A Day in the Life of Chaos

There is something that happens inside a parent as their child grows and they realize they don’t need them as much anymore.    In truth it should be seen as success.  “Spread your wings little one… fly!”, is the refrain I thought would echo in my brain.  My son is growing older.  He is nearly 21 now.  Sure he needs my money to survive but aside from that the dependent ties of a child are becoming thinner.   As a parent I must shift from the role of ruler to advisor.  The wise council that may or may not be followed and honestly may or may not be wise.  Every parent has a different way of confronting this issue and some never do.  My grandfather never stoped calling my mother “Baby Sally.”  I think in her parents minds she was always a little girl and never transitioned to adulthood.  My wife’s parents seemed to have accepted her growth yet every time she returned home she was still their girl and they took her under their parental wings as they had always done.  Despite bei ng of

I have never been so worried for my country.  This is not hyperbole, it is seriously a feeling I have deep inside my gut.   At nearly 51 years of age I have lived over half a century.  While I find this thought an anathema to my feelings of youth inside, it is in fact a reality that I can now look at the world and time with a sense of perspective.   America is disintegrating before our very eyes.  Again, I don’t mean this statement to be dramatic in effect.  I simply state it as a realistic appraisal of who we are and where we are as a society.  Our value systems have become clouded and buried under a mountain of lies designed to divide and conquer.  Internationally we have never been weaker.  We as a nation are more vulnerable then we have ever been but like the Roman Empire before us we are literally rotting frown within.  We are sewing the seeds of our own destruction and no one should doubt that our enemies do not recognize this.   I have been a fighter and debater all

  Sometimes when I think about life and the journey we take, I think about it as made up of many signposts. Each one is unique to ourselves and our lives but as we look back over time we find many have become beacons of life. A point in time when we changed in some way and found the path that has led us to the present. It can be a dangerous recollection because we are at risk of allowing our minds to wander into the unknown. The world of what might have been can be enticing however, it can also be risky as a mode of thought.  This is largely because there can be no resolution.  We can't change or re-live the past, only move forward from the decisions we made. The summer of my nineteenth year I was eager to find myself. I wanted to break out into the world and make my own decisions. I wanted to leave the protective custody of my parents but like most young kids, I subconsciously wanted to find independence without fully losing the security of parents and family.  When a ch

The King is Dead! Long Live the King.   The King of Thailand just passed.   He was eighty-eight and has been sitting on the throne since 1946 making him the longest serving monarch in the world.  I guess it is now up to Elizabeth to best his record.  He was a good king and very much beloved by the Thai people.  It is difficult to imagine having a focal point in a society like a monarch for 70+ years.  Very few Thais lived before him, making him all they have ever known.  Much of the world knows something we don't.  They know how to have institutions that unite societies rather than divide them.  America has no equivalent.  In sport it is the World Cup.  A once every four year tournament that is made up of national teams.  In America we think only of our regional favorites.  Go Cowboys... love you Gamecocks!  The Olympics is the only thing that comes close and for the most part it is a tournament of individuals.  Names we don't really know until they poke their head up

Freshman Orientation The older I become the more circles I see in life.  Really it is the consequence of time and living.  Both intertwine and the result is the definition of a pattern once invisible to the mind.  Nothing brings this home like being a parent because in your child you see a shadow of your own life.  Not only do you re-live the stages of life through the eyes of your child they become a reflection of your own life and experience. My son recently began study at a university yet his course is quite different from most.  Rather than follow in the footsteps of his friends and attend college in the place he was raised he has followed his nomadic father on an unconventional journey through life.  I have tried to give him everything I had, because in truth I regret little about the path I have followed. My parents gave me a home in Alaska.  It was a place for me to bloom that was not to big to breath. A small city where I could learn to appreciate life, friends

Everyone defines Shangri-la differently.  One of the first films I came to love was a 1937 epic by Frank Capra called Lost Horizon.  Despite being one of the best and most thoughtful films of its time ever produced not many people know about it.  The movie contained a message of peace and pacifism at a time when the world was gearing up for war.   In it, actor Ronald Coleman escapes the violence and turmoil of China to find the mythic Shangri-la lost in the Himalayas.  Shangri-la for Coleman was a peaceful place filled with beauty, thought and contemplation, yet for others it might be something completely different.  We all have our own definitions for everything in life.  Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously replied in 1964 when answering the question what is Justice Potter Stewart pornography? "I know it when I see it." In truth Shangri-la is a concept so intrinsically personal only you will know it when you find it.  It is very much like Buddhist enlighte

Bangkok is a city of a million faces and a million stories.   Each person lives a life independent with his or her own complications, anxieties, depressions and laments.   Joy often gives way to a daily existence of life and work interwoven in a fabric of traffic and noise.   Every day when I awaken I feel like I want to explore and understand.   I want to comprehend what drives each individual.   I want to learn about their lives however joyful or miserable.   I think in a hidden voyeuristic sort of way it encourages me to look beyond myself and discover a world I might otherwise never see. One day while walking down a busy Bangkok street the city of a million stories decided to give me a glimpse into a very different life. One of the great curiosities of Thailand for the Western mind is what here is known colloquially as the “Third Sex.”   In the west we view transgender issues as interwoven with gay rights.   It exists as a subset of the society.  Most people when confronte