Blog 1840 – 10.07.2020

Rip Van Winkle

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14bKJb8ykRdClO-VffnHHV77Dq2jAy3rG/view?usp=drivesdk

Rip Van Winkle

I am up early often putting together these daily blogs for publication and most usually just a few hours into my day I am ready for a nap. Rip Van Winkle in today’s story took a very long nap, so long that the world around him no longer recognized him nor he much of it when he finally woke up. Per the story prior to his long nap, Rip took longer and longer walks in the woods with his faithful dog to escape his family responsibilities and the very sharp tongue of his wife. The story reminds me of a proverb that echoes the sentiment that Rip probably often thought even if he was too cowardly to utter it, “It is better to dwell on the house top than with a bitter and contentious wife.” Husbands can be and often are bitter and contentious too. All those soul partner seekers out there should beware that there are far worse things in life than living by one’s self. And one of the reasons that many never marry again after losing a spouse, even those who have had long successful marriages, is not love so much as it is relief. I love the old joke, “I was married twenty years and it was the best two years of my life.”

Like Elizabeth Taylor, married eight times, I can honestly say I believe in marriage, just four times for me. Due to COVID-19 my wife and I have spent more time together these last months than we have in any of our last thirty two some odd years together, especially the previous seven or so years that I spent away mostly working on the road.

In the Rip Van Winkle story, after he wakes up from his twenty year nap his wife has gone on to her eternal or infernal reward and only a daughter is left to recognize him and that kindly and lovingly. Some say that there is a long dirt nap awaiting all of us. I choose to think that instead there are other walks of life that await us, other stories, other adventures, chosen for us by our higher self to experience all that there is to experience, with perhaps pauses between to consider what we learned in the last one before proceeding to the next.

Nevertheless, unlike Rip I do not plan on napping away a big chunk of this one, but on savoring every moment of it. Happy trails to you all, with partners or strolling on your own. You are never truly alone for everyone you ever loved or who ever loved you is always with you. “Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart, for you’ll never walk alone.”

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TFeMFUZoryqzNOSt2bQ4-5n6r62tX71g/view?usp=drivesdk

When You Come Back To Me Again