deliberate living.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately… to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life.” –Henry David Thoreau

Cars weave about one another. A fatal dance that is not overly appealing to the senses, unless adrenaline is a sense. The line at the pharmacy is irritatingly unending. All faces refuse to hide the disgust felt upon being inconvenienced. Trash outlines the trail next to the man-made body of water. To breathe in deep is to risk bodily contamination.

Yet the noise, the hurry, it becomes an almost necessary extension of us. There is, in the crowds and lights, a sensation of being where things happen. And to miss out becomes the enemy. To not be present where busy-ness occurs—it threatens contentment down to the very soul. We must feel alive or we shall not live.

It is utterly sensible and painfully turned around.

Thoreau penned life in terms of solitude and nature. But the man was not all right about all things. He correctly assessed that an escape of sorts—a running away to the woods—is a vast consolation to the mind. Our poor heads, stuffed so tightly with thoughts that often add nothing to us, they need a rest from shallow thinking. To breathe in deep of the hills and forests. A freshness that man cannot re-produce, no matter his efforts. Breathe, clear the brain. Make way for a simple, bottomless gratitude. A thank heavens in being allowed to live. And oh, how the woods stir us up and settle us down, in such a progression of reflective appreciations.

This said, it is not location that ultimately determines the position of the heart. Each of us chooses that placement for ourselves. A silencing of stupid thoughts is always within grasp. A reaching out for freshness ever possible. We recognize, if we want, that we are living, regardless of how we feel. And the setting of our hands to any noble task before us is to live “Spartan-like.” To not lose hope when selfishness says “despair!” is to establish sturdy-ness. To breathe deep, whether we risk or not, is “to live deliberately.”

never can't.

Never say “I can’t.” Don’t dare. Childhood with a determined father implanted an illustrious fear of the hopeless saying in my mouth. Dries up just thinking about it. There is, within most of us, an inaccurate disbelief in what is possible for the self to accomplish. Growing up, I required particular attention to rectify my own distorted limitations. I like to defend my instinctive doubts, pointing to the memory of my parents giving my older sister the book The Little Engine that Could, while they presented me with The Little Red Caboose. But there is probably no true depth of meaning in that seemingly prophetic Christmas. I just didn’t think I was able. And my father disagreed.

One winter afternoon the wood needed to be split. Wouldn’t fit into the stove otherwise. Chop to it, twelve year-old me. Nine minutes and ten cold fingers in—“Dad, I can’t do this. It’s too…”

“Never say, ‘I can’t.’” The eyes shot the rest of the excuse out of me. The tone got my immediate respect which I would refuse to show. But the unwarranted belief in my abilities was the push—shoved my stubborn feet back out the door. The deluded man really thought I could do this. I’d show him. Once I froze out there with an ax lodged in my leg, he’d be sorry.

Of course, I accomplished the wood-splitting. No one really wants to die of hypothermia and an ax wound. Not even to prove a point. He came out before I was finished, partly to help, but mostly, I figured, to relish in his rightness.

“I knew you could do it. I am really proud of you and I appreciate your help.”

“Yeah…well, sure…whatever.” My pride twisted in a state of contradictory, distasteful satisfaction. Under the breath—“could have died out here” mumblings and so forth. I skulked away uncertain who lost and who won.

He believed there was a strength in me which I would almost rather die than admit to. I would not see it for my limited, selfish vision. I believed he demanded too much. He believed I could. I can.

A few months down the road of my adolescent life. Middle of a work day out in the woods. Distracted me lost a valuable tool in the creek pool. Find it. Can’t move on until it’s found.

“Fine, fine, I’ll get it.” Poking about the water’s edge with a stick for thirty minutes rendered no retrieved tool. The returned father gawked at the inefficiency before him. What on earth? This was trying to find it?

“I can’t, dad. This water is muddy and…”

“Never, ever,” here he picked up little me, “say ‘I can’t!’” And in the creek I went. Astonished, gasping, and filled with a profound respect that leaked onto my stubborn face. Need it be said? The tool was quickly located.

Impossibilities, to him, existed only within the boxes we chose to think and do inside of. Don’t poke around the banks. Wade out to the deep places.

More years later than I gladly admit to, the never-can’t ideology still wins me my sweetest victories. Also gets me into some of the stupidest problems. The situations where I can truthfully think, “If I died now, no one would know for days.” But those are what, after the right dosage of time, I tell around the campfires—my most glorious adventures.

The storm is rolling in. I run up to the mountain peak anyway. The job is harder than the compensation is worth. I stick it out regardless, feeding off potatoes and courage. The stinging nettles and mosquitoes have established dominion over the trail. But I hike it until the soles of my shoes fall off. The homeless man doesn’t speak sense and I am lost on what to do. I shall smile and listen to him, in spite of my helplessness.

I can.

The people cry for what is so hard before them. I cry too. But I won’t be thrown in the creek. I will run into it myself now.

Here’s to a father who forced me out of the typical scope of human possibility. Here’s to the many dreams I have realized because I refused to say, “I can’t.” Here’s to a world where excuses cease, and brave souls press forward because it is difficult. Wouldn’t want to miss the memory of determination, nor the sensation of being wrong about what you thought you couldn’t do.

We can.

iodine.

“For you shall go out with joy,
And be led forth in peace;
The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you,
And all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.”
-Isaiah 55:12

If Helen had been a preacher, she’d have told the best sorts of stories. Funny ones. The kind would turn people’s thoughts on. That end with a feeling—of being horrid muddy, but hopeful, shooting for July skies. No one ought to leave a place God calls home with who-knows-what unmended, awful hurts they got. She always said the Lord’s Word were ‘sposed to be iodine for sin-dirty hearts. And that’s every heart ever beat.

Helen wasn’t a slice of elegant. She wore comfy clothes and clapped her hands with the trees to worship a Maker she knew right personally. Made friends with near anybody too. Joy looked like homey-ness on her.

Allison Burks talks about the time she first joined the church choir. A right uppity group they were by appearances. But Helen was there, frumpy hair and a clean, grey blouse, the brashest singer of them all. One or two notes went particular bad for Allison and people started looking ‘round with crinkled noses asking, “Who’s gone off-key?” A little sun-loved hand shot up with a laughter-snort and next thing Allison knew, Miss Helen was getting them all into giggles, claiming she’d been the one to fumble. Shy Allison gaped at her with a profound gratitude she’s not forgot to this day.

Someone’s gotta tell the stories Helen didn’t.

Then, there’s the time her brother, John, got entered in a big race. They were just kids. But Lord, could she run, and he wasn’t half-terrible either. Her father said ladies don’t race, so she bit her lip to keep in the complaining. John did swell enough, but he got to the last lap and everyone knew his brain’d scared his legs from winning. She wouldn’t be bothered by all the grown-ups hollering for her to come back; Helen ran next to her brother a quarter of a mile when she spotted him slowing.

“C’mon, John! You go, beat all of ‘em. Run faster! Lord made you strong. Run, John!” His legs shot out quicker than ever and people started yelling.

When he made second she assured him the boy in first had a heavenly purpose for winning.

“Can question God all we want,” she told people, “don’t change the damned hearing we got, keep’n us from listenin’ to His answers most times. Good for us He loves the joke we are.” Then she would laugh and pour more tea. Shared it with anybody who came over too. Best tea this side of heaven. Lord knows. He probably gave her the recipe.

Helen didn’t ever preach. No sir. Wouldn’t have stood at the pulpit if they’d begged her. But she could be heard clapping out in the woods and no creature doubted she’d gone there to get some iodine.

Funny thing though, she never struck anyone as what you’d call overly religious. Just sort of loved people more than they expected. And told a lot of stories.

nostalgic expectation.

“We swore we knew the future
And our words would take us halfway ‘round the world…
But everything goes away.
Yeah everything goes away.”
-"Always Gold" by Radical Face

“Hey.” The soft word was welcome, a feeling of it, all wrapped in kind intentions and professional attire. She looked like a movie star, no one specific, just timeless in that way.

“Do you want to come to the work party tonight? I’ll pick you up.” Her dark hair fell like royal curtains around her perfectly put-together face. The new employee—fresh in from the countryside—sized herself up as an amateur next to this considerate expert.

“I would love that… Thanks so much!” Unkempt curls and mismatched outfit. The new girl donned gratitude as her best accessory, so powerful was her indebtedness in that moment.

“Great. Pick you up at 5:15.”

Their eyes met then. Experienced thoughtfulness greeted clumsy compassion. No two souls so different. And all the world agreed.

Yet theirs was a friendship of the sweetest sort, not in spite, but because of the contradiction that was them.

One night they drove around downtown eleven times looking for cheap parking, when it was all free. They biked up a hill only to stop halfway—had to turn around and leap from stone to stone across the river. Not to say they had done it, just to know that they could. Never minded when they rewound the movies to watch their favorite scene again and again. They taught and learned new loves to each other. Yet somehow remained beautifully opposite.

So many hours, snuck away from time, whispering hurt and dreams into the understanding air. They held the hearts up saying, “Here’s to laughing when we are lost.” Life hit them in the knees, rendering them windswept, but they regained composure together. Getting up is easier with hope at the elbow.

Watching the way others live is often the only inspiration required to ignite courage in a timid, uncertain soul. Any timid parts of them were regularly challenged by one another, by outsiders. So they watched the other live. And great was the courage they replaced uncertainty with. But no courage compared to that called upon when she decided it was time to go away. Movie star headed to a brighter city and country girl left to battle her disheveledness alone.

Kindred spirits parted. Their time together, so brief in the span of their lives. But as Thomas Hardy, the author, once said, “Measurement of life should be proportioned rather to the intensity of the experience than to its actual length.” And so this season together, deceptively short chronologically, was worth whole years of sentiment.

They sat on her porch for the last time, licking up popsicles which had melted onto their hands. They hardly spoke for how much they felt. Life was grand, and what a delight to have one’s horizons widened by differing thought. To see more of what you can be by understanding how someone sees you as more than you are. To be held in such comfortable love that you’re sure you would be alien to yourself without it.

Popsicle faces turned and eyes met. Nostalgia greeted expectation. No two souls so different, or so happy to have walked a short deep way with another.

And all the world agreed.

“…I’m gonna be here ‘till forever,
So just call when you’re around.”

the chase of the epic: a fellow nomad’s plea.

Call us the lost generation. We have illegalized settling down. Traded in our fathers’ ideals for perpetual searching—a bunch of wandering souls, magnificently aimless. Marriage delayed. Career put off. Adventure accepted. It is the chase of the epic which consumes us.

He rides his bike around the sunset. Lands whatever job likes him. At twenty-nine there is still no rent-less life on the horizon. Bills are low but spending is high. Whatever the cost for an entertaining now, it will be paid. Loans can be differed as long as he keeps going to school. “Student” is a job position now. There is a pride to be had in the humility of it. Endless learning. It distracts from the distance between himself and the goals he doesn’t have. They say he needs more education to qualify. Who is they? It doesn’t matter; he just listens.

When our fathers turned twenty-nine they had a wife, three children, a house, and just as many dreams as we do. The difference? They mastered self-forgetting where we will not. The Himalayas called to them too. The sun rose in the dawn of their personal aspirations and they beat the steering wheel to the rhythm of inexpressible freedom which they also longed for. The seas, foreign foods, and music at dusk was theirs, at heart, as well. But we won’t track by their footprints because we only see the hard shells they built to hold in their desirings. We would run wild.

She is lost on what it means to be ladylike. She’ll conquer the world because they tell her the boys don’t get to do it by themselves. At twenty-six she is professional, but hard-after attention. Life is lonely, at best. Still, she gets to pat herself on the back for each day she chooses responsibility. A long run and some fresh-squeezed juice remind her that she’s alive. The slow stares of older men and the quick sentences from boys retell her beauty, she supposes. There is no one to fix the car, the dishwasher, or the empty feeling, but she will find a way to pay for it all.

When our mothers were twenty-six they were our world. They felt lonely too. Dwelling in unfairness, anger, and unseen loveliness before we knew the words. Yet they developed focused love and chiseled their hearts into the shape of their families. They also wanted to spit on doilies and cookbooks, but the laundry got done anyway. They conquered the world in us. Yet we only see their corsets, fit tightly to keep the soul from spilling out. We would rather burst.

There is something that goes beyond wanting, that tauntingly dances along the edge of necessity in us. We will not be like them. Our lives will count for more somehow. If in nothing else than our ability to make peace more tangible. Mountains summited, cities visited, stars beheld. The world is ours for a moment really and we see only this task—to live in that moment. To reach strength and contentment because that is what we crave as a companion each day. But we never quite get to it due to our fatal flaw—we live for us.

We will sit in unbounded coffee shops, sipping on the hope that we have attempted to materialize. We will listen to music because it makes us feel. We will talk about our not-new ideas and tuck away the seemingly meager legends of our fathers and mothers. We will run wild, bursting out of ourselves to live an epic existence. And one day we shall be sorry for it. Sorry to have seen a noble life as a contemptible case of sitting still. Regretful to have done so much for the self, even in our ill-motivated attempts at charity and simplicity. Fruitless upon realizing we never did grow any roots.

Take heart, lost. We have a chance to remake our journeys.

We can settle down and still climb mountains. Because settling is just a pessimist’s way of saying living. In all our workdays, our lack of time to tend to the self, our dreams that seem bitterly departed—we exist outside us. We can cease pursuing that which is great and for the love of Saint Peter, just do something good. Practice, every day, the sort of caring that looks like letting go. And though no one is infinite, such grounded souls have the best chance of making brilliant shadows on the surface of the earth as thy fly. May we walk other-focused, not caring who sees, but knowing this is life.

And oh, how epic it is.

do.

“You find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.” 

–A.A. Milne

I am that child that never grew up. By pure obstinacy and a touch of magic. I am that timeworn man who refused to shift when they called out for the changing of the tide, over and over and over. And how I rolled when the waves hit. Every time. I hold to all that is old-fashioned, and preciously unknown to the too-busy people. I am the musician that accepts—I simply cannot play. Beating and strumming with numb fingers that pulse in recognition of falling short. Name me. Heaven knows I cannot.

Where I imagined I excelled, I was often encouraged. I have no blame to hand out here. But there are voices people speak out of without talking. And these I hear most; criticism like bolts slapped onto a peeking-open chest. Dream. Don’t.

When my body flows over my bed and the street lights keep me awake I dive headfirst into my pillow and fill up my thoughts. Such glories and sugar plums are mine in those moments. I explore highlands and truly believe: I am better than myself. But the loudest, unspeaking voice is my own when the dawn tickles me out of sleep. It heads off the attack from an army of more critiques which every day require a sort of maneuvering through. Imagine. Don’t.

Looking at a picture what do you see? Is any corner of it real to you? Do you feel in dimensions or taste when you’re supposed to smell? The crowds begin to praise a notion of simplicity but I cling to ideas of grandiose magnitudes. Condemn me. I will always want to be different than them. Most of you do.

If there are puddles, I still believe in jumping in.

When I asked the man on the bench if he was okay he talked for forty-eight minutes and I knew I could maybe only do one thing on this earth—listen. I hear a whole world of considerings. And I will hear more, more, more. May I keep my unspoken voice quiet by feeling the grace I tend to only say I should feel. May sugar plums blossom into trees that puncture the sky.

May you keep the childish parts unbroken. Reaching into the breathtaking dreams, look down from lofty heights and wave. Unbridled in smiles that say it is alright.

Hope. Do.