Truly Blessed

Galileo

In the south they always say "blessed."  Have a blessed day or I am truly blessed.  Bless your heart they will tell you and then subsequently kick you in the ass.  Most of the time it is used as a kind of farewell wish or sense of self affirmation.  I am not sure who is doing the blessing, I am sure in their mind it is the Lord Jesus Christ.   I have always had trouble with this concept.  If there is a Lord Jesus Christ I have always assumed my life would be quite insignificant in the greater context.  Still self importance has always been the essence of Christianity.  Prior to Galileo the Sun revolved around the Earth.  Of course poor Galileo was made to recant his own teaching and discovery and forced by the inquisition to remain essentially under house arrest for the later years of his life. 

Christians are allowed to speak directly to God and God will hear them.  He will bless them like a priest splashing holy water and make all their dreams come true.  Or not.  Anyway, the general point is that Christians feel blessed and love to bless.  It makes them feel good.  Like they are doing something by the utterance of a word.  While literally it is meant for God, in their own mind it is meant to make them feel as if they are giving when in truth they give nothing.

I have launched into this expose on the word "blessed" primarily because I had intended to write this entry and mention how I have been blessed.  It was only as I started to realize that my vocabulary has been altered after living for 14 years in South Carolina when I stepped back and reconsidered.  I decided to instead use the word "Fortunate."  Fortunate seems to signify that goodness has come from my own doing.  From my own decisions.   Winning the lottery is "fortunate."  If you didn't buy the ticket you would have never won the ten dollars. 

As my 50th year as a living, breathing sentient being closes in on me I can't help but contemplate life and the decisions I have made.  I will soon embark on a new chapter of life.  It is one that will take me far away from everything I know.  For some they might find the thought frightening.  For myself I find it invigorating.   It is a chance to refresh my mind.  To reboot and think of things in a new and different way.  Age brings perspective and as I look back at where I came from, what I have done and where I will go I can't help but think I am truly "fortunate."  While I will never be rich I have had and continue to have opportunities that most people dream of.  They are the kind of experiences that many people can't even conceive of let alone contemplate.  The majority of humans will live the lives that they are given existing day to day in a kind of comfortable and familiar world straddling a zone of neutrality like a rider on a horse navigating a familiar pasture.





For myself I have sacrificed the inherent security and stability of a docile life and instead I chose a path that will lead me to worlds beyond myself.  Much like Galileo discovered, I am not the Earth and the Sun does not revolve around me.  I must revolve, I must float my own path through life.  This path has taken me to far corners of the world.  It has lifted me above myself and let me look down on the world like a God seeing all that transpires in the maze of life.  I have flown in a helicopter over the Amazon and stood upon mountains closer to the heavens than most of the pious will ever find.  I have seen poverty and wealth yet beneath it's shroud discovered the reality that the blood that courses through our veins is the same despite the color of the skin or language spoken.  Emotions are universal yet experience and perspective is not.  Each human being, each place teaches me.  I learn from their unique view and it contributes to a constantly evolving perspective of my own.

Ernest Shackleton

Sometimes when I speak to another I forget.  I forget how hard it must be for them to conceive of my own thoughts and ambitions.  When I speak of living out my golden years in a corner of the world they will never see much less imagine I must be uttering a language foreign to their ears.  I am fortunate in life to have found people that understand these feelings and thoughts that exist within me.  I speak most certainly of my wife, my father and my son.  I speak fondly of the friends I have met in my travels each seeking their own truth and knowing that home will always be a foggy memory.   

When you pack up your life to leave for some place new you are reminded of how temporal life is.  I feel this way as I see the pile of take/not things grow larger.   I realize that even among the take pile each box becomes increasingly insignificant.  I discover how easily it would be to leave it all behind.  The true treasures are few.  They mostly consist of things that will outlive me and hopefully have value to those that follow.  I feel as if I am a caretaker of sorts.

Sir Richard Francis Burton

Increasingly I wake up everyday and think about how fortunate I am.  I am truly wealthy with life and experience.  Gifted with a mind that thirsts and leads me forward on a never ending quest to learn and feel more.  In a way life is my drug and when I close my eyes for the last time I believe I am on a path that will leave me satisfied.  I don't believe I was "blessed" with this life I have but I have certainly been fortunate.  Decisions made long ago slowly come to fruition and leave me more fulfilled than I have ever been but not half as much as I will be. 

I am sorry dear Galileo if the blessed never understood you.  I follow in your footsteps for knowledge.  I follow the foot steps of the Explorers Richard Burton and Ernest Shackleton.  I follow a path of compassion gently left by all those who believe they must give back to the world that gave them life.  With humility I live in your shadows and am truly grateful for the lives you lived and the fortunate life I now lead.