Don’t allow yourself to be distracted by things that demand your attention every day. Apollo Robbins tries to teach that lesson in the video below through some very deft handiwork. Watch it a second time to catch what you miss the first time and see how distracted by the world you really are.
I wrote last week about changing perspectives and wanted to add onto the discussion a bit. Don’t allow yourself to be distracted by things that demand your attention every day. Apollo Robbins tries to teach that lesson in the video below through some very deft handiwork. Watch it a second time to catch what you miss the first time and see how distracted by the world you really are.
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I am pretty sure that I have written before about shifting perspectives and how I look at things in different ways as I age, but I ask that you indulge me with that topic once again. I have written earlier this week on several topics that are difficult to nail down in terms of a specific definition. Beauty, love, heroism, and leadership are all things that we think we know about, but when asked to define them, the answer is more often than not that we will “know them when we see them.” I looked back at my own experiences in life and realized that I would have defined all of these things much differently 10 or 15 years ago than I do today and I owe that entirely to the things that I have seen and done. Long ago I would have listed physical attributes as the only thing that could denote beauty, but I know now that inner beauty is so much better. My thoughts on love haven’t changed too much over time, but have only strengthened. I am able to understand that I love more things and why I love them that I may have when I was younger. My heroes are certainly different today than they were in high school or even college and I understand today much more clearly what it truly means to be a hero. Finally, leadership has probably changed the most in my mind. As I wrote yesterday, leadership had long been about position in an organizational structure until my eyes were opened by leaders like John Maxwell. I now understand that leadership is much more than just being a “manager” or “supervisor” of people and that one can lead from any position. As you can see, my own personal thoughts about these different concepts have changed over the past several years. I urge you to think about what you have experienced that has led to changes in your thinking over time. These days, everyone writes something every day. From tweets, to Facebook statues, to emails, we are all typing away at a keyboard just about every day of our lives. But what are we really saying? I want to challenge everyone out there to make sure what you are writing really matters. If you are about to send out a banal tweet, stop and think twice about it. Before you post that latest Facebook status complaining about your hangnail…consider if it’s really going to matter another 30 seconds. If what you want to say truly is important, go ahead and hit send. But just think about it for a second first. I have tried not to make this a blog about my life, but life is always there, so it finds its way into my writing from time to time. I had a chance this weekend to gain some perspective on my life and my family that I wanted to share. Many times over the past three or four years I have stopped to look back on my life since certain milestones and think about how the twists and turns of fate have led me to the place I am today. I’ll give you a few examples. If it was possible to go back in time and have a conversation with myself on the day of my graduation from high school, I would tell myself several things that would totally blow my 18-year-old self’s mind. I would talk of a highly coordinated attack on America by terrorists just a little over a year into the future. I would tell of discarding dreams of becoming a video game programmer and instead opting for a “career” in writing. That wouldn't be too far a stretch, but at the time I was not thinking along the same lines as I am today. The above examples are things that I could never have seen coming from where I lived my life up to that point. Other things like getting married and having kids were things that I always figured I would do at some point. But if I went back even ten years from now and told me that I would marry the woman that I had just met a few months prior, and have three kids with her and that one would pass away in our arms…that would have been simply too much to handle and my past self would have sent my future self back to where I (?) came from. All this is to say that when I take those moments to look back and see where I came from, I realize that the path I have taken was not obvious to me. I challenge anyone to take that look behind them and honestly say they knew the path before they stepped onto it. But back to where I started this trip down memory lane. I had the occasion to take my kids to a local amusement park this past weekend. Ten or fifteen years ago, I would have spent the day on the water slides and once the sun went down, wasted away the evening on the roller coasters and other rides that are designed to turn stomachs. This time was different. I spent the day watching my two most favorite people in the world discover boats, cars, and turtles that did little more than go in circles, and yet they had the time of their (so far) short lives. They screamed with joy, laughed, smiled, and generally enjoyed themselves in a way that gave me more joy than going on the roller coasters ever did. Take a moment today and look back on the path you've taken to this point in your life. It twists and turns, but your memories will keep is illuminated for you long into the future. Cherish that path, but don’t be surprised if you take a sharp turn tomorrow at the same time you’re reflecting on the past. |
AuthorMy blog is here to give updates on my writing projects and occasionally post new poems or story excerpts. Archives
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