chance with an unknown outcome.  The end result of this little excursion is that I found beauty in the world where before, only ugliness filled my vision. Where dark, indistinct objects once loomed in my path, the horizon suddenly filled with the bright, colorful artistry that I remembered at better times in my life.  The single circular path that I had been walking for months branched, and became a maze of differing directions to choose from, separate paths, that seemed endless, all leading to an unknown, fascinating future.
I guess the message I'm trying to get across here is that, when we take the opportunity to attempt something new, something unknown, it may seem uncomfortable and dangerous to us at first. We may look back repeatedly as we walk away from our home waters, and move on to uncharted, unascertained paths to find new waters, feeling as though perhaps we should turn around and move back to what is known.  Our comforts turn to feelings of inner turmoil, disagreeable gut-wrenching agony at times as we make our way into what may be Shangri-la, or may be the abyss.  The fact of the matter is, however, that we cannot find new waters , new successes, new opportunities without leaving those home waters that we have allowed ourselves to become so accustomed to.  I'll close with this, the fortunes and successes that we seek in our lives cannot be found by looking for them in the unsuccessful misfortunes that we've already found...
Thanks for reading!

-M

Finding Wings...

Well, I guess it’s been quite some time since I have ventured back on to here to expel my thoughts upon unwary visitors, but I have decided that it has been long enough and I should attempt to post at least a few more thoughts before I go off to try my hand at my new career and while I have the opportunity to still have my feet upon “terra firma”. 

What has spurred me into this, my latest mind-burp in a series of many, is that I recently received my 90-day notification email, informing me that I now have less than 90 days until I leave for basic training.  Consequently, the message came on the same day as my 32^nd birthday.  As I read through the letter and considered my past 32 years, I began to think about all of the steps in wrong directions that I had taken throughout my life.  So many of these steps have resulted in a feeling that almost assuredly will feel equivalent to the sensation I’ll soon have when I step from a fully operational aircraft.  Likewise, I’m certain that it is the falling, tumbling sense felt by wood ducklings when they leap from the cavity of an oak tree shortly after hatching.  

These simple, minute, awkward steps have the capability to send these young, flightless ducklings into a tumultuous journey from a high perch to an unknown landing below.  The fall may culminate in nothing more than a tumble into a relatively soft landing in the leaf litter below, resulting in nothing more than perhaps an increased heart rate, or it may result in a rapid, unforgiving fate.  Similarly, we may ourselves be sent headlong into an unknown fate when we misplace our own steps.  The resulting venture may simply take us through a foggy shadow in our minds, or drive us deep into the most dismal depths of our own self-being.  We may land softly from a fall and carry on, unscathed, or fall to depths unseen and have to reach to the extent of our will to push ourselves back to a functional jumping point so that we may make a leap to yet another uncertain fate.

As I spun these thoughts through my mind, with the mountain of missteps growing steadily, I began to feel my accomplishments being heavily outweighed by my failures.  My few bright and shining moments were slowly being overshadowed by my shortcomings, and I began to feel as though I had spent 32 years taking up space and air that could easily have gone to someone better and more accomplished than myself.  I began to question myself, and whether I was worthy of wearing the uniform that I will soon don.  I stared at the Ranger and Airborne Creeds that I have hanging on my wall as my inspiration, and challenged my own self-dedication yet again.

Just as I was about to turn away and erupt into another mental fit, I noticed the silver Airborne emblem that I now recognize so well and aspire to someday wear on my own uniform.  The silver wings that represent a history much longer and more prestigious than my own had a calming effect upon me, and made me reconsider my negative thoughts.  I began to contemplate the wings, and actually laughed aloud when I was struck by the concept that made me realize what my missteps had actually amounted to.  The wings represented in the Airborne emblem are those of an eagle; majestic, soaring, taking flight with the greatest of ease.  I have chosen to liken myself much more to the wood ducklings…clumsy, awkward, flopping from their perch, uncertain of what lies beneath them (hence the earlier duck analogy).  

The times when we fall may make us feel as though we can barely walk…let alone fly. But, regardless of whether we are as clumsy as the wood ducklings or as graceful as the eagles, the result shall forever be the same.  However we learn to fly, we only need to learn once to find our wings.  If you’re reading this, thanks for checking it out, and may your flights always be fair.  Blue skies…

-M

In time...

  
   My lifetime has barely stretched over the boundary of three decades, and only falls into a fourth by a year.  Somehow, in that short amount of time, I've accumulated enough knowledge of myself and of the world around me to understand who I am more than I ever really thought that I would be able to.  At times, I feel I've experienced enough in my short time to have filled an entire lifetime, and yet, somehow I just haven't experienced enough.  I've also made enough bad decisions and accumulated enough regret to fill my lifetime several times over.  While I'm trying to rectify a lot of those bad decisions, I know that they are, in fact, the decisions I have made and the decisions I must live with forever.  Occasionally, I do make good decisions, and the one which I have made as far as the direction in which I want to take my life and my career  feels like one of those.  While it will never have the ability to cancel out all of the bad decisions I've made, it is one that I believe I'll be proud to live with for the rest of my life.

      In the past week or two, I've been thinking a lot about my decisions, and what they really mean as far as the direction my life has gone thus far.  What I've realized is that many of my decisions have resulted in burnt bridges, broken trust, injured feelings, occasionally legal issues and economic stress.  In addition to these, however, they've also resulted at times in new friendships, love found, career successes, and ultimately, in a man that now has enough respect and confidence in himself to know which direction he wants his life to go in.  It took me a lot of years of making the wrong decisions (and a few right ones) to develop into the person I am today.  I am proud of the man I've become, and have come to the realization that I am a result of my decisions.  I may not always be proud of each and every one of those decisions, but I am proud of the fact that I have the tenacity to work past them, the integrity to face them and admit to them, and the common sense to never repeat them.  All of these are simply byproducts of choosing my direction at forks in the road.

      There are other byproducts that have come about as well, one of which is a long, drawn-out list of things that I guess I need to face and live up to, and that I hope will come to pass in time.  In order to make this writing slightly shorter than an encyclopedia, I've abbreviated this list and hopefully have not eliminated anything in the process that needs to be said...

-In time...I hope that the bridges I have burnt may be rebuilt.

-In time...I hope that the friends I've alienated can forgive me and find it in their hearts to still call me a friend.

-In time... I hope that I have the ability to make myself valuable enough in my career that I will never again be seen as expendable.

-In time...I hope that I may succeed at living up to my name and finally making myself into someone my family can be proud of.

-In time...I hope that I may forgive myself for the decisions I've made in my past so that I may make my own future as bright as possible.

-In time...I hope that my family and friends accept the career move which I am about to make.  It is indeed time for me to make a decision that I can be proud of.  While they may doubt the decision, I hope that they do not doubt the reasons for it.

(While this seems to be a short list, I think it covers a lot of ground.  Hopefully, I haven't left anything unsaid that needs to be said.  If I have, my sincerest apologies belong to each and every one of you.)

     One of my closest friends often gives me three simple words whenever I need a little encouragement, "Everything is temporary".  These three words seem to make a lot of sense to me, especially now.  The actual consequences of the decisions I've made in my life have been temporary, as shall the consequences of the decision I am making now, and the consequences of all of those that follow shall also be temporary.  The only thing that I've found to be truly permanent is the mental scars that these decisions may leave behind, and for me, the only way to eliminate those scars is by covering them with the new skin of the good decisions I have yet to make in life.  Hopefully this one covers a few!  And with that, in a few short months, I'll be off to wherever my decisions may lead me, so, if I don't post anything new on here for a while, it's because I'm sort of busy in the process of getting my affairs in order and making sure I don't leave loose ends behind that need to be tied up later!

Sorry for making this post a little in-depth and a little sappier than anything else I've written about on here so far.  I guess I needed a medium in which to not only apologize, but also in which to explain my actions.  

Thanks for reading.  Take Care,

-M

      

  

The art of false casting...

      For those of you reading this that do not fly-fish, the false cast is what the fly angler does to lengthen the amount of line at play. That is, it is what most people envision when they think of fly-fishing. It is the image of the angler, standing knee-deep in a river, with a loop of line whistling over his head that conjures the romantic image associated with fly-fishing. Besides the fact that this often looks very impressive, the false cast also has a very real purpose. As I stated before, it lengthens the angler's line, thereby increasing the range of the cast. It also helps the angler to place their fly on-target, achieving the the goal of a perfectly placed cast, and hopefully rewarding the angler with a well-earned bounty.

      The true fact of the matter is that it is nearly impossible to truly master the art of casting without first mastering the art of the false-cast. If an angler fails to false-cast enough, they will undershoot their target, too much, and they'll overshoot. Often, even after false-casting to the proper distance, the cast will land off target, and the angler will immediately raise the line out of the water and begin to false-cast again, changing and adjusting it ever so slightly in order to make the next cast perfect.

      In our own daily lives, whether we are anglers or not, we're all making “false casts” without ever realizing it. Working toward our own personal goals and aspirations requires us to be constantly false casting and making miscalculations in order to make our next cast just a little more perfect than the last. We are forever adjusting our efforts to avoid making recurring mistakes. Only after countless misplaced casts, readjustments, and improvements, can we really make our casts fully count.

      Often our false-casts may begin to feel redundant, causing fatigue and frustration. At times, we may not know how to adjust our casts so that they fall perfectly in the next attempt, and the only viable option is to continue to false cast until we have perfected it. If we are to fully appreciate the casts we make in our lives, we must learn to appreciate the art of the false cast. At the times when we begin to feel as though we have expended every ounce of energy and have exhausted our efforts in the hopes of perfecting our casts, if we simply lay our line onto the water once more, we'll often see our goal become reality. For every precise cast we make, we may have to false cast a hundred times, but the one cast that falls exactly where we want it to will cause all the false casts to become nothing more than stepping stones that got us to our goals. Then, and only then, will our casts become worthwhile. All of our fatigue disappears, our frustrations vanish, and the rewards of our efforts will be seen through the perfection we've achieved.

Make the memories count...

    
  “In the quiet times of my life, I occasionally reach into the back of mind and try to recall better, more peaceful times when happiness was easily found, when friendships were abundant, and when life was most enjoyable. Instead, I am often plagued by the memories of bygone days and of things left undone or unsaid. I am haunted by recollections of the bridges I have burned and the friendships I have lost. These are the memories that make up my life. At times, I feel I have become an old soul trapped in the body of a younger man, trying my hardest to live up to the expectations I've set for myself, and those set for me by the people I've let down in the past.” Less than two short years ago, I penned this paragraph in my notebook, while trying to think of the memories in my life that made up the fabric of “me”. Try as I might, at that point in my life, I could not clear away the mental debris and crawl from the rubble to find my good memories. I had pushed them aside and replaced them with all of the darkest memories that remained.

      One of the dark memories that has haunted me since the day it occurred was the last day I ever fished with my grandfather. No, it was not on some peaceful lake or on a forgotten trout stream. The day was not bright and warm, in fact, it was raining outside, and the only light was that which shone in the window of a first floor room of a nursing home. My grandfather had severe dementia, likely brought on by countless other ailments that had taken everything but the shell of the man that I once saw as the strongest, most respectable man I had ever known. As I sat by his side, talking with my grandmother, who also resided in the nursing home, my grandfather raised his hand as though holding a fishing rod, and began to turn the reel with his other hand. I think that, in his mind, he truly believed that I was at his side, fishing as we had done so many times before. Tears came to my eyes, and the image burned itself into the back of my mind. I sat for as long as I could hold my tears, and left as the first rolled from my eye. A few days after, my grandfather passed away. To the best of my knowledge, the first time I ever took the opportunity to tell my grandfather how I felt about him was at his funeral, and the words were audible only to me, resonating in the corridors of my own thoughts. I have tried a countless number of times to replace this memory with one of the many happier memories that I have of my grandfather, but my efforts have been in vain.

      Of the memories we hold in the confines of our minds, we may at times forget some of the details. The date, or time, or place may escape our consciousness. Should we fail to recall all other components of our memories, the one element that should be locked into the memoirs of our days must be the people that have been by our side to see our trials and tribulations, our missteps and our masterpieces. I urge that above all other things, we should push the very edges of our cognizance to never forget the people that have lived our adventures with us.

      As we make memories with the people in our lives, we should, in turn, polish them as they occur so that they never lose their luster. Embellish them by making them as valuable as possible. Take the opportunity to tell or at least show the people around you what they mean to you. Swallow...no, devour... your pride and convey your feelings to the people around you. We do not have, nor ever will have, the ability to amend the opportunities we have missed throughout the course of our lives. The ashes of burnt opportunity should never be allowed to cloud the brilliance of the recollections that we hold dear. Treat those in your lives as though they are the gems that sparkle the brightest when you someday clear away the cobwebs, dust off the treasure chest of your mind, and marvel at the riches you've accumulated in your life.

      I'm really not one for profound statements, and those who know me know that, at times, I struggle to even say the things I'm attempting to say without thinking before every word. The ability of spoken word is apparently one that has escaped me somehow, which is why I so often choose to write my thoughts, instead. I know some of you may have heard me say the following statement before, but I'm throwing it out there again because it resonates so loudly in my own mind whenever I think of the people in my own life: Our own candle shall never have the ability to shine so brightly alone as it does when illuminated by the flame of those around us. This is a thought that sticks in the back of my mind as I attempt to make new memories with the people around me, so that someday, during the darkest times in my own life, my memories shall forever shine through.  

Testament of a Fisherman...

This is one of my all-time favorite writings that I just wanted to share with everyone from Robert Traver's "Testament of a Fisherman".  Robert Traver was the pen-name of John Voelker, the attorney and former Michigan Supreme Court Justice who also wrote "Anatomy of a Murder". Enjoy!

"I fish because I love to; because I love the environs where trout are found, which are invariably beautiful, and hate the environs where crowds of people are found, which are invariably ugly; because of all the television commercials, cocktail parties, and assorted social posturing I thus escape; because, in a world where most men seem to spend their lives doing things they hate, my fishing is at once an endless source of delight and an act of small rebellion; because trout do not lie or cheat and cannot be bought or bribed or impressed by power, but respond only to quietude and humility and endless patience; because I suspect that men are going along this way for the last time, and I for one don't want to waste the trip; because mercifully there are no telephones on trout waters; because only in the woods can I find solitude without loneliness; because bourbon out of an old tin cup always tastes better out there; because maybe one day I will catch a mermaid; and, finally, not because I regard fishing as being so terribly important but because I suspect that so many of the other concerns of men are equally unimportant - and not nearly so much fun." - Robert Traver (John Voelker)