A Million Miles and a Ladybug

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Random thoughts as I read a million miles in a thousand years. Interesting definition of a story. “A character, someone who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it”.
If you see a movie that is meaningless, it does not make all movies meaningless. Thus somebody who finds “life” to be meaningless are really saying that their life is meaningless. I would tend to agree with that one. It makes perfect sense. They are merely projecting their view of life onto the rest of the world. Why not,,, misery loves company!

I have to say I don’t personally feel that way. I do want people to understand where I am coming from and kind of like to have them feel for me a little. Sympathy for a moment feels good,,,,at least to me it does. I’m not real good at returning that favor though. Sympathy just helps me realize that emotions are founded in some sort of reality.

At some point during the day my neck and shoulder got a twinge of some sort. It comes shortly after I was thinking to myself how my neck and shoulder may be getting better. I’ve lost over 30 pounds and have started working out. I’m stronger than I have been in years, yet that doesn’t seem to be enough at this time. I sit here tonight enjoying a beer and trying to read while a head ache brews from my injuries of long ago. So this is what getting old is all about? Falling apart and comparing good days to better days and wondering what happened the best of times? I often wonder what could have been had I kept with my cycling career? I do miss it! There was something about biking and being “on” that just can’t be explained. Man machine,,,perfection. The feel of the tires rolling fast and sure down the single track, the taste of dust and sweat, the second wind you get after thinking you have pushed yourself to the limits.
The simple sense of accomplishment of when it was just you versus nature. Much like fishing, any day on the bike is a good day. Even when I busted my shoulder up and wasted my neck. The moments leading up to the accident were great, the ride in the ambulance and the paramedic lady with the loose fitting top....priceless. It hurt like hell my friends! Yet there was something about it. It was almost a right of passage in a way. I’ve finally did it. This one is cost me some money, points and the championship. Not to mention 9 weeks off of work and rehabilitation! Yet I did it on my terms doing something that I loved. That was what the heroes did when I was growing up watching football and Evel Knievel risk his life and occasionally bust his ass. What a brave man. I wanted to be that brave when I grew up. Not sure what happened though? It was probably adult shit, like having responsibility and having to well,,,pay for shit.
Ya know what? I still love bikes, just like I used to when I was a kid. I would ride till I couldn’t ride anymore. It would get dark and with a new bike in the garage, I was sad to have to go in and leave it sitting out in the garage all night, alone and cold. Really? Yep, really.
Even now, at 41 years, my Cannondale hangs in my living room. I catch myself staring at it like a father would a new born child as it quietly sleeps. I often wish that I could get it a brother or a sister depending on how you sex a bike? I don’t like the idea of riding a dude, but then again riding a chick bike is subjective as well. I ain’t riding no lesbo bike so that is probably why I don’t name my bikes. There are 2 sexes for bikes though, as odd as that may sound based on my previous statement. There are Road bikes and Mountains bikes. The other bikes are in between are relational to the 2 for mentioned bikes getting together. Ie. Hybrids and BMX. Old fucker bikes are well just old bikes some are new but they look old,,those are posers.
The point of this rant? Not sure? Apparently I needed to get some shit of my chest. I want to write a book so I’m just shooting things out here hoping that something forms from all of this. I want to find another passion, one that won’t find me in the hospital after a long ride in an ambulance with a very friendly paramedic with a nice chest. Something with meaning and substance. Something that changes peoples lives and simply makes a difference.

An interesting point just came to me. We live our lives in stages. I sort of touched on this earlier, or not. At first we are learning and full of wonder. We then get to an age where we seek milestones of age that fulfill goals and mostly wants. We then hit that middle point. I think that is some where after 25. We may have started to establish ourselves based on the previous years of challenges then turned into habit now turned into our unrealized reality. But, nonetheless, we wander, influenced by the mix of ages that we encounter at work or play. Old and young the advice is every where. We struggle to obtain the future.

Then we hit that 3rd stage. Somewhere around late 30’s early 40’s. For me it was 40. It was a mile marker that I had no idea of how profound it would be. Nor did I know how the key characters in my life would change, how they would change me and send me on a mind bending spiral that would eventually lead me to God.
This 3rd stage is a stage that I find myself thinking about the past a lot and trying to make sense out of what I’ve lived through and how my decisions have lead me to this very moment in my life. Every decision I made as a child has lead me to my fortunes as a teenager as did it to my young man now wiser older man.
The change of any of those events may have lead me down a different road entirely. I may not be sitting here in Franklin Tn. Writing my memoirs and enjoying a new found friendship with God. Now here I am, 3rd stage trying to make sense of it. Now whether third stage is it for me I don’t know. I think there will probably be a 4th stage? Not sure how that will play out. It will be my death and true test of faith. So I hope I’m paying attention at this time.....

There is so much beauty around us everyday. Every where I look there are pictures to be taken. Life and death plays out every moment of everyday. Will it matter when my curtain comes? Have I made a difference in this world? Will my lost be felt? Did I play the role or the character that God had intended?

These are the questions that I personally struggle with a lot. I want my life to have had meaning to more than just those to whom I pay my bills to or for those that I show up to punch the clock everyday and make money for. Now will I have had an impact on the world around me? Living Gods plan is much larger than myself or my own perception of self. It’s like a part in a motor. There are many pieces but they are all there for a reason or they wouldn’t be there.
Sure you can still drive the car if the air conditioner doesn’t work or the c.d. Player has ceased to play anymore. However it’s not complete, something is missing. Like the air conditioner, its presence is surely felt. Everything has a place, everything has a role. Unlike the car and it’s deliberate design we don’t really know exactly where we fit in as a widget in the much larger view of life and world for that matter. Talk about a silence followed by a deafening roar!

Can we compare or even understand the impact of everything-ness? What affect did a lady bug have on the world or even just an individual? Compared to Einstein? Did that ladybug go through it’s life unnoticed by anyone other than its own kind? What affect did that have? Holy shit, think about this from my vantage point for a moment. I am but only one person among billions on this third rock from the sun. I was born in Michigan, moved to California, then went to Alabama, then to Franklin Tn. Moved from Franklin to Bellevue Tn. Then moved back to Franklin at the age of 40 only to find myself wandering alone again wandering in the woods. This time though,,,,through another series of events I have a camera. With this camera I found myself near a stump at an old Civil War site where I noticed a dead ladybug that I then photographed because I saw beauty. Beauty even in death. I may have been the only person on earth to have ever seen this one ladybug. Even in death it still held on to the side of the stump. This creature had purpose up till that final moment where it could no longer move any further. It was now time,,,, time for it to rest. I was there to witness it while it still held on even after several days had passed since it last felt the warmth of the mid day sun, while it was still full of life.

What was that? What did I really witness? Was it noting more than just an observance of life and death? Yet here I am,,,writing about it. A photograph holds this bugs place as I am sure it has since fallen due to decay and the elements. Yet in a series of 1’s and 0’s this ladybug is kept and was noticed and appreciated by me. It now stands as a memory, a memory that reaches beyond what ever a ladybug would normally do within its life time.
Would the ladybug have even noticed let alone cared? Only God knows that answer. One day I will have my chance to ask.


Just scenes from a memory, my life, my character. From my small apartment in Franklin with no pictures on the walls to my long sorted past of triumphs and failures. I run the gauntlet of making up for my short comings to trying to make a difference in the lives of those who matter the most. This is just stuff, stuff that will be here long after I’m gone. Someone else will get it. It will be someone else that will either realize that these old things once mattered to someone. They served a purpose in someones life, it help identify who they where and what they stood for. Will it matter, will it even be remembered?
I believe it could matter and I believe I will have made a difference in this life.
Like the ladybug that held on to a the bark of a tree stump long enough for me to find it and appreciate it, I hope will leave something behind for someone to find or notice. If one person, just one person can find the beauty in that then my life had purpose, my life had meaning. What more could I ask for.

Love and light,
~A