What If I Was Kind Today?

“What if you decided to be 100% more loving and compassionate today?” — Brendon Burchard

I’ll be taking a long drive today, and again on Sunday. I do some of my best thinking while driving, and since the Coronavirus has killed two trips I’d planned (The Philippines for a week long stickfighting workshop, and Seattle for Norwescon) I need to get away and ponder. The core issue is that I’ve reached the end of the journey I began in childhood. I’m NOT saying I don’t have an infinity to learn about writing, or martial arts, or being a husband and father. I know people horizons ahead of me in any of the three. But at this moment in time, I am a horizon beyond where I began in each. And that is a moment I have to stop, and ponder, and ask myself “what’s next?”

It’s an important question, because while I can see easy goals in each of the three, the point of having that balance was to provide “safety rails” for my growth, but also to define something indefinable. The analogy I’ve used is that bending grass is not the wind, but if the grass is bending, you know the wind is blowing. The visible displaying the invisible.

I’ve mentioned that there are hints, and some goals that will take me a few steps further, from which I can see a little more of the path ahead. But there is also that sense that there IS no path ahead. Only the place I am, right now. I remember running five miles three times a week, and at the 3.5 mile mark it stopped feeling like I was running. It was as if I was standing still, and the universe was moving…