Waiting

Wisdom does not wait for anyone to get  it. “Older and wiser” is the saying.  Still we don’t get it no matter how old we get. 

We just have more life experience and that assumes that we have figured out the 

meaning of all our mistakes and glory 

of our achievements. There might be meaning gleaned from our mistakes if we ignored being ashamed that we weren’t 

perfect. But then we’d have to admit to 

being human and where would that 

get us. And then there is glory. There 

might be a burst of excitement when 

an exam is aced, or when some obstacle 

is overcome. There might even be 

someone patting us on the back to tell us 

how great we are, how far we’ve come. 

But none of that is wisdom. In fact, I’m 

not sure I could even draw a picture of 

wisdom. I never was good at drawing faces, 

but I think that my grandparents or anyone 

much older than me may have been wise. 

But then they had to grow up too, so maybe 

they didn’t know what wisdom was either. 

So I’ll just accept the ‘older and wiser’ saying 

and wait till I get older to learn more about it.

“Patience is the companion of wisdom.”

~ Saint Augustine

My Way

Openings for how to grow, how to learn, are not obvious. Not a guy on a street corner holding a sign: 

“Openings here!”. If it was, 

would it mean an opening 

for a job, an opening for 

a door, or an opening for

opportunity? And would 

anyone pay attention to it,

other than to say, ‘what’s 

that old guy up to now?” 

No, openings for growth 

are tiny and most often 

unseen but struggled 

through like putting on a 

new pullover. Takes some 

stubbornness and even after 

the pullover is settled and 

smoothed the fit won’t be 

recognized for years. 

Of course, unless some 

teacher or parent claps 

excitedly and produces 

a gold star. But most of 

the growth and learning 

that happens is accidental, 

with no grades, no gold 

stars and no one clapping 

and cheering along the way. 

It is merely a singular journey 

needing nothing more than 

curiosity, willingness and

‘I did it my way’. 

At least that’s what 

Frank Sinatra sings about.

“The first step towards getting somewhere is to 

decide you’re not gong to stay where you are.”

~ J.P. Morgan

Generations

Rooting out where I’m from 

only gets me as far as the 

prairie where my grandfather 

homesteaded. Where the grasses of the prairie were tamed with strength and determination. Where he built a home for his young wife. Where his children, my dad and my uncles were born. 

But those are only the roots of one tree. 

On that prairie my mother’s grandparents 

arrived to build their lives with the railway. 

Her parent’s lives were a dairy, more farms, 

schools and church. And from those young 

saplings, generations of children have been born. 

I don’t know that we make a forest. 

But I do know that from these 

pioneer trees, saplings still grow 

and learn to become the pioneers 

for each generation. Generations, 

foreign to me with their technology, 

will build new worlds to marvel at 

and explore. 

But we are all under the same blue sky, 

some of us still on the prairie of our grandparents.

“We need to remember across generations 

that there is as much to learn as there is to teach.”

~ Gloria Steinem

Dimensions

Going into a dream with no end, only a drifting of faces and places until we wake to see light slanting through the curtain. It is only then that we see our surroundings solid, unmoving, 

shadowed by early morning light. 

In the light of day, our movements make life greater than any furniture. Are we taking care with our lives? Are we drifting as in a dream? Such choices bring another dimension to our lives. 

Dimensions of colour and texture that weave life’s tapestry.

“The key to growth is the introduction of higher 

dimensions of consciousness into our awareness.”

~ Lao Tzu

Simple but not Easy

Going into…

Rooting out…..

Openings for….

Wisdom does not…..

Temptation to….

Happiness made….

“As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.”

~ Rumi

24 Hours

So many things to listen to. At night 

we listen to our dreams. They drift away, 

fraying at the edges until our eyes open to 

reality. Keeping sounds low, home stirs 

awake. Sleepy chirping of birds, uncertain 

weather rattles window panes or the silence 

of a rising sun suggests whether to shiver or 

be glad. Cars and trucks shush by, garbage 

trucks rumble down alleys, and passenger 

laden buses bustle and wheeze. With the 

steady tick of the clock, voices grow busier, 

laughter bubbles til at days end, family 

sounds take their places wrapped up in screens and sitcoms. Pillowed dreamtime returns and still we listen. But how much have we heard?

“Everybody has 24 hours and the question is, what do you do 

with your 24 hours? That’s what makes everybody equal.”

~ Stedman Graham, 

educator, author, businessman, public speaker

An Outlier

It troubles me when I learn of the travels of friends and family, or overhear a conversation in a coffee 

shop about the wonder and frustrations of a latest trip to Timbuktu or the Arctic Circle or some other far flung and exciting place. 

What troubles me is that I have no desire to travel ~ at least today, and maybe tomorrow but that can always change.

If there were the teleportation of 

Star Trek fame, I may consider it; 

but that is far in the future and 

probably not in what remains of 

my lifetime ~ which still has a 

couple of decades to go. However, 

technology, racing along like an 

uncontrolled teenager, may bring 

to life that fantasy. But by then, my 

already old bones will be a lot older 

and wouldn’t necessarily handle 

the molecular pin ball that 

teleportation seems to require. 

Regardless, I am content to enjoy 

my home without looking for the 

history of the world or taking photographs 

of buildings that lose their grandeur in 

a digital album. And of course, I will 

not miss the noisy bump and shuffle 

of airports and their waiting areas.

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking 

new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

~ Marcel Proust