I read this quote today: “Life is what happens while we’re busy making other plans”. It was in this essay I was reading about patience. So today, Wendy and I decided to take Layla and ourselves to Henry Cowell state park. Which is only about 15 minutes from our house down highway 9 in Santa Cruz. We had never been here for some reason, and decided today was the day. It was a beautiful and quiet December morning. We were rewarded with cool crisp air and the ambience of a million streams of light breaking through the 1000 foot canopy of redwood trees above. Layla laughed, and cried, and ran and jumped in puddles and, found joy in sticks and banana slugs. And I slowed down, I let life happen, and it was a simple joy! A reminder that life should also be in our daily plan, that patience involves seeing the innocence in others, and that all the stress, and the hurrying around we do, is probably just something that makes us feel important. We are distracting ourselves from what is important: this precious little time we have to kiss Banana slugs.
The one thing we find in life is that we discover these little morsels of truth and then quickly forget about them as we get on with our lives. The best thing is to post the most important one and as few as possible on our refrigerator so we see and read them every time we open the refrig. If we put too many on the refrigerator though, the most important ones will get lost, so one or two or three at the most is all that should be allowed. If we find one to be false, it should be removed until another truth comes along.
Life is strange. You can eat all you want and not gain weight. I gain weight. but then I was an excellent athlete in my day and jogged a good part of my life until I had my first irregular heart rate at 45. A-fib. Slowed me way down. My son often gives me a bad time because I don’t do more, but I used to and life has a way of interfering now and then. I do ski and walk and skied the black diamonds last season so for a big guy, I’m still active. But I’ve always wanted to be thin and wonder if it will ever happen. I’m following Stephen’s Slow Carb diet (kind of) and am losing weight little by little.