THE TIME BETWEEN TICK AND TOCK

We have learned that much of life exists between the tick and tock of events. We are in such a place now. One great event has occurred, and we must wait for the inevitable tock that follows. "Tock" occurs (god willing and the creek don't rise)on next Tuesday, October 16th. I will be posting about it, but right now I don't want to throw any monkey wrenches into the clockworks (to extend the metaphor perhaps a bit too far). In the mean time, I want to share some quotes on fear that struck Nanc and I as appropriate to this time:

Eleanor Roosevelt:
You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.

Marcus Aurelius:
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

David Oliver-Godric:
Fear is one of the essences of what it is to be alive. Courage is to have fear but act anyway, cowardice is to have fear and fail to act. Life is about action, failing to act is the same as being dead, although even the dead act as fertilizer so perhaps it is worse.

See you Tuesday!

PAIN AND VALUES

I originally wrote this for Jack Hittrich, Nanc's attorney in this case. Hopefully, readers of this blog will find it inspiring:

"Great events and horrific trials identify the outstanding individuals among us. They take the ordinary man or woman and, if they have the right steel, forge them into the tools of history. Pain is the birthright of humans. What the individual does with that pain is the story of their life. For the few that find their true temper – turning their personal suffering to the service of others – there we see the shining blades that are the power and the real value of our species."