Your True Value

They are but beggars that can count their worth.

Shakespeare
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Hello Frosty
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As I add more years of experience to my calendar I come to realize more and more how unimportant my past is. It is preverbal that gray headed ones, particularly those with no grand children, tend to dwell with memories, in an atmosphere of a life lived almost as uif that life was over. There are regrets, of course, but there is also pride of accomplishment and, maybe, satisfaction. Well and good, up to a point. But just because the hair is gray doesn't have to mean that the head is.

Sometimes, in this journal, I may bring up some event from the past to illustrate a point, and I might remember an event in conversation with someone who shared it. But otherwise I don't want to think about the past. It's gone. It doesn't exist. It is not an extant in the world.

The best part is to realize that my past, my childhood, the loss of my father, poverty, scorn, abuse, itinerancy, the education I got, the failures, the successes, the tragedies, the delights, the accidents, the injuries, the pain, the fights, the sex, the loves, the fears, do not define who I am. Put them sll together in a biography and they don't even begin to summerize me.

Woven in and out though all those threads on the loom of time are the invisible, intangible, inestimable virtues and values that have always been there and have always been who I am. Most of the events of my past were cover ups, things I did while I was waiting to discover myself or things that happened to me which beclouded the discovery.

Even if you are a young person your worth is not measured by the events of your life, including your hopes and plans. True human value is above all the tangibles and materials. I discovered this truth by going back and looking at some of the entries in my private paper journal. I was amused and annoyed to discover, in light of my recent slowly growing realization of my real value, how inconsequential many of those entries are.

Think about it. How much of your current life will you count as worth and how much will you eventually discard as worthless? I used to be amused at the answer sometimes given to interviewers of older peopled that if they had it to live over again they wouldn't chance a thing. What amused me was the bland acknowledgement that seemed to imply life was over and the belief that if they thought about it there were probably a great many things they would change. Now, today, I think about it and ask myself if there was anything I would change. My first impulse is to say that I would probably change all of it. But then I think again and say that maybe I would not, in fact, change any of it except to acknowledge to myself that none of it was true.

DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
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No Regrets

He who lives without folly isn't as wise as he thinks.

Francois Rochfoucauld
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Hello Frosty
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The old conductor had retired and was moving back to his home in Europe. As he packed up to go he was going through his belongings, deciding what to take and what to leave behind. A young member of his staff was helping him.

The maestro was carefully turning the pages of an orchestra score when he asked his assistant what it was. The young man replied that it was the first symphony by some not too well known composer. Then he told the old man that he had conducted the world premier of the work many years ago.

"I did?"
"Yes sir."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes Maestro."

The conductor stared at the score, shook his head and said "I was a fool."

Who hasn't done things that left a record for all to see of our extreme silliness and incapacity to live a reasonable life. It is after all the exercise of putting the foot in the mouth and the egg on the face that teaches us fundamental things that perhaps we should have known but didn't at the time.

Like the maestro, I could give you a short list of plays I wish I hadn't done and performances I wish I hadn't given. But just to preserve my peace of mind, I won't. I will tell you this however. The quickest way to learn how someone's name is pronounced is to mispronounce it while announcing on the radio. Before you finish speaking the phone is ringing.

If we aren't careful our folly will be echoed years later by regrets. We can really mess up our lives with regrets. Regrets are like a sore toe that you keep stubbing, or wearing too tight clothes. or a leaky faucet that won't get fixed, or having doggy poop on your shoe.

Doing foolish things are payments we make for growing up and growing wise. The man or woman who leeds a squeaky clean life, with nary a folly to their names, who congratulate themselves for their prudence and circumspection are living on credit and sooner or later the piper will get the best dance out of them he can. The best thing is learn the lesson, remember it and then forget how you learned it. And pass the wisdom along. You just might save another egg.

DB - The Vagabond
Never give up.
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Forgive Me

It's toughest to forgive ourselves. So it's probably best to start with other people.

Patty Duke
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Hello George
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So many things to be grateful for. So many things to forgive. So many things to regret. So many things to apologize for.

The fact thet human beings don't get things right all the time creates a lot of dust and garbage that either has to be cleaned up or else forgotten about. It gets forgotten because we often can't find or even remember some of the people that we should apologize to. We just have to hope that we have been forgiven or perhaps forgotten.

Forgiveness is another matter. We generally remember those we think have done us wrong, and we have to look at ourselves to see how much resentment we still hold for those people. We can say in our thoughts that we forgive them, but do we really. Forgiveness is a tough one.

Some people hold on to resentment their whole lives and allow it to become a parasite chewing on happiness. As hard as it is forgiveness is the only antidote to resentment. There is no peace of mind without it.

And that brings up the subject of self forgiveness. Most of us harbor regrets, some of them major, which need to be expunged from our lives if we don't want to invite the parasites in to gnaw. I have recently discovered that I can forgive others for things that I find it almost impossible to forgive myself for. But regrets are even tastier meat for the parasites than resentment. So get busy. Roll up your sleeves and plunge your hands into the hot dirty water of regrets and clean out the garbage.

DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never give up.
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Talk To The Dog

How people treat you is their karma, how you react is yours.

Wayne Dyer
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Hello Lilly
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There's a big difference between knowing that you have lessons to learn and knowing what they are even before you learn them. Self satisdfaction is a comfortable and attractive suit of clothes, but it can cover the nakedness of ignorance, particularly ignorance about oneself.

I am one who usually goes along through life with a sense that I'm secure in the knowledge I have of myself. But then I will trip and fall and bump my chin on some new particle of information I didn't undeerstand or consider.

I found that my reactions to other people tend to be abrupt and falsely final. If I feel someone has wronged me I don't want revenge, which is just as wrong, I just want them out of my life, promptly, followed by the burning of bridges. Lately I've come to the realization that, even though the end result won't be any different, I could be more proactive and take the time to discuss things before the final curtain. Who knows, it may benefit the wrong doer and save me all the drama.

One day a few years ago I was sitting on a park bench when a couple approached with a medium sized dog. The dog walked over to me in a friendly manner so I stood up to greet him. When I did that he started growling and snarling at me. The owners wee very upset that he did that. I just said "All right" and walked away.

Maybe my standing up startled him, maybe the owners recently got him from a kennel as an adult and maybe he had been trained as a guard dog and thought I was threatening them. maybe he had had some brutal treatment from someone I reminded him of. Maybe I could have made friends with the dog. I will never know and will never be able to assure the owners. I walked away. I regret that.

Now, as a neophyte in proactive behavior, I think my reaction should be better that the treatment I get from other people, good or bad.

DB - The Vagabond
Never give up.
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The Museum

We can draw lessons from the past, but we cannot live in it.

Lyndon Johnson
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Hello Arlene
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Sometimes I think the concept of time is one of our worst enemies. It's a vast, somber, dimly lit museum where live all the events of our lives, most of them forgotten about. But there are two rooms where the lights go on and off at random times and in those rooms are displayed some of the more colorful artifacts and anecdotes, the shards of experience. One room is The Happy Memories Room and the other is simply called Regrets. I try not to visit that room although sometimes I'm coaxed into it. I visit the Happy Memories Room on occasion, usually to cite some experience for this journal or to tell a story to a friend. The fact is I see no point at all in visiting either of those rooms, or the entire museum as a whole. Everything in there is from my past, or rather my memory of my past. To walk through either of those rooms is to invite a particular form of irreversible trouble. The temptation is to stay. It's a mesmeric trick that takes over our sense of direction and destination. (The same trick that makes us take the wrong exit off the highway.) If we think we are being asked to stay and enjoy the lagony and ecstasy of the past in either room, we should get out fast before the door closes.

Today marks one month I have been in my new home. I should actually call it my home because my former dwelling was anything but a home if home is where you are supposed to be comfortable, at ease and safe.

Since moving here I've acquired some furniture, have my paintings out of boxes and leaning up against walls and windows where I can see them, have had my books arranged, disarranged, rearranged, disarranged again and in the process of being rearranged. Thanks to the tireless Linda R. and her visits I'm slowly getting myself in the proper alignment with what I have in my mind as a home. I'm down to about 98% of the pain I brought with me and most of that has turned into disgust.

I have noisy neighbors, not the rock and roll noisy types with their ear splitting entertainment. These are the argue-with-each-other type which I don't mind. There are no dope dealers in the place as far as I can tell. No one could sneak in anyway since their apartment door is right outside my bedroom window. "Let the dead bury their dead."

I think the most important item I brought with me is my future. As memories and regrets, past and current, take their places in the dusty museum of my former life I look forward at what can be, what should be and what will be.

DB - The Vagabond
Never Give Up
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Waking Up

The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.

W. M. Lewis
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Hello Lora
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I used to say, half jokingly, that I was waiting around for my life to start. The life I had in my imagination, the life I thought I should be living, was not the life I had. Even though I had achieved a career as an actor, and even though, along the way, I managed to become an announcer at the two radio stations that were most important to me. I still felt there was something missing, that I should be somewhere else doing something else. One day, gratefully, I woke up and began to accept myself for who I was and what I was doing.

I have an original quotation in my Vagabond Jottings (http://vagabondjottings.blogspot.com/) which says something like "Don't bother wondering what you should be dong with your life. You're doing it."

It's a trap, a bad game we can play on ourselves, to think that what we do is worthless or not the tight path in our lives. We can stack up a large pile of maybes. If only I could afford it, if I only had a better education, if I had just made a better decision back then. It's a sad story when a man works his whole life to do something he believes is right and then to end up with regrets that he didn't do something different. What a rueful trap to fall into.

But, thankfully, the big lesson and realization is that it's life itself that is important and not the superficial trappings that accompany it. That is the wisdom of senior personship. That's what's at the end of the rainbow. The reward of living is waking up to the consciousness that we can embrace life from any place, any path in the universe. And we can begin to do that whenever we are ready to.

DB - The Living Vagabond
Never Give up
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AUTUMN QUESTION

What event over the past year changed your life, a lot or a little?

Autumn is moving along.
Only 6 answers so far.

dbdacoba@aol.com

I eagerly await your answers.
DB
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Good Choice

History is the sum total of things that could have been avoided.

Konrad Adenauer
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Life is just a catalogue of results. We live mainly with the consequences of the choices we made or the choices that were made for us one way or another. When we start out we have no choices of our own, they are made for us. We didn't choose to be born. We're given a name before we are consulted about it. We didn't choose our parents or where we live. The best we can do is to make demands by means of loud noises. By the time we reach the age when someone finally asks us what we want we are so unused to making choices that we probably don't know. Then we may make a choice we regret.

The choosing process usually doesn't take long but the results of our choices can last a while, maybe even the rest of our lives. Some people claim our destiny is written in the stars or our DNA. I claim it is more likely written in our choices. In so many of the simple, so called trivial moments of our lives we are likely to make choices that have far reaching results. You make a simple choice to go one way and not the other and your entire future has changed even though you don't know it yet.

Why is the world in such a mess? Because over the many years of our human existence choices were made, some good, some not so good and some dreadful. So many of the rocky, thorn bush lined paths we've trod as citizens of the earth could have been avoided if only someone had made a better choice way back.

Along with the bundle of results we have to live with as a result of our decisions is the nasty crop of regrets. A wiser person may say "Don't do that. You'll regret it." Do we listen and heed? Maybe. If we're smart we do. But maybe not and then we have our own personal regret to live with. Regrets are negative crops, the weeds that grow up along side the wheat. They should be rooted up and discarded. What's the point of regretting? It's a Herculean waste of time and effort. "The past is prologue" Shakespeare wrote. The future is what is important, and since you've learned now to make better choices (haven't you?) you can look forward to better results.

Some wise person once said "You always get what you want. So be very careful about what you want."

DB - The Vagabond
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Never give up.
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SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)

Come on. 11 diverse and interesting answers so far. Where's yours?

NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.

Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?

dbdacoba@aol.com

I eagerly await your answer.

DB
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Good Habits

Having looked the past in the eye, having asked for forgiveness and having made amends, let us shut the door on the past - not in order to forget it but in order not to allow it to imprison us.

Desmond Tutu
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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle once write something about the mind being like a room and that one should put into it only the furniture and other things one wants and everything that doesn't belong there should be thrown out.

We all have regrets. The older you get the more of them you have. They accompany wrinkles and gray hair like an entourage, nasty folks who weren't invited to your party but came anyway. Recently I was talking with a woman who was feeling very down because she had been remembering her past mistakes and bad things that had been done to her. She said she kept going through her mind trying to imagine what she could have done to avoid them. I told her to stop it. I told her to look forward, not back. I said don't rehearse a show that's closed.

Earlier this year I wrote about the modern Kabbalist who likened the mind to a radio that only plays two stations. On one station you can hear only good news and on the other only bad news. When you aren't alert the radio will automatically switch over to the bad news station. One has to keep switching back to the first station or the mind will give bad news to you all the time. It takes mental discipline to keep focused on only what you want in your mental room.

The past is hard to forget. Regrets pop into the mind without warning. A word, an event, a picture, something triggers a memory and zap! there you are reliving some scene you wish hadn't happened. Something has imprisoned you, locked you up in the wrong room. But fortunately you've a choice, it's called Freedom of Thought. It isn't hard. It just has to be exercised and used. It's easier than losing weight and much easier than giving up cigarettes, take it from me.

As an actor I found it was vitally important in order to clearly and faithfully portray the character that I was always concentrating on what he was thinking. Thus I developed an alarm that would go off whenever my thoughts were wandering into erroneous paths. The silent alarm would go off in my head and a voice would say "What are you thinking about?" Now I find the same alarm in my daily life. It's a habit. A good one.

DB - The Vagabond
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SUMMER QUESTION
(This is not a contest.)

Who are the 2 (two) most important people alive today? Why?

Only 7 responses so far.

dbdacoba@aol.com

Thank you.
DB
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Tempting Trash

Regrets are just leftovers. Eat them up or throw them out.

DB - The Vagabond
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One cannot live a life, particularly a vital, active life without collecting a truckload of regrets. If I tallied up all the time I've spent regretting things I did or things I didn't do it would probably amount to about 15 years of my life. What a waste of time!

Sometimes my mind acts like a mule hitched up to my wagon. If I sit back and let my mind wander sooner or later it will lead me into a swamp of negativity. I will start to think about things I don't want to think about. I call it The Law of Diminishing Enthusiasm. If you don't tend your garden it will start producing weeds which will choke the flowers. If one doesn't discipline one's mind it will eventually find the dark places of the past, and they will drive out the good thoughts one should be thinking.

I think of it as being in a row boat on a river. To go upstream you have to row. If you want to be self destructive you can row downstream. But if you sit in the boat and do nothing you'll go downstream anyway.

I try to discipline myself to not think about the past. Even though I have a lot of wonderful memories of an active and interesting career, some of those memories are too close to others that I would avoid. So, even though I may be remembering something that was fun I will stop myself and say "Why are you thinking abut that?"
Today, tomorrow and what is next is what I want to think about.

Sometimes regrets pop into a mind that is not wandering. That's because we aren't sure we have sufficiently learned the lesson we need to know in order to prevent the mistake from happening again. That's the moment to be articulate, to identify clearly what happened and why it happened under the circumstances. In my case it was usually a matter of not being alert to what was going on around me and so I said an ignorant thing or did an ignorant thing, or else, I was being selfish.

Most lessons have to be repeated in order to be properly learned. It takes time, like learning to drive or cook or increase one's vocabulary. But that doesn't mean the dumb thing you did that brought on the regret needs to be repeated. Eventually, as the new self knowledge becomes certain, the regret will abate and become a source of humor or else it will be forgotten. It disappears from the plate. It's been eaten up.

A regret is not a thing. It's a reaction to a thing. Stop doing the thing.

DB - The Vagabond
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WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest.)

Given the resources and opportunity, what one thing do you want to do in 2010 that you've never done before.

You have all Winter to answer. Answers will be posted on the first day of Spring.
9 responses so far.

DB - The Vagabond

Brainless Behavior 10/11/09

There is no original truth, only original error.

Gaston Bachelard
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Are you there?
_________________
It puzzles and often frustrates me how many different ways I can get things wrong. I, like many, can be very inventive and imaginative about how I screw things up. "Let me count the ways." No, let me not.

When I was a lad of about 8 years old a kind friend of my mother sent me to summer camp. The camp counselor was a Native American and so we had a lot of activities that were of an Amerindian nature. We all had Indian names. I was "Long Arrow." There was a lake with canoes, a wigwam, a circular pow wow place with a bonfire, horseback riding and archery. I enjoyed the archery and I was good at it, more or less. Mostly less.

The problem was that I would either hit the bulls eye or else I would completely miss the target. There was no in between. That action has become a metaphor for my life. I have occasionally hit the bulls eye but I have done a lot of missing the target.

The people I've chosen as friends or lovers, auditions I've been through, jobs I've taken, places I've gone, turns I've made, roads I've taken, things I've said, letters I've written, advice I've given, theories I've held onto, opinions I've defended, things I did or decided not to do, an endless list of errors that are all stacked up in my archives in the file marked "Arrows in the Grass."

Life doesn't unfold in a nice neat pattern, even though we might wish it to and often willfully try to make it so. I think the easiest thing in life to do is to get things wrong, to make a mistake. Nothing is simpler. Most of the time the mistake is a small and forgivable one. But sometimes it's a big one. Those are the ones we remember because we have to live with the consequences, either in daily life or in regrets.

And that's why it is so important to air out and don the garment of self-forgiveness. When you are facing one of life's targets remember there is a bulls eye, and the rest of the vast, unlimited universe is not it.

DB - Vagabond Journeys
___________________
May this day be an adventure.
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AUTUMN QUESTION

This is not a contest.

If you could be remembered for one thing, what would it be and why?


You have all Fall to answer if you wish,

Reply here or at dbdacoba@aol.com

2 responses so far

Thank you

DB