The 60

Today would have been my mother's 60th birthday. What would she have been able to tell me about her 60 years? Would she have told me that as far as we have come, that we still have far to go? Would she have lamented the old days when things seemed clearer? Or would she have just looked at the years ahead with optimism?

I don't know. Maybe she just would have told me that she loved me.

Happy Birthday, Mom.

The Retraction

Well, I have some good news and bad news.

The good news is that I found my walkman. We are in the middle of a move to new office space and I placed it in one of the bags I had. I was very happy when I found it but then I realized that I cast apersions on the characters of my coworkers. Granted, some of it is earned but I went ahead and determined that one of them was the thief and this attitude effectively coloured my whole day, making me less than productive.

That was the bad news-the fact that I jumped to a conclusion and did not consider all options.

There is a Chinese parable that one of the Taoist masters told and it went something like this.

A man who was a woodcutter came back from lunch and found his ax missing. He looked for it in the area where he was working. He remembered that there was a boy who was hanging around. At first, he though him lazy, because he did not seem him working. When he saw the boy again, he thought that the boy took the ax. He thought that the boy walked like a theif and acted like a theif. The woodcutter then found his ax lying right where he had left it-inside of a stump. He had done this to keep it from being stolen while he had gone to lunch. He felt badly about accusing the boy, even though he had not confronted him, he had jumped to a conclusion.
Now when he saw the boy, he saw a boy who walked upright and honorably.

Maturity

Michael Jackson has been accused of having "Peter Pan Syndrome." For those who aren't familiar with it, it means that this is a person who does not wish to take on adult responsibilities.
I don't know that I suffer from that, it does occur to me that I should be having more fun than I am currently having and I feel that being an adult should not suck so much.

Don't get me wrong, I am happy to:

A) Still be alive
B) Still be alive and healthy
C) Recognize that my life could be truly miserable

I guess that I want to experience what some people experience, which is that unbearable lightness of being that motivates you to live your life to the full. That feeling that children usually have that makes them want to get up in the morning.

I get the feeling that adults lose this and fast and we spend the declining years trying to get it back. That's why we buy the gadgets and get the face-lifts and crowd the studio audiences of Tony Robbins, Dr. Phil, Oprah, Suze Orman and whoever else seems to tell us that there is a way to find it.

I am not in the age group of that demographic. I am in the demographic that makes up the eldest of their children, who were told to do certain things and to take on certain values even if we saw how flawed they were.

I did not expect every day to be great but life is a bowl of cherries. True, some of it is the pits but a lot of it is sweet. I think I want a little more sweet.

I guess the fact that I lost a second walkman in a year has got me down. I am down because I obviously did not learn my lesson from last time about coworkers and thievery. Well, I learned it now. I think I just hate the fact that people steal and will steal junk. The walkman had more sentimental value that dollar value. It was a walkman, not an ipod.

Well, maturity is knowing that into everyone's day a little rain must fall.

So why get wet? Where is my umbrella?

I suppose that's what maturity is also, knowing that mummies and/or daddies can't kiss it and make it all better. I will need to find my own umbrella.