Insight

Always Worth Living

/ James Browning

Even though I try not to, I find myself at times wishing for the “good old days”. Yet I know they were not nearly as good as my memory has enshrined them to be. It’s my mind’s way of coping to embellish the days gone by. Sometimes the ‘bad’ is made bigger in retrospect and the good is grown “larger” by memory. One of the gifts of getting older is a growing ability to let past happiness and joy expand while allowing difficulty and sadness to diminish slowly over time.

Taken from “The New Days” by Edgar Guest

The old days, the old days, how oft the poets sing,
The days of hope at dewy morn, the days of early spring,
The days when every mead was fair, and every heart was true,
And every maiden wore a smile, and every sky was blue
The days when dreams were golden and every night brought rest,
The old, old days of youth and love, the days they say were best.

The new days, the new days, of them I want to sing,
The new days with the fancies and the golden dreams they bring;
The old days had their pleasures, but likewise have the new
The gardens with their roses and the meadows bright with dew;
We love to-day the selfsame way they loved in days of old;
The world is bathed in beauty and it isn’t growing cold;
There’s joy for us a-plenty, there are tasks for us to do,
And life is worth the living, for the friends we know are true.

I am grateful for every day of my life: even the most difficult ones. Each one was filled with twenty-four hours of breath and life that I had the gift of life within. Even at their worst, my days been interesting, instructive and always worth living.

Enjoy yourself.
These are the good old days
you’re going to miss in the years ahead.
Unknown

Through Their Eyes

/ James Browning

Rudyard Kipling passed away just short of twenty years before I was born.  As a kid I loved the wonderful mental journeys I took reading the stories in “The Jungle Book” and the great adventures I went on with “Kim” and “Captains Courageous”. I didn’t discover Kipling’s poetry until well into adulthood and admittedly haven’t laid eyes on any of it in years. So when I came across “If” by Kipling it was an enjoyable reminder of what I aspired to be as a child and in some manner succeeded in being here and there.

“If” by Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream — and not make dreams your master;
If you can think — and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build `em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings — nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And — which is more — you’ll be a Man, my son!

For all the writers who have inspired me, and yet will, with their poetry, novels and thoughts in word of all sorts, I am extraordinarily grateful.  Through their eyes I have witnessed a world for beyond any I could have known without their work. 

The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say,
but what we are unable to say.
Anaïs Nin

Trail Markers

/ James Browning

A definition of a “saying” is: a short grouping of words that together make a clever or meaningful expression which usually contains advice, wisdom or expresses an obvious truth. For me sayings are much like markers on a trail that help me keep on the life path I want my feet to stay on.

This morning in meditating on ‘character’ I pondered the following three “trail markers” and wanted to share them:

You can tell the character of every man
when you see how he receives praise.
Seneca

You can easily judge the character of a man
by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Wisdom is knowing what to do next,
skill is knowing how to do it,
and virtue is doing it.
David Starr Jordan

A thought from each of three different men from three different times: one from a philosopher of 2000 years ago (Seneca), another from a philosopher close to 300 years past (Goethe) and another saying from a man who lived within the last 100 years (Jordan). All three reach through time to express timeless wisdom to me about being a good man. I am grateful for what each one left behind to inspire me today.

Our chief want is someone who will inspire us
to be what we know we could be.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

A Letter To My Son on Father’s Day

/ James Browning

ORIGINALLY Posted on June 19, 2011

Dear Nick,

Vivid in memory are the emotions I experienced just after you were born. The day after you arrived I wrote in a journal about the joy I felt, the gratefulness within for you being ‘normal” with the proper number of fingers and toes, the awe that filled me for life and the hopes I had for you. I described your birth as “the most incredible thing I’ve ever witnessed” and also wrote “No child could be more wanted or more loved.” Those thoughts have aged sweeter as time has clicked by.

Frequent have been musings of how I could have been a better Father. Had I not chased with such vigor the emptiness of dysfunctional illusion, success and money I could have been there for you more. There were too many of your games I missed,weekend outings that never were and small events at school that were big happenings for you when my presence was missing. I never did build the treehouse I promised you.

Your Mother and I went our separate ways when you were sixteen which took you hundreds of miles away. One of my deepest regrets is your high school years when seeing you only every couple of months I became a sideline spectator of your life. Yet, as I mature and learn I have come to know regrets past making sure you aware of them, have no good purpose.

There are so many wonderful memories I have of your growing up. No child has ever been more curious about the world than you. You never crawled and began to recklessly walk at 7 months old. Such determination you have always had!

In school you did well and had the respect of most of your teachers. You made good friends and some of those relationships are healthy and thriving today. The only time you ever really got in trouble at school was through protecting a friend from a bully. How the game of hockey worked when you started to play at seven was unknown to me, but no father was ever prouder than I was to watch you. The lessons that came at you in college were hard ones, but you learned from your mistakes. I can not begin to express my admiration for your determination and stick-to-it-ness to get the education you wanted.

On this father’s day I hope these borrowed words express clearly to you the feelings of my heart and the wishes of my soul.

Until you have a son of your own… You will never know the joy beyond joy, the love beyond feeling that resonates in the heart of a father as he looks upon his son. You will never know the sense of honor that makes a man want to be more than he is and to pass on something good and useful into the hands of his son. And you will never know the heartbreak of the fathers who are haunted by the personal demons that keep them from being the men they want their sons to see.

We live in a time when it is hard to speak from the heart. Our lives are smothered by a thousand trivialities, and the poetry of our spirits is silenced by the thoughts and cares of daily affairs.

And so, I want to speak to you honestly. I do not have answers. But I do understand the questions. I see you struggling and discovering and striving upward, and I see myself reflected in your eyes and in your days. In some deep and fundamental way, I have been there and I want to share.

I, too, have learned to walk, to run, to fall. I have had a first love. I have known fear and anger and sadness. My heart has been broken and I have known moments when the hand of God seemed to be on my shoulder. I have wept tears of sorrow and tears of joy.

There have been times of darkness when I thought I would never see light again, and there have been times when I wanted to dance and sing and hug every person I met.

I have felt myself emptied into the mystery of the universe, and I have had moments when the smallest slight threw me into rage.

I have carried others when I barely had the strength to walk myself, and I have left others standing by the road with their hands out stretched for help.

Sometimes I feel I have done more than anyone can ask; other times I feel I am a charlatan and a failure. I carry within me the spark of greatness and the darkness of heartless crimes.

In short, I am a man, as are you.

Although you will walk your own earth and move through your own time, the same sun will rise on you that rose on me, and the same reasons will course across your life as moved across mine. We will always be different, but we will always be the same.

This is my attempt to give you the lesson of my life, so that you can use them in yours. They are not meant to make you into me. It is my greatest joy to watch you turn into yourself.

To be your father is the greatest honor I have ever received. It allowed me to touch mystery and to see my love made flesh. If I could but have one wish, it would be for you to pass that love along.

I love you,

Pops

You are my son-shine.
Author Unknown

A Beautiful Soul

/ James Browning

The thought-provoking images with a message below were found on a blog on tumblr.com called “life is a beautiful struggle”:

 

Sometimes running across what others have placed on their blog has more meaning to me at that moment that any other thing I know of or could write myself.  A beautiful soul keeps the blog I borrowed the above from and has my sincere gratitude for the inspiration she gave me today. 

If you see a friend without a smile;
give them one of yours.
Proverb – Author Unknown

Two Poems and a Saying

/ James Browning

This morning finds me a bit groggy after a good night’s rest even after a half hour awake and my first cup of coffee of the day. Extra measures of the activities of a good life squeezed out some usual sleep hours over the last ten days and I’m now in catch-up mode. I’m dragging!

Reading is frequently the best medicine for brightening my mood and I reached on top of the two stacks of books on the side of my desk. The first one I picked up for inspiration this morning was “Moments of Awareness” by Helen Lowrie Marshall published in 1968. There I found the little pick-me-ups I needed.

“Good Morning”
“Good Morning!” What a lovely way
To open up a brand new day!
Not knowing what that day may hold-
A sun of tinsel or of gold-
The phrase embraces in its scope
His faith-of every soul a part;
The love that lives in every heart.
“Good Morning-and a Good Today!
May all things happy come your way;
And may the light of this new dawn
Find all your cares and worries gone.”
So much the simple words convey-
“Good Morning-It’s a lovely day!”

“A Shaft of Sunlight”
A shaft of sunlight breaking through
Can make the whole world shining new;
Can shape tomorrow, change a life;
Can banish doubt and fear and strife.

One shaft of sunlight through the grey,
One word of cheer that we may say,
Could carry far-flung consequence,
And might make all the difference.

The words of sages, philosophers and poets have frequently been the sign posts of my life that pointed me in the direction I needed to go or else reminded me of what I already knew. Silently each writer is my companion on this adventure called life and gives me insight, strength and encouragement. I am grateful for my ability to read and all those who inspire me by their words put down for me to discover.

I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.
Richard Wright

More Profound than Truth

/ James Browning

English romantic poet John Keats wrote “Beauty is truth, truth beauty; that is all”. While the statement is easily understood it actually says a great deal while saying very little. Anatole France thought beauty was “more profound than truth itself.”

If you look up definitions of beauty what is found are descriptions such as:

* Quality perceived which gives intense pleasure or deep satisfaction to the mind arising from sensory manifestations such as harmony of form, gracefulness, pleasing shape, meaningful design or pattern.

* A combination of qualities that pleases the aesthetic senses, the intellect, or moral sense; preceptions which pleasurably exalt the mind or spirit; sensing excellence of artistry, truthfulness, and originality.

In an article in National Geographic Cathy Newman wrote: Define beauty? One may as well dissect a soap bubble. We know it when we see it or so we think. Philosophers frame it as a moral equation. What is beautiful is good, said Plato. Poets reach for the lofty such as Kahlil Gibran who said “beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart”. 

Blogger Janiel928 made a list of fifteen things she considered beautiful: my husband’s laugh, butterflies, sunsets, music, snow, baby animals, fireworks, flowers, good food, the beach, sound of owls, night sky, hummingbirds, books, and cats. Another wrote the five most beautiful things in the world are “falling in love, the ocean, sky filled with stars, laughing and peace.

A writer’s list on-line of the most beautiful places in the world included sunset at the Taj Mahal, Skywalk at the Grand Canyon, the Matterhorn, the Northern Lights, view of New York from the Empire State Building and Antarctic glaciers.

It’s impossible to pick just one most beautiful work of art. While Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel or statue of David could certainly be in the running, so could De Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” or any number of Rembrandt’s work. Then there’s Renoir, Gauguin, Warhol, Dali, Monet, Matisse, Picasso or even Rockwell and Remington. Van Gogh said, “The most beautiful paintings are those which you dream about… but which you never paint”.

In conversation of a group of people there will never be full agreement on who wrote the most beautiful music whether it was created by Mozart or Brahms, The Beatles or the Moody Blues, Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin, Garth Brooks or Reba McEntire, Henry Mancini or Duke Ellington, Nirvana or REM, Charlie Parker or Billie Holiday or many others. What’s beautiful in music is no different than any other art form: it’s a uniquely personal thing.

Who is the most beautiful man or woman living today? …that has ever lived? From a spiritual sense some would say Jesus while others say Mohaummed and still other’s response would be Buddha or another. 

Whatever the criteria, it is impossible to answer universally who/what is most beautiful because the answer varies with the person doing the choosing. Carole Bayer Sager asked the question “What is the most beautiful flower? the most beautiful song, voice, etc?” She then answered “Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder; there is no one answer”.

I am grateful for the great beauty in my life in all forms and shapes in comes in. There is so much of it even while my vision of what is beautiful is different from anyone else’s.  I have grown to appreciate more and more what I preceive as having beauty, but I still don’t appreciate it enough.

About ten years ago I vowed to at least once each day to stop down for a few seconds to truly notice something beautiful and really “see” it. I am grateful for the reminder to restore my habit to consistency.  It well known to me that doing so makes a sizeable different in the quality of my life!

The best and most beautiful things in the world
cannot be seen or even touched.
They must be felt with the heart.
Helen Keller

Dreams That Need Completion

/ James Browning

What are three things that burn at you to do before time runs out?

Having had a successful career, raised a son who is making his own way in life well, knowing the love of those close and many other wonderful experiences all combine together into a good life.  There have been many adventures and I’ve been able to indulge keen interests seriously, ranging from photography to piloting airplanes. Far more has come to me that I could have ever dreamed or imagined when I was young. There is humble gratitude for all my benefits and blessings. However, here in my late 50’s I am not done!

What are the three things that come to mind I want yet to experience?

To romantically love and be loved, passionately, gently, tenderly, thoroughly through the ups and downs with my last true love.  To bravely hold hands into old age in spite of fear of demise and death. To share the ultimate adventure of fading into the winter of life.

To write and make a difference; to express my thoughts and feelings and have others find them worthy of their time to read. Ultimately I hope to have what began here as a blog to be the building blocks of a published non-fiction book (self published is fine with me). I also want to finish the great fictional love story I began several years ago titled “A Year From Wednesday”.

To travel; I mean really travel. Go places and stay long enough to fit in and know my way around. A week or two there, a month or two in another place; far away places. The more untarnished the better. There’s a whole world out there that I want to see, smell, taste, feel and hear in its variety.

The beginning of making big dreams come true is to tell others about them… and then tell them again and again. I am grateful for the impetus that sharing my dreams here gives me. 

What three things do you want most to yet accomplish in your life?

When we are motivated by goals
that have deep meaning,
by dreams that need completion,
by pure love that needs expressing,
then we truly live life.
Greg Anderson

Behind a Farting Camel

/ James Browning

Hafez or Hafiz was a Persian poet who lived in the 1300’s. His work has been influential since that time even though little is actually known today about him and his life. His work made deep impressions on writers such as Thoreau, Goethe and Emerson with the latter referring to him as “a poet’s poet. Hafez has been a favorite since I became aware of his writing during my young “hippie days” (or was that “hippie daze”?)

In this piece, Hafez writes about depression and seemed knowledgeable about the subject hundreds of years before Jung and Freud. There are a few days per month I have to deal with “cycling depression” that brings a sort of dimness and lethargy into my life. Writing like the piece below from Hafez helps me understand I am far from alone. Many today suffer as I do and many did a hundred generations before me did too.

I know the voice of depression
Still calls to you.
I know those habits that can ruin your life
Still send their invitations.
But you are with the Friend now
And look so much stronger.
You can stay that way
And even bloom!
Learn to recognize the counterfeit coins
That may buy you just a moment of pleasure,
But then drag you for days
Like a broken man
Behind a farting camel…
O keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From your prayers and work and music
And from your companions’ beautiful laughter
And from the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body.
Now, sweet one,
Be wise.
Cast all your votes for dancing!

In recent years the days of my depression usually pass like wind through a tree when limbs are moved by the passing but no damage is not done. Through counseling, support of peers and those who care about me, and reaching a level of understanding that “depression” is a ‘normal’ malady, I am much healthier today than ever before. Some deal with migraines; some throw their back out; I cope with depression. And I do it quite well these days and am grateful for all the love, support and insight that makes that possible.

If depression is creeping up and must be faced,
learn something about the nature of the beast:
You may escape without a mauling.
Dr. R. W. Shepherd

I Have Been a Fool

/ James Browning

When one hears the word “lust” it’s common to conjure up sexual meaning. Certainly sex can be lust, but lust is many more things that just sex. In the realm of desire I have known sexual lust so strong it blinded me to almost everything else. But any such yearning compulsion pales in comparison to my greatest lust: the lust for perfection.

The dictionary defines “lust” as ” an intense longing; a passionate or overmastering desire or craving; an emotion or feeling of almost overpowering desire. My chasing of always elusive perfect people, perfect things and a perfect ‘me’ certainly qualifies. It has been the lust that plagued my life most.

Friday evening after work, a relaxing evening watching a movie was my chosen way of unwinding from the work week. Out of my stash of bargain used and closeout DVD’s, “Holy Smoke” was a near completely random pick. I had not seen it and knew nothing about the movie except it starred Harvey Keitel and Kate Winslet; both long time favorites.

Admittedly I have had an innocent boyish crush on Ms. Winslet since seeing Titanic almost fifteen years ago. Having seen the re-released “Titanic” on IMAX 3-D a few weeks ago, that sense about her had been refreshed. I’ve always thought she was attractive in an unaffected way and admired that she seemed never to try to be absolutely perfect. In the famous sketch scene in Titanic where DiCaprio’s character draws “Rose” laying naked on the sofa, Ms. Winslet looked sweetly innocent and lovely. As beautiful as she looked, if you pay attention you can see stretch marks on her breast in that scene that was admirably left un-retouched.

My Friday evening movie, “Holy Smoke” with Winslet and Keitel, turned out to be a quirky, but deeply revealing movie.  It touched me enough to cause a real shift in my perspective. It’s gritty realism hit hard in few spots in a manner that helped me see past some of my previous behavior and way of seeing others.

In the past I never felt I was “perfect enough”. The exactly ‘right’ shoes, car, home, vacation, suit, furniture, accomplishment, camera and so on always alluded me. Perfect was always just out of reach, but I kept reaching any way.

The “imperfectness” I saw and felt in myself also colored EVERYTHING and EVERYONE around me. No friend was quite good enough. No associate was talented enough.  No woman was ever perfect enough and accepting each one’s imperfections eluded me. Now I realize what I was perceiving was only hatred of my own lack of perfection and was layering it onto them.

In “Holy Smoke” Harvey Keitel is 50-something cult deprogrammer hired by the family of a mid-20’s Kate Winslet who has been mesmerized by an east Indian guru. There’s a night scene where Kate’s character sets on fire her clothing from the cult, a white sari, hanging outside on a tree. The flames wake up Harvey’s character who runs outside to find a completely naked Ruth (Kate’s character). That’s when my “changing” moment happened.

I sat on the couch stunned as I pressed pause for a few seconds looking at a naked Kate Winslet on the screen. That’s when for the first time I was able to truly see the beauty that is in a woman’s physical imperfection. I saw breasts that did not match nor were perfect in shape with irregular nipples. I saw bigger thighs and legs too large for me to have previously thought of as ‘perfect’. I saw a woman who wanted to be known just as she was and accepted in spite of any imperfection. That was the point of the scene of the movie and it worked. I accepted her openly and completely, seeing only the unique beauty that is 100% Kate Winslet. I will never be the same again.

The wrong of how I judged wives and girlfriends in the past is crystal clear to me now. Beauty is in the total package; the unique female each woman is. For those women who loved me who I judged about the shape of their body or any part of it, or I wished were more here and less there…I humbly apologize and ask your forgiveness. From butt to face, breasts to weight, height to hair, posture to stomach, from scar to skin tone I judged wrongly and saw imperfection I then wished was different. Even if you never know of my feelings now, I am still very sorry for being judgmental. It was my loss I could not see the unique beauty that each woman was. When Friday’s epiphany came over me while watching “Holy Smoke” I said aloud “I have been a fool. I have been blind. Why could I not see like this before?” Tears followed as the weight of my misguided view of the past began to evaporate.

Thank you Kate Winslet for your courage to be so fully seen in an uncensored and honest way. You’re imperfectly perfect and changed my life in a single movie scene! Substantial and deep gratitude is within me for this wake up call. I have let go of a way of perceiving that no longer works for me. Short or tall, skinny or full-figured, big breasted or small, little butt or big butt… the female form in all shapes and variety has become more beautiful to me in a way I have never seen before. True beauty is in the uniqueness of every one.

Beauty is an experience, nothing else.
It is not a fixed pattern or an arrangement of features.
It is something felt, a glow or a communicated sense of fineness.
What ails us is that our sense of beauty is so bruised and blunted,
we miss all the best.
D. H. Lawrence