Chapter 2

The next thing I remembered with any clarity was sitting in Stu’s car. We were moving.

“Highway,” I said. The words came slowly to my lips.

“About time you said something I could understand,” Stu said.

My head ached. The rain hitting the windshield moved too slowly. It looked thick and ran slowly before the sweeping wipers. It took all my focus to turn and look over at Stu. My chin lolled to the left and stuck to my shoulder. The last time I felt this groggy, I had drank way too much vodka at a Fourth of July party.

“The car,” I mumbled.

“Yeah, yeah. Your car is getting towed. Don’t worry about it. It’s not like you’re gonna be driving it anytime soon. We’re swinging by Ella’s house on the way home. I texted her and she wants a look at you.”

“Ella’s house?” I said.

“I’m not sitting in some emergency room unless she says to go there;” Stu said. “There’s a nice lump on the side of your head. I think you’re fine, but when your best friend is a doctor, why not ask?”

Stu, Ellen and I went to grammar school together. We rode the bus together right until junior year of high school. When we became seniors, I got a used car after I passed my driving test. I drove those two everywhere.

Memories of those nights cruising through town, weekend trips to Boston, and hanging out at Hodak’s farm floated through my hazy mind.

“Kaylyn,” I said.

“Yup. Been texting her too. She’s put Emma to bed. She’s worried about you. We’ll call her once Ellen gets a look at you.”

I braced myself against Stu walking up Ellen’s driveway. She met us at the door. I smiled when I saw her shaking her head like a disapproving mother.

Ellen didn’t have a family of her own. She focused so relentlessly on medical school and her residency that a social life took a distant back seat. I was grateful of that right now.

I sat in a chair in the middle of her kitchen while she looked me over. The recessed lights burned my eyes. My head started aching all over again.

After a few minutes, I sat in straight-backed chair in her mostly glass sun porch that looked over the backyard. Rain hammered the aluminum roof so I couldn’t hear the two of them talking in the next room, though they were only fifteen feet away from me. Stu shook his head while Ellen lectured him. I saw Stu pull out his phone and make a call.

“Probably calling Kaylyn,” I thought.

After a minute or so, they came into the room. Ellen pulled a foot rest over and sat in front of me.

“How you feeling, kid?” Ellen had nicknamed me “the kid” a long time ago. My birthday is late in the year and I was always the youngest kid in our class. My parents probably should’ve held me back and started school the following year, but they didn’t.

“Things are clearing up. My head still hurts but I can see straight and everything doesn’t feel like slow motion anymore.”

“That’s good,” Ellen said. “I don’t think you have a concussion. But you did hit your head on a hard surface and you need watching. I told Kaylyn what she needs to do for tonight.”

“Thanks, E. I owe you one. You too, Stu.”

 “Yes, you do,” Stu said. “Let’s get you home.”

I called in sick in the morning. I didn’t tell my boss what really happened. I just said I had been throwing up all night.

“Sounds like a stomach bug.” He said. “Stay home until it passes. We don’t need you spreading that around the office. I’ll have Tony disinfect your desk just in case.”

“Really?” I thought. “I bet Tony will love that.”

I only slept a couple hours. Whatever rest I got was born out of exhaustion and mental fatigue. I woke up to the dull ache. It hurt less than when I was at Ellen’s, but I wasn’t 100% yet.

The entire day consisted of nothing but ibuprofen, tea and lying on the couch. Not only did my body ache but I couldn’t shake the image of the guy in the boots. It haunted me. I kept trying to convince myself that he wasn’t looking at me from across the rest stop dining area. But I knew he was. Feelings of dread covered me like a too-heavy blanket on a warm night. Sweat beaded up on my skin while I struggled to keep my fear under control.

The footprints. How could they just appear with no trail coming from anywhere that made sense? Where had he come from? What did he want? How did he get from the stall to right beside me when I fell?

I didn’t tell Kaylyn about him. Considering the fall on the hard floor, she would chalk up my fears to a mild concussion and delusion.

After hours of wrestling with all the ‘what if’s’, I had nearly convinced myself to let it go and move on. That’s when Stu texted me.

He wrote, “Dude – how you doing?”

“Better. Love daytime TV.”

“Good, Wanna get your car?”

“Yes.”

“Ok. I’ll leave work early. Get u @4.”

“Cool. Thx.”

“Hope tow guy doesn’t have muddy boots!”

I stared at my phone, re-reading the message. I didn’t remember telling Stu about the muddy boots guy. Maybe I mentioned it when I was going in and out of consciousness in the car. While I thought about what to write next, Stu sent another text.

“Cat got yur tongue? Or yur fingers?!”

I powered off my phone and put it on the coffee table.

Stu picked me up a little after four o’clock. We didn’t talk much on the ride to the towing company. He didn’t bring up the muddy boots guy. I felt relief that he didn’t go there.

We pulled into a wide parking area in front of a gray, sheet metal building as big as an airplane hangar. We could see a few guys working of some vehicles with hoods up or elevated on lifts. From inside a small office, a man in his 60’s came out holding a clipboard.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“Yes. I’m here to pick up my Honda Civic. You took off the side of the Pike last night.”

“Right.” He looked down at his clipboard. He flipped a few pages.

“Here it is. Killingworth. Edward?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll need to see some identification.”

I handed him my driver’s license. After looking it over he handed it back.

“That’s you, all right. Name’s Desmond White. I brought your car in myself last night. Pretty tough spot you picked to wash your windows.”

“Yeah. Well, I didn’t have much choice. Some nasty stuff on my windshield.”

“I saw that,” Desmond said. “Looked like oil. I got all of it off for you. Wasn’t too bad. I have some pretty strong stuff we use here. I put a can in your trunk in case that happens to you again. Get yourself some clean rags so you can take care of it right next time.”

I thanked and paid him. I thanked Stu yet again. He got all melodramatic and said, “Let this be a lesson to you, kid. How many times have I told you to keep that car of yours clean? Five hundred? A thousand times? Next time, I won’t be so quick to come to your rescue.”

“Get the hell away from me,” I said.

“No problem,” he said.

We went our separate ways for the night. As I drove down Page Boulevard, away from White’s Garage and Towing I zoned out. The processing part of my brain took over operating the car while I kept playing the events of last night over in my head.

The shadow in the trees on the side of the road. There, in the darkness behind the whipping rain and thrashing boughs. A space that was too dark. A shape that wasn’t natural. It was no shadow. It was him. I knew it had to be him.

“You picked an interesting spot to pull off. You know where you are?” Carl’s words repeated back to me. What did a truck driver from Tennessee know about a dirt patch on the side of one of a thousand miles of road he travels every week?

“Well. He must know something about it?” I thought. “Why else would he ask me?”

I didn’t watch the news regularly. I tried to think about what I had heard or read about something happening on that stretch of the Pike. Nothing came to mind. I mean, people had accidents all the time. I remember a Trooper being hit while he walked back to his cruiser after stopping a drunk driver.

I could picture a bunch of makeshift shrines on the side of the highway. You know the ones with small crosses and flowers. Sometimes balloons or candles were set up when their birthday came around every year. The Pike had been built in the 50’s, I think. So it had been around 30 years before I was born. Maybe something bad had happened in that spot. Carl was twice my age and I might talk with other truckers at rest stops all the time. He would know more about something like that than I would.

When I got home I talked to Kaylyn for a few minutes when small feet tapped into the room. Emma had drawn a picture of me. Daddy with an ice pack on my head and a thermometer sticking out my mouth. She handed it to me, smiling.

“Are you feeling better, Daddy?”

“Yes, little one. But Daddy’s real tired. I’m going to go lay down.”

“Don’t you want something to eat?’ Kaylyn asked.

“Not now. I don’t have any appetite. Maybe later.”

Emma gave me a hug. “Brush your teeth before you lay down, Daddy. You could forget and wake up with yucky-mouth.”

I laughed. “I will, honey.”

My boss, Mitchell Baker called me into the office as soon as I got to work the next day.

“You sure you’re feeling better, Ed? You don’t look like you’re 100%.”

“I’m not at full strength but my doctor says I’m clear to work. I’ll be back to normal tomorrow.”

“Fine. Check with Tony. He picked up the slack while you were out. And buy him lunch today. He wasn’t thrilled at having to wipe down your cube.”

“Sure, boss.”

I watched the clock all day. Nothing could motivate me to be there. The work from the past few days and some new requests that just came in stared at me in defiance on my monitor. By the time everyone around me was packing it in for the day, I had hardly accomplished anything.

But as people started saying goodbyes to each other and the office thinned out. I got a second wind. I looked at the clock. If I pushed through till 6:30, I could finish at least one these reports. I texted Kaylyn and told her I’d be late catching up. She wrote that it was no problem. She and Emma had rented a movie and would watch it after dinner. By the time I got there, they’d probably both be asleep on the couch.

With a small amount of satisfaction, I sent the completed file to the manager who requested it. I checked the time. 6:45pm.

“Not too bad. At least I won’t have to fight traffic at this hour,” I thought.

My car sat alone in the mostly deserted parking lot. The rainstorm that had swept through the region was long gone. Tonight was calm and a little warmer. I’d probably make it home by 8:30pm. I could see a couple more late nights in my future before I got my head above water at the office.

I drove with far fewer cars on the secondary roads around the office. “What a difference an hour makes,” I thought.

Once on the turnpike, I hit up the first rest stop to get gas and grab a coffee. The clerk, Arline by her pre-printed name tag, took my money. “Arline,” I thought “I wonder if they spelled it wrong.” Thankfully, I got in and out of there in about 10 minutes despite it being pretty crowded.

As I merged back into the three lane highway, the usual commuting traffic of passenger cars was replaced with big trucks. For every four-wheeler on the road there were five big haulers taking up the center and right lane. As long as I stayed in the passing lane doing 80mph, it was smooth sailing.

The truckers’ driving patterns reminded me of a flock of geese. One truck would pass another one as they climbed an incline in the road. Once they crested the hill, the heavier tractor trailer would gain speed and pass as many trucks as he could before the next climb. I wondered if it was a game they played. Maybe they were drafting like NASCAR drivers. How many points for passing one truck? Did you get double points for passing two? And what if…

Brake lights illuminated the entire road ahead. I hit the brakes and barely had enough room to stop behind the SUV I was following.  I could see the driver throw two hands up in the air like I had actually made contact. “Whatever,” I said to myself. “Take a chill pill.” The traffic looked like it was crawling along where the Pike bent to the left.

I tried searching on the radio for the traffic advisory channel. Why didn’t I save it as a pre-set? Stupid. I checked the State Police Twitter feed. The last few posts were about accidents that were hours old, near the outskirts of Boston. The further we crept, I could see we were being funneled into the passing lane. “Road work or an accident,” I said to no one. After about 30 minutes I could see where the traffic was opening up again. I texted Kaylyn to let her know I would be later than I thought. She replied with a single letter; “K”.

Then I saw the overturned tractor trailer. The back double doors of the trailer pointed up in the air as the rest of it lay along the slope on the side of the highway. I noticed there was no guard rail here. My skin felt cold all over. I swallowed hard in my throat. The panic I had felt just 48 hours ago came rushing back in a flood of fear.

“No,” I breathed. The back of the trailer read “THS” in big block letters. That meant something to me, but I couldn’t remember what. The closer we crawled, I knew that was the spot where I pulled off the road. The exact freaking spot. I started to text Stu but my hands shook and I couldn’t spell anything right. I saw a Trooper putting new road flares down where the original ones were sputtering out. Once I got through the bottle-neck, I pulled over to the right side shoulder and put my hazards light on. I stopped the car and got out. I looked down the slope. Police spotlights lit up the disabled truck. On the side of the trailer I confirmed what “THS” stood for: Tennessee Hauling Systems. A sour taste climbed up my throat.

I stepped over the guard rail and started running down the slope. From my right, a Trooper who couldn’t have been more than 25 grabbed my bicep and stopped me cold. He was so strong my feet came off the ground for a second before landing again. He raised me up so I didn’t land on my ass.

“Where do you think you’re going, pal?” he said.

“Carl. Is that my friend Carl?” I said.

“You know the driver?” he asked.

“Is it Carl Goldberg down there?” I asked. Panic obvious in my tone.

The Trooper stared back without answering me. He examined me like a doctor looking for symptoms of illness.

“Well is it!?”

“Yes. The driver is Carl Goldberg of Oak Ridge, Tennessee. But how do you know him?” he said in a flat, even voice.

“He helped me the other night. I needed help and he stopped for me. He helped me right here. Right there.” I pointed at the truck with my free hand.

The Trooper’s eyes narrowed. After a few seconds he said, “Come with me.”

He never let go of my arm, but the grip eased up a little. We walked across the slope over to a two more Troopers. He told me to stay put, about ten feet away from them. He turned his back on me and talked low enough so I couldn’t hear them. The other two looked in my direction a couple times. One of them nodded and then walked up to the road. He shone an incredibly bright flashlight up the highway. I looked and saw he shone it on my Honda. He walked straight over to me. “He just checked my tags,” I thought.

“That your car?’ he asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I had that car towed two nights ago from this location.”

“I know,” I said. “I called to report that I had to leave it. Oil on the windshield during the rainstorm. I picked it up from White’s Garage.”

“And you’re saying that this trucker, Goldberg helped you out?”

“Yeah. He tried to clean off the windshield, but the rain turned the slope to mud. He gave me ride to the next rest stop instead of trying to drive it out.”

“Huh.” He said. “Wait here.”

“Is he ok?” I asked.

The Trooper didn’t answer me as he walked back over to his cronies. More flashing lights rolled up on the shoulder. In a minute, two paramedics descended the slope carrying an orange back board. It was the kind that had handholds cut out all around the edges and several straps tied across to keep someone from falling off.

Insticntively, I ran down the slope toward the front of the tractor. The Troopers shouted in a single voice, “Stop!” I didn’t care if they arrested me. I had to see him. He could be hurt badly.

I made it around the rig and found Carl lying in tall grass. I’ve never seen someone injured so horribly. His eyes stared into the sky. His mouth gaped open. Parts of his legs were…were missing. His belly had been ripped open and his insides were all pulled out. The sour feeling in my stomach rose like a geyser into my mouth. I puked a hot stream of coffee and lunch into the grass. Bent at the waist, I coughed until it hurt. I dropped into a squat that lasted five seconds. I rocked forward onto my knees, gasping for breath.

With nothing left inside to eject, I shuddered. A coldness gripped me, causing me to shiver. My arms were pulled back by strong hands. I heard the handcuffs snapping into place. The merciless steel clamped around my bony wrists.

Coughing once more, I said, “Who…did this? What happened…to him?”

“We were going to ask you the same thing, Mr. Killingworth,” one of the Troopers said.

Another one said, “Let’s go.”

They stood me up, turned me around and marched me back up the slope. They ignored my repeated questions. I was stuffed into the back of a cruiser. I looked to out the window and saw faces in the procession of cars. Their scanned back and forth from me to the truck, back to me. I saw smart phones pointed in my direction.

I turned my head toward the woods. A couple minutes passed and I saw them carrying Carl’s body toward the ambulance. More emergency vehicles had arrived behind me. I saw firemen and guys with State Police coats carrying big utility boxes down toward the truck.

I wondered for a second and then I knew it was the crime scene guys. A Trooper broke free from the group and got into the front seat. He looked over his shoulder at me.

“Looks like your car is getting towed again, Mr. Killingworth.”

“Why?” I said.

He didn’t answer me. He put the car in gear and pulled into the mass of automobiles and trucks. He sounded the siren briefly and the cars opened a space for him. He gunned the engine and we raced ahead. He kept his flashers on and cars moved aside.

“Where are we going?” I said.

“Barracks,” was all he said.

“I need to call my wife. She’s going to be worried about me.”

“Uh-huh,” he said. The rest of the ride was spent in silence.

6 Reasons the World Is Nearing its End

Our lead story tonight: there's mounting evidence that human beings think less each and every day. The acts of thoughtlessness contained in this report will reveal the horrific fact that the world as we know it, is about to end. I've closely tracked several events supporting this theory. I've gathered, organized and analyzed the data needed for proof. I couldn't be more confident. Here's the evidence!

1. Head-Down Driving. In recent years, I've observed the plague-like spread of this insidious habit. Pass someone on the highway, pull alongside a car at a traffic light, or the worst scenario - be passed by another vehicle on the interstate. Notice the tilt of the driver's head. Cocked downward at 45 degree angle, busily texting or surfing the web, this driver is like a missile with no guidance system. You can spot them in the distance, constantly over-correcting, swerving in & out of their lane boundaries. Apparently driving a 4000 pound, gasoline filled, glass & steel behemoth is not the most important thing happening in their present moment. And I thought I was the daredevil driving and simultaneously eating a McChicken sandwich!

2. Public Bathrooms. Know why public bathrooms are filthy? Because we treat them like crap. Compare your bathroom at home to one in a gas station, the one at work or your favorite coffee place. Any similarities? Guys, would you dare pee all over the seat at home? Fail to flush the toilet? Miss the trash with your used paper towel and not pick it up? It's about ownership. We don't have to clean that bathroom so we don't feel any empathy to the poor soul who does.

3. Littering. Much like number 2, we're not individually responsible to clean parking lots, roads, movie theaters, restaurant tables/floors or event arenas. It's got to be the explanation for the amount and frequency of trash we leave behind without a second thought. At a gas station, I watched a woman exit the convenience store after purchasing a drink with plastic wrapped around the cover. She peeled off the plastic and threw it on the ground. She then sat in the car, door open, guzzled the drink and then placed the bottle on the ground. She closed her door and the driver took off. It happened so fast there was nothing I could say or do. So, I picked up the plastic and the bottle and put them in the trash can, four feet from where they lay on the pavement.

4. Reflexive Lying. I pull up to gas station. I pump gas, then move my car to the spaces by the doors, so I wouldn't block the pumps for others. I go in and buy a coffee. I come out to find a car parked so close to mine, I can't even squeeze between them. I go back in looking for the driver. No one had a sign hanging around their neck that said 'I'm an inconsiderate bastard". The need to use the bathroom arose. So I did. When I went back outside, the driver was in his too-close-to-mine car playing with his iPhone. I knocked on his window. He recoiled in horror like a lion got too close to him in a drive-thru safari. I motioned for him to lower his window.
 He did and said, "What?"
I said, "Are you heading out? You parked so close to my car I can't get in."
Looking flustered he said, "Oh, well the person parked over the lines on this side so I didn't have a choice!"
I looked around and said, "This is the last spot. You're parked next to the drive thru lane. Are you going to move now?"
He turned beat red in the face and said, "Yeah, yeah, I'm going."
What's with the instant lying? He didn't even try. There's a ton of science on lying. It come down to this: we lie all the time. Sometimes it's to make other feel better. Sometimes to make ourselves feel better. When you lie to avoid blame for doing something stupid or wrong - think it through. I'll bet it won't end well. Go on YouTube and search for "caught lying". Enjoy yourself.

5. Willfull Collateral Damage a.k.a. Unintended Consequences, What? Picture yourself walking into a church. You are welcomed and handed the weekly news bulletin. Flipping ahead a couple pages, you are surprised to find what amounts to an advertisement for annulling a marriage. Their having a meeting to educate folks on the benefits of annulment. The way it reads, you're reminded of an slimy advertisement with a suspicious angle. "Free trip to Florida if you listen to our 90 minute co-op presentation."
Then, before mass starts, the lay-person who does the readings makes a special announcement from the lectern. Yes, it's about the very special annulment meeting where you too can learn about all the myths surrounding annulments.
What is going on here? What's the hype around annulments? You're becoming unsettled because you came to this church today with many members of your family and your parents. Your parents who are going to have their marriage of 50 years blessed during the mass. How can they be pumping the annulment message when we're about to celebrate 50 years of two people sticking together?
You settle down and mass lurches forward. It's a Catholic mass, so half of it is sung poorly enough that you can't understand the words. This results in your daydreaming about how good a few local TV commercials sound right about now. Then the big moment draws near. Mass is ending. You know that Mom and Dad are going to be called up to the front of the church for the blessing.
But before that happens, you are told yet another special announcement is next. A swarthy woman dressed in beige strides up to the lectern and launches into an energetic speech about, you guessed it...freakin annulments! Calling her words a speech is not accurate; it quickly unravels into a redundant, unorganized blather that has every member of the congregation looking around in bewilderment. She even says that she recommends annulments for everyone because having her marriage annulled turned her life around. Everyone? Really? So you're recommending an annulment to my parents who were married in this very church 50 years ago?
Her rant ends and the priest comes down to the base of the altar and calls your parents forward AND all the family with them here today. Not even a transitional statement - can you say 'awkward'? So you all shuffle up to the front of the church, the happy couple, their children, daughters in-law and twitchy grandchildren. Everyone is lined up in front of the altar like you're about to be sworn as deputies in a posse.
From here on out, you have to admit that the priest does a pretty good job with the blessing. He even asks the golden couple for the secret to a long marriage and shares it with the congregation. Ok, you think, this isn't so bad.
When it's just about over, you notice the beige-wearing Annulment Lady off to the side of the altar. You give her your best Clint Eastwood "Do you feel lucky, punk" glare. She casts her eyes downward in apparent shame. You're a Catholic, so even though you publicly shamed a woman during mass, in the front of the church there's no sense of guilt.
It all ends well as members of the congregation say 'congratulations' on the way back to your pews. As everyone is filing out, the choir is singing on, you wonder what message people are leaving with today.

6. The Face of Evil. I needed to buy a car. I see one online that's available at a local dealership. I stop in and test drive it. The salesman, let's call him Carl does a good job. No pressure. Super informative. Let's me take it home for a 24HR test drive.
It's during the test drive that I know this one's not for me. So I bring the car back and sit down with Carl. Based on the initial test drive the day before, he apparently thinks it's a done deal. As a matter of fact, he's already done all the numbers since I filled out some preliminary paperwork the day before. Carl even tells me it will go through smoothly because he used to be the financing manager. He knows all about the process. He says he talked to the current financing manager about my good credit and he offers me 1.84% financing on a used car. I wonder why he's not the financing manager anymore. Before I could ask, Carl offers to tell me why: he has three kids and the hours were crazy and being a salesman allows him to focus on his family.
Oh kay...so 1.84% sounds too good to be true, right? Wait for it...
I tell Carl that the car isn't for me and that there weren't any others on the lot I was interested in. He's obviously not happy. There's not much left to say. I leave. A week later I buy a car from another dealership. It doesn't go very smoothly, but no major surprises. Not like the surprise I learned about Carl and why he wasn't the financing manager anymore. It seems that convicted felons, felons guilty of insider trading can't have a job like financing manager for a car dealership. If you want to read more about it, here's the story.

If clicked the link and read it: that's crazy, right?! Only a couple months earlier, all that stuff was going down!

So that's it. The 6 pieces of evidence that prove mankind is nearly done with rational behavior and that the Apocalypse is upon us. Popular culture would have you believe it'll be a Zombie Apocalypse. Others will expect the traditional 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Hey, it could be the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man for all we know. I'm signing off. I'll be looking for the Gatekeeper. Gozar the Gozerian is coming...

Are You a Bricklayer?

Staring at the ocean with nothing particular to do is giving me an opportunity to think. It's an activity I'm accustomed to. I spend a lot of time in thought while driving. My three hours of commuting is so robotic, my subconscious mind takes control of the navigation and I cruise from A to B and back again.

That leaves lots of neural freedom to ponder other stuff. A recurring theme for me is 'purpose'. The questions are mostly the same. Am I doing what I'm supposed to be doing? Am I doing what I'm doing because it pays the bills? Am I doing what I love? Am I doing my best? Do I do my best every day?

Understanding purpose is a huge deal. When someone find theirs, all else becomes clear. You don't have to worry about your next steps. They are revealed naturally, like those solar, glowing pathway stones after sunset.

But what if you haven't figured out your purpose? What if you don't like answers to these questions: "What am I doing here? Why am I doing this work? Am I happy? Have I been happy in the last year? The last five?

Ever hear the story of the stone mason? Check this out:

A traveler entered a town and found herself drawn to a section where a great deal of dust and commotion was happening. She walked up to a construction yard where she came upon three masons cutting stone blocks from massive chunks of granite.

The first mason seemed unhappy at his job, chipping away and frequently looking at his watch. When she asked what it was that he was doing, the first mason responded, rather curtly, “I’m hammering this stupid rock, and I can’t wait ’til 5 when I can go home."

A second mason, seemingly more interested in his work, was hammering diligently and when the traveler asked what it was that he was doing, answered, “Well, I’m molding this block of rock so that it can be used with others to construct a wall. It’s not bad work, but I’ll sure be glad when it’s done."

A third mason was hammering at his block fervently, taking time to stand back and admire his work. He chipped off small pieces until he was satisfied that it was the best he could do. When he was questioned about his work he stopped, gazed skyward and proudly proclaimed, “I…am building a cathedral!”

Three men, three different attitudes, all doing the same job.

Are you cutting stones or building cathedrals? If you haven't found purpose, it can be difficult to be enthusiastic about what's happening at the present moment. One choice would be to begin to ask the questions that will reveal purpose. Another choice would be to wait. While waiting, you could be any of the three masons. The choices are:

• be miserable
• be diligent but uninspired
• do your best work regardless of the task at hand

  

I've reflected on this and can identify countless moments when I have been each of the masons. It's crazy how and when I make the choices I do. Mowing the grass: best work. Reading e-mail: diligent but counting the minutes until I'm done. Attending a particular meeting at work: miserable. On and on it goes. I show up differently at a variety of things though I'm still the same person.

How does it happen? State of mind. It boils down to how I feel. Feelings are produced by the quality of our thinking. Kinda tough to be inspired by something I dread. Even tougher to be miserable doing something I love. I read something recently that bears repeating. The author said that most human suffering comes from one of two places: grasping and aversion.

When you grasp something and can't let go, you fixate on it. It's hard to think of anything pleasant. You can be stuck as the first mason was. Unhappy with the present moment and doing less than his best.

When your mind desperately pushes away at something, refusing to to let it come, you're experiencing aversion. The amount of energy you spend worrying about something that hasn't happened causes anguish. And it hasn't even happened yet! Most times, the thing isn't even that bad after its over. We build things up to be awful, setting our expectations to needlessly painful levels.

Identifying when you're grasping or in aversion makes it easier to let go. Call it what it is and move on.

If you're curious about the book, send me a note and I'll give you the specifics.

A last piece of wisdom to leave with you: "Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is." Ralph Waldo Emerson

Uncertain Certainty

I observe everything I come in contact with. That includes what I sense. The stuff I see, hear, read, touch, taste, smell all gets processed and judgments form. Based on those judgments, I act.

But what has me thinking today is stuff I sense. Sensing something is altogether different. Sensing is more about intuition and gut feeling. I might not bet a paycheck on my gut, but if my senses are right, I wouldn't be surprised if that thing came true.

So what am I sensing? Events in this world are shaking the foundations of our assumed stability and security. I don't have to go into the world and national events that have dominated the headlines for the last several months. I specifically don't want to do that.

I won't because that's what the media does. They sensationalize and dramatize everything from the tragic to the mundane. Every where you turn someone gives their opinion on the "why's" and the "who's to blame" and the "what doom is next". I get the First Amendment and those in the pulpit or the anchor desk are by law free to say what they will.

What I sense is that people simply parrot what they hear in a sound bite or a youtube clip and adopt it as their own thinking. The media, both televised and Internet can be damn persuasive. It suddenly saddens me that newspapers are fading toward their inevitable death. Maybe it's nostalgia speaking but didn't it seem like both sides of an issue were represented in the papers? Ah, maybe not. I'd like to think it was so.

Back to what I'm sensing. People's ability to think is dying. It's "I'm right, you're wrong." It's "You're so wrong I'm going to ruin your reputation so no one will ever listen to you again and you'll never earn another dime in this line of business." How did we get to that?

I say that there are as many opinions as stars in the sky. They can't all be right and they can't all be wrong. And if you think yours is absolute and above inspection, well you're just wrong. We don't have enough information. We're not that smart and they're not that dumb as Mark Horstman states in his laws of great management http://www.manager-tools.com/docs/Horstmans_Laws.pdf.

We're so busy that we don't stop to think. Our minds are bludgeoned on all sides by our fabulous technology. It shouts at us from every corner, every second of our waking existence.

When was the last time you drove your car for more than 15 minutes without listening to the radio, iPod, talking on the phone, checking twitter, facebook and e-mail or talking to the people in the car? I bet you can't remember.

We don't think. We feel compelled to be stimulated or say what we're thinking. The funny part is that when we talk without some forethought, we don't make sense. We repeat, change our minds, wordsmith the idea until we get it right. No? Does this sound familiar?

Ever listen to someone talk so much it sounds like they're debating a subject all by themselves? We actually don't talk most of the time. We chatter, like gibbering monkeys. Don't agree? Read most social media posts. Between the spelling, grammar and incomprehensible garbage people write, you can't convince me that much thought preceded the keystrokes.

The answer is that we want it all so fast. So fast that we don't have to think for ourselves. Let someone else do it and I'll just hit the like button or star it or whatever it. Blow it all up I say. Even though I use it regularly, I like my life better without all this connection.

I was flying around last week, attending a busy conference and didn't use electronics much. And you know what? I didn't miss a damn thing.