The Fresh Start

You are definitely a different person at different stages in your life.

Ben Harper
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Last week a friend, an artist and a barber, came over here and gave me a hair cut which I sorely needed. When she was finished I looked at myself in the mirror and exclaimed the old saying "I feel like a new man." But then I thought, not a new man, a renovated man.

A few days later another friend said that I look younger. Again I referred to myself as a renovated man. But after a few days of feeling renovated I thought about it and decided there was nothing wrong with being a "new man." When I go to sleep at night it's because another day has been lived, and when I awake in the morning I have another day to live. I may and do carry some baggage with me into the new day but there is always the hope that during the day some of it will be discarded. It is, after all, left overs from the old day and the old man, the one I was yesterday.

The fact is every new day gives us a fresh opportunity to express our manhood and womanhood in a new way. One of the basic requirements is observation. It is a right and joy to see and contemplate the same old things around us as if we are seeing them for the first time. The picture on the wall, the chair, the coffee pot and everything else that greets us when we wake up, have stories to tell and lessons to teach. What's out the window is a little different than it was yesterday. There's something new about that favorite old song. The chores we didn't get done yesterday we can do today.

But even more important than the whats of our lives are the whys. What do all the things around mean to us? Their meanings are really what define us and we so easily forget them.

Other things we forget are wishes, dreams, plans. Opening doors and boxes we haven't opened for a while reveal old things that are new. Underneath our dusty thinking are surprises we put there and forgot about. There are things that renovate, regenerate, revivify us and make us new. We find strength we didn't know we had and light, hope and a sense of future, a fresh start.

Every decade gives us a right and a reason for trading in the old model. We don't have to be young again to be brand new.

DB - The Vagabond
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SUMMER QUESTION

It's a long, hot, sticky summer, so here's a hot, sticky question for you. Don't let the recent New York State decision rob you of your thunder.

Same sex marriage. Should it be legal or not? If so, why? If not, why not?

dbdacoba@aol.com

12 answers so far.

You have until the last day of summer, but don't dally.
I eagerly await your answer.

DB
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