Directional Signs

Don't Go This WAY!
(Sidewalk note encountered on recent morning run)

If only life's directional signs were this clear. Instead, I get the Cheshire Cat telling me that any road will do!

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.

"I don’t much care where--" said Alice.

"Then it doesn’t matter which way you go," said the Cat.

"--so long as I get SOMEWHERE," Alice added as an explanation.

"Oh, you’re sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."

[Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland]

Possible Impossible

Flying Bathtub at the local children's museum
June 2011

I've been thinking of this quote from Alice in Wonderland:

Alice laughed.  "There's no use trying," she said:  "one can't believe impossible things."  "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen.  "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day.  Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."  [Through the Looking Glass, Chapter 5]

These days, my life feels full of impossibilities, with every option a painful one.   Maybe I need more practice believing impossible things?

Wednesday's Word -- Trust

I'm not one to follow celebrities (or think that what I think about them matters one lick), but I have to admit that I have always admired Maria Shriver.  She is a strong, smart, capable woman.  Have you read her 2009 Shriver Report on women?  You should.  Right now (whether she cares or not), my heart is aching (and still admiring her) for what she's enduring.

So this week I'm thinking about the word TRUST, and what happens when it is gone.

"Trust" means "firm reliance on the integrity, ability, or character of a person or thing."  It is "something committed into the care of another."  Like the word ENDURE, it comes from the Indo-European root deru-, meaning "hard."  The word TREE comes from the same root.  So fitting, because I really can't imagine anything more trustworthy, steadfast and immovable than a tree.  

Times like these --  trust chopped to the ground -- leave a woman sitting on the stump, mustering the strength to get up and go plant her heart in more fertile ground.           

Monday's Metaphor -- Surprised by the Consequences

September 9, 1974
Blue Ridge Mountains, Virginia

My parents snapped this photo of me many years ago, just moments after a goose bite incident.  I was one month shy of two-years-old and so indignantly surprised that the goose I was harassing actually decided to give me what was coming to me.

Sometimes in life when I'm astounded by obvious consequences that are nobody's fault but my own, I think of this photo and smile.