Romantic Thoughts that Must Be Done

March 9, 2010

When I was younger, as a romantic, I always thought it would be great to meet someone in a fantastical way – like rescuing a girl from a burning building perhaps, or from being mauled by a mountain lion.  But as I’ve grown older, my romantic thoughts have grown up, if you will, and infiltrated all the other areas of my life as well, much more than simply the juvenile desires of a high school dreamer.  I have a list of all the different things I want to accomplish in my life, all the random romantic thoughts that have manifested themselves into life goals.  I wanted to share them and see what you all thought of them.  So here they are, in no particular order, my romantic thoughts for life.

Become the only millionaire in the world still living with his parents.

I know it sounds a bit ridiculous.  You’re probably chucking right now to yourself thinking what in the world is he talking about?  Thoreau, my favorite author once said: “For my greatest skill has been to want but little.”  I’ve spent the last few years living well below my means, living for a year in southeast Asia, and two years at a youth ranch for troubled kids.  I’ve realized that most of the necessities that average Americans think they need really aren’t necessities at all.  Though I sure these romantic idealistic thoughts will change when I find someone who wants to settle down and get married, for now, it’s nice to have the idea swirling about in the spheres of thought.


Become a treasure hunter

There’s no man on the planet that hasn’t secretly dreamed about this one.  And I know there’s a gold nugget or a meteorite somewhere out there with my name on it.


Save the day

Anytime, anywhere, I’ll be ready.


Build my own house

I don’t think there could be anything more satisfying than actually living in a house that you built with your own two hands.  Once I finally get tired of being a millionaire and living with my parents, I’ll stake my claim somewhere and set off to work :)


Open up a Swiss bank account

Because honestly, how cool would that be?  And I’ve heard from different sources that you can’t open up a real Swiss bank account unless you have a million dollars to deposit.  So I’ve found the perfect place to park the millions I’ll eventually earn while still living with my folks.  It’s a perfect plan!!


Fall madly in love with just one girl, and be with her always

She doesn’t have to be in a burning building somewhere. I’ll make an exception just this once.


Make a citizen’s arrest

Especially with the happenings in San Diego recently, I eagerly await the day when I’ll get the chance to tackle some scumbag and say “Don’t move…you’re under arrest.”


Write books that people love

And not just books, but poems as well.  Writing is a beautiful form of expression, and I would love nothing more than to use the written word to inspire people toward something great.


Go on Walkabout

Perhaps you’ve heard of the Aboriginal tradition.  According to the original tradition, it was a rite of passage for manhood where the participant would live in the wilderness for a period of up to six months. There are so many beautiful hills in San Diego, and I’d love to get the chance to leave one day and not come back until I knew the time was right.  To quote Frost: “They would not find me changed from him they knew.  Only more sure of all I thought was true.”  Jesus himself went on Walkabout.  He spent 40 days in the wilderness with nothing to eat, simply thinking and talking to God.



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Cambodia Motorcycle Diary #4

March 3, 2010

There was a long road just next to the house where I lived nicknamed the “Dike Road.”  It was named that because the road separated the side of town that flooded during the rainy season from the side that stayed dry.  All the houses in that area were raised on wooden beams and the residents would travel by boat when the waters rose during the rainy season to the markets and everywhere else they needed to go.

Rain, in southeast Asia, is something altogether different than here.  Here we avoid the rain, escaping its touch with jackets and umbrellas and swiftness of foot.  But there, the rain is different.  The rain was the only truly clean water you’d ever encounter, and it would fall with such ferocity that a person could barely see their own hand stretched out in front of their face.   I often would venture out of doors during the fiercest storms, stand in the courtyard and let the rain wash over my whole being.  The rain was never cold, even in the winter months, and standing in the midst of it, a sense of timelessness would emerge, and one would get the distinct impression that all was right in the world.

It’s odd to feel that way, a deep sense of well-being, especially when there’s so much desperately wrong with the world.  Just yesterday, in my home town of San Diego, we learned the a 17 year old girl who had gone missing a week before had been found murdered and buried by a lake she often jogged around.  The world is indeed a dark place.  Feeling peaceful in it and content about it seems like ignorance and folly.  I’m very conflicted.  I love nothing more than being on a lonely morning trail clad with mist, feeling alive and feeling like the world is full of possibility.  But the world is a desperately dark place, full of tragedy.  How could I find contentment and peace roaming the same trail that a 17 year old girl was murdered and buried on?  I don’t know that I ever will again.  It’s easy to simply forget and move on.  But there’s a verse in the Psalms that convicts me:  “They are enclosed in their own prosperity and have shut up their hearts to pity.”  I don’t want to be like that.

I’m still trying to figure it all out.  Is it fine to find peace and contentment in a world that houses so much darkness?  Or is it better to ever be reminded of tragedy and keep it hidden in the recesses of the mind?


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Quotes to Live By — A Way that Seems Right

February 24, 2010

The next of my favorite quotes to live by, is a quote I had forgotten about until just recently.  It was a quote that heavily impacted my life as a younger man, showing me that life was something different than what I thought it was as a child, and that if I wasn’t careful, I would end up on a pathway I had never wanted to be on.  This quote to live by comes from the Bible, from the book of Proverbs, chapter 14, a book dedicated to life wisdom.  It says simply:

“There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.”

I’ve often marveled at how easily I’ve been fooled in life into traveling a pathway that ends up leading nowhere — inevitably finding myself stranded on some forgotten byway with nowhere left to travel.  And always, looking back down the pathway that finally has come to and end, it seems so obvious in hindsight that the path was always going to lead to nowhere, and I can’t believe that I didn’t see it beforehand.

One of my wishes, as a man who realizes that life is short, has always been to live my life with purpose and meaning — in essence, to do those things in life that are really worth doing.  There’s a prayer in the Psalms that I’ve adopted as part of my prayers to God.  It’s from Psalm 119, and the Psalmist simply pleads to God:

“Turn my eyes away from worthless things.“

I don’t know why, but human beings, in their natural state, often have such a hard time identifying worthless pursuits until it’s too late.  Hollow things often have such captivating promises.  So often we spend our time and effort on paths that lead to death, never giving a second thought to the notion that maybe what we’re doing isn’t really something worth this precious thing called life.  One of my biggest regrets in life is spending so much time and energy on paths that lead nowhere and pursuits that end up worthless.

In my mind, the quote to live by at the beginning of this post is one of the most solemn declarations ever made about humanity.  How sad is it that human beings are so easily taken in by things that prove hollow, that we often don’t realize, until it’s too late, that what we’ve been spending our time striving to achieve really isn’t what we thought it was.  How many a mid-life crisis could have been avoided if we would have, just for a little while, taken the time to make sure that our life’s pursuits were really things that would bring meaning and purpose into our hearts.

I always keep this quote at the top of my quotes to live by.  I have been fooled enough in life — have spend my time and energy resigned to what seemed good enough at the time.  It is my prayer and hope that my eyes will be turned away from worthless things and my feet away from paths that lead to death.




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Cambodia Motorcycle Diary #3

February 3, 2010

A few friends and I took a backpacking trip into the furthermost reaches of the Cambodian jungle, on the borderlands of Vietnam.  It was odd to see that even in a place so removed as this, still the distinction between civilization and the natural world could be clearly seen.

Jungle meets Civilization

In the picture, a farmer has cleared a small plot of land away from the groping arms of the impenetrable jungle to grow rice for his family.  Our foot path led along the border of the jungle, with just enough room between the rice and trees to walk and make our way.  I was mesmerized by such a stark contrast, and also how it related to man — how each of us, in our own hearts, retains some of our natural, freeborn spirit, while on the whole, society is chipping it away piece by piece, creating for itself a subdued and productive model citizen.

Our journey through the Cambodian National Forest led us to some interesting encounters.  A French journalist was also there, making a documentary of the forest, and we being the only foreigners hiking through the forest at the time, were asked if he could document our experience and follow us along.  He was overjoyed to find us, having traveled all the way to the end of the road, as it were, and expecting to find many people to film, but finding no one.  Apparently he had been there for two days, filming the wildlife, when we finally came sauntering through.  By day, he went ahead of us as we walked through the unknown.  And by night, sitting around a small fire with a deck of playing cards, laughing and talking about life, he was content to slowly circle.  Reality TV at its finest, I’m sure.  I’ve tried dozens of times to find that documentary, but sadly, none of us ever thought to ask him what he was going to name it once it was finished.

But back to the farmer.  I was very intrigued by their method of building a life for themselves.  It seemed, as far as we could tell, that when a man came of age in their village, he would begin clearing for himself a section of the nearby jungle, and would build himself a small hut from the wood and begin to plant rice.  However much jungle he wished to clear would be his allotted portion, and he’d be able to farm it to his hearts content for the rest of his life.

Ratanakiri Farmer

This farmer lived in the middle of her field, her rice growing all around her.  A small hut a few hundred feet away was her son’s farm.  I’ve always had a fascination with American history, especially the pioneers who went out west and established farms wherever their feet happened to lead them.  In coming to this place in the forgotten jungles of Cambodia, I was mesmerized by the lifestyle that seemed so similar.  But soon, we were compelled to return.  Our trip lasted only a short week.

And though we have returned to normal civilization, I often recall fond memories of tromping around in the jungle.  Being there reminded me of something that’s been lost in the modern age.  For though civilization as a whole has made many advancements, it’s lost something as well — namely man’s struggle against the natural world, being limited only by how hard he’s willing to work, making a living by the sweat of his brow and the work of his hands.


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Quotes to Live By — On Time

February 2, 2010

Thoreau, who has always had my favorite quotes to live by, once said, “Time is but the stream I go a fishing in.”  It’s a quote I’ve always loved, and though I’ve always tried to keep it as a mentality, recently, more than ever before, I’ve begun to feel the slow tug of time at my doorstep. Time, instead of the once mellow stream I’ve gone a fishing in, now seems more like the swift current that’s slowly dragging me away.  I’ve posted some of my favorite quotes to live by and poems about time, in hopes of breaking the nagging discouragement that sometimes comes to find me when times seems like it’s running out and slipping away.  The first excerpt is by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, his poem “A Psalm of Life”:

“Tell me not in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou are, to dust thou returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each tomorrow
Find us farther than today.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.”

I’ve always been very encouraged by that poem, especially the third stanza.  It encourages me that, when I don’t know what to do, I ought to just do something to better myself, so that tomorrow finds me better off than today.  Simple things, done consistently, often end up becoming big things.  The next excerpt is from a poem by Thomas Moore entitled “Farewell, But Whenever You Welcome the Hour”:

“Let fate do her worst, there are relics of joy,
Bright dreams of the past, which she cannot destroy;
Which come in the night-time of sorrow and care,
And bring back the features that joy used to wear.
Long, long be my heart with such memories filled!
Like the vase, in which flowers have once been distilled
You may break, you may shatter the vase, if you will,
But the scent of the roses will hang round it still.”

This poem echoes the sentiments of the last post I made, about being “Wrecks of another world, whose ashes are still warm.”  Equally true is the shattered vase, whose scent still carries the smell of roses.  It’s a very cool word picture, and it reminds me to be thankful for things, even when they don’t work out — to hold onto the scent of the roses amid the chaos.  The last is another poem, one that I inscribed onto the back of a special bookmark that someone once hand made for me.

“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may
Old time is still a flyin’
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will by dyin’”

I love that reminder to live life to the full, to realize that meaningful things don’t last forever.  I hope you liked these poems and quotes to live by!



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