Terrified by the Wonder of It All

~What do you guess life is like for most folks?  Is it mostly filled with terror, or mostly filled with wonder?
~Which is it for you? 
~Has it always been the way it is for you now, or has the terror-wonder balance shifted one or more times over the years?

My answers to the questions above would be:

~I think for most people that I know, life is more wonderful than it is terrifying.  However, there are probably many, many people I do not know, for whom it is the other way around.
~For me, life is much more wonder-full than it is terror-filled.
~The balance has always been in favor of wonder for me, but not always to the same degree.

What does that picture say to you about wonder and terror?  Does it look like a picture of someone taking in the beauty of a heavy snowfall of an evening?  Or, does it look like someone caught out in a blizzard, maybe lost, as night falls?

What about this one?  Do you think of a wonder-filled morning walk through the forest in the early morning hours, maybe just after a great cup of coffee?  Or, do you think of a terror-filled trek through a deep forest as night closes in, hearing strange sounds with every step?

One more.  When you see this picture do you think of the wonderful silence and beauty of the first snowfall of the season in the big city; or, do you think of the terror of being alone, all alone, in an unfamiliar place in the cold of the concrete and snow?

Carlos Castaneda has written this: “The aim is to balance the terror of being alive with the wonder of being alive.”

It is a delicate balancing act, for sure.  If you can, tilt the balance in favor of wonder...for yourself.  And if you can, for others, too.

Here I Come to Save the Day...

I wonder how many folks are holding out for someone to come along and make everything right in their lives.

I wonder how often folks dream about, pray for, yearn for someone to correct all wrongs, settle all scores, and turn everything around in their lives.

I wonder how many of us are folks like that.

Mighty Mouse used to save the day for folks who were in trouble in the cartoon world he lived in.  "Here I come to save the day/That mean's that Mighty Mouse is on the way..."  Developed by Terrytoons studios, the cartoon ran from 1942 to 1961.  Mighty Mouse had super-powers of flight, incredible strength, and he was invulnerable.  He could turn back time.

Mighty Mouse was one of my favorite Saturday morning cartoons when I was a kid growing up in small-town Indiana.  I knew he wasn't real, but it sure was fun to pretend that maybe there was some super-hero like him who could make everything right, make everything good, and avenge all ills.  Wouldn't it be great if he really could save the day.  Every day.  All day long.  Just for me.

Well, Mighty Mouse can't really do that sort of thing.  Not in the real world where you and I live.

Nobody can do that in the real world where you and I live.

Not even a particular god we believe in can do that in the real world where you and I live.

Some days cannot be saved.  Some days are just terrible.  That's the real world where you and I live.  That's real life.

What we do in reaction to every day of our life...the good days and the terrible days...that's what will, in some small way, save (redeem) the day.  You and I have that power.

But we don't have a really cool cape, like Mighty Mouse.

So Very, Very Close...But

Stuff like this is hard to read.  Not hard to read like stories about people being wounded or killed in fighting or war, or folks losing all they have in a natural or man-made disaster, or families being torn apart by all the things families are torn apart by; not that kind of hard to read, but hard to read, all the same.

Stuff like this may be hard to read because we all know what it feels like to be so very, very close to something big, something good, something lasting...only to never actually get the big thing, the good thing, the lasting thing.

So here is the stuff I am talking about:
"What a tough break for Chicago Cubs second baseman Darwin Barney, who was three outs away from breaking Placido Polanco's Major League record with his 142nd consecutive errorless game at second base, before committing a throwing miscue in the Cubs 8-3 loss to the Diamondbacks on Friday night."


So very, very close...but.

I offer some pictures that capture the feelings, I think, of those of us who have been so very, very close but never actually got...

I wish Darwin Barney had broken that record!  Records are meant to be broken.  Dreams are meant to be realized.  Goals are meant to be achieved.  Aren't they?  But more often than not, it seems, we read about the near-misses and not the have-gots.

Here are some words from wise people on the subject at hand:
~To risk is to risk appearing the fool. To weep is to risk appearing sentimental. To expose feelings is to risk exposing our true self. To place your ideas, your dreams, before the crowd is to risk loss. To love is to risk not being loved in return. To live is to risk dying. To try at all is to risk failure. But to risk we must. Because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. The man, the woman, who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing.  -Ralph Waldo Emerson


~We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope. -Martin Luther King, Jr.

~When you don’t get what you want, you suffer. If you get it, you suffer too, since you can’t hold on to it forever.  -Peaceful Warrior

~Loss is the great unifier, the terrible club to which we all eventually belong.  -Rosanne Cash

Well, since we nowadays reduce some of our deepest thoughts and greatest perplexities to bumper-sticker or T-shirt slogans, here are two T-shirts to put this whole mess in perspective...

Better luck next time, Darwin Barney.  Never stop trying.  I'm not a Cubs fan but I will be cheering you on.  You were so very, very close, man...but.