Blog 1564 – 12.29.2019

Hey, Wanna Meet, Greet, Your Best Friend?

We are not here to learn or to teach but learn and teach we will. I think we are here to experience life in all it’s fullness. One of my all time favorite reads is the Robert Heinlein’s sci-fi classic, Stranger In A Strange Land. In the story Michael Valentine Smith, the Man from Mars, is the sole survivor of the first manned-mission from earth to Mars. He starts out a baby born between two of the scientists selected for the mission soon after they landed on Mars and after the inexplicable deaths of everyone else in the party he is raised by the Martian Old Ones and sent back to earth to check it out for his masters who are intent on earth’s destruction. But they are in no hurry and will mull over his report for many years before coming to a decision.

The story is an engrossing one as Mike comes to know his new Water Brothers. Because water was so rare and hard to come by on Mars, Mike believed the sharing of it to be a sacred bonding ritual. I highly recommend the book, but, it requires the investment of several hours to read the whole fascinating story. Isn’t that often the way of a good story, that it cannot be told on a bumper sticker, or in a thirty second commercial, or in a quick photo opt made for the headline news.

I just began a book that I was given as a Christmas gift. It is called, The Last Love Story, and is a biography of writer Joan Didion by Tracy Daughtery. It has on its cover a picture of Joan, arms folded across her chest, a cigarette in her hand, and a look on her face that says, “I have something important to share, got a few hours.” For a lovely sexy smoker, certainly, I am all eyes and ears, well almost. Young ladies, smoking is a nasty, unhealthy habit, but because most all of the lovely goddesses on and off screen smoked when I was a boy my heart still finds women who smoke incredibly sexy and attractive, as do many men, so beware taking up that and other habits that may get you into and keep your life full of trouble.

I am barely a few pages into the book but I already know that Joan was far more that a just sexy smoker and I want to know more of what she wrote and had to say. Someone has said that when we are facing death that it will not be our work or the money we made that is the most important thing on our minds but the people we met, got to know, and loved along the way. I already know that I am going to love Joan and that I am going to wish that I had gotten to spent time with her. It is the marvel of a well-written book that we get to do just that and with as many people as we take the time to get to know. That is why I wrote the thirty-two chapters, episodes, from the life of my daughter, Emily Elaine White, to share the treasure that she was to me with the wider world, Emily, The Little Girl Who Sang Her Song To Anyone Who Came Along.

I am a man who believes in the importance of making and maintaining friendships. I have not always been the outgoing gregarious person that I am today. I was once a shy, backward boy, lacking self-confidence, and one sadly like many of you who did not care very much for himself. But over time I came to know and love myself and to see myself in others and love them too. That is, I think, the greatest secret of life and happiness, falling in love with yourself first and then with as many as you can in the span of a lifetime.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uE8qP3jDtjBavSK3dVSbop-VF4csZR_6/view?usp=drivesdk

Fall In Love With Me

I do hope you will make the effort and give it the old college try. I promise you that you will find it more than worth the effort. Loving that most difficult of all persons will make loving God and everybody else “easy peasy.” I suggest this method to begin. Every time you look into a mirror, smile and say “I love you.” If that is too strange or difficult for you at first just try to put an “I love you look” in you eyes, mouth the words, and read your lips. They say it takes twenty-eight days to make a habit. Try it for twenty-eight days. You have nothing to lose and your best friend ever to gain.

Ready to fall in love? Be mindful, it is habit forming. After that first love you may soon find yourself falling in love with everybody you meet. Not a bad way to spend seventy or so years I figure.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White