Welcome to David’s webpage!
Since we are likely to travel this life’s journey only once, let’s make the most of each moment. We should look forward to the hopes and dreams we collected in our dreamcatcher to determine which ones we still want and need to accomplish as we take our next step. Also, we should look back to reflect on how we could improve upon the many projects we attempted – some with success, some that did not meet our expectations.
One seldom gets to look inside another’s head, unless they are a therapist with a truly open and honest client. This blog is an attempt to open my mind to see inside of my head as openly and objectively as I am capable. Thus, this blog will, in essence, be a kind of storytelling where sparks fly and hopefully ignite a flame in those readers who find their way to my website.
I will tell the stories with a flair for digging into subjective content and add commentary that I find interesting and hopefully equally intriguing to the reader. My aim is to update this blog weekly and then compile the contents together into a tome – a work that will become a book of my thoughts. Meanwhile, my goal is to share. If you find anything of interest, it is yours for the taking. The reward is a new perspective and if you have ideas to share, please comment below.
I often ask, “What’s on David’s mind?” More on that later, but for now, it is enough to say that I am aware. I am mindful. My being exists here, in this life, at this moment. In front of my consciousness is my mind, constantly churning and my body, ever cognizant of the perilousness of our pandemic-infused world, hovering, suffocating the breath out of humanity.
Background noise continues, like survival, chores, and maintenance. As a creature with a mind like a sponge, I am intellectual hunter-gatherer. Thus, in the foreground of my mind the fields are watered and fertilized. That is where the most fascinating growth has sprung up for the harvest. As I can interpret, my brain is busily and endlessly recounting the contents of fantasyland, including infinite tales of shouldas, couldas and wouldas. Sometimes from the depths of my memories emerge horrid stories, more often than not, related to me during REM sleep as I lie in a trance-like state at some appointed time in the bowels of the night.
Brain talk, or as my late wife Annette would say, “monkey talk,” is the enemy of mindfulness. And yet, the greatest unexplored part of our world lies within, mostly, if not almost entirely undiscovered. It attracts me as work I must do, places I must go, ideas I must explore, wonders I must examine. There are no limits in this great inner space. The expansive vessel of knowledge and wisdom are unveiled, open to the learnings of the centuries and, yes, ideas also from the unknown – a subconscious twilight zone.
This is the space, this is the thought, this is the conscious and subconscious that motivates me to write at all and even to contemplate this deluge of ruminations as an offering to others wanting to go on this journey with me. I have held off way too long, prodded to do what I have long wanted to do anyway. Now, at this moment, I am here, open, mindful, eerily prepared. Maybe holding off for a while aided in the marination of juices, restlessly stirring in my mind. Yet, knowing I am here, ready, and writing rings with the bells of a new day, a reality, though unsure if the world of “right thinking” and political correctness will approve. I seek to bless this journey and encourage others to take up the pen and keyboard for themselves. I sense this stream of thought and necessity to write is not a hypothesis needing proof. My senses tell me sharing thoughts, experiences, and inventions is truly our common purpose.
That said, this never-ending story will be updated once each week with a new chapter, a part of my exploration in making sense of the rich resources, accumulated along the trail of a magical life lived, experienced, and shared.
I think of my life journey as spanning three centuries. Not that I have lived in three centuries, only parts of two, but that my early life socialization was at the knee of people who lived and were socialized in the 1800s.
My father, born in 1899, my mother in 1904, were themselves socialized by those who experienced firsthand what it was like to have lived in the 1800s. And, that is what they had to offer. It is what parents do. They socialize us; us having no choice in the matter. It’s who they are. They don’t think about it. They just do it, some well, some badly. If you are a parent, you know this well. Keep in mind if you are on the far side of the middle of life, much is happening simultaneously.
The life of a parent, spouse, worker, and home manager involves a significant number of survival issues. The catch here is to pay attention and remain open to the possibility of intentionally inventing the next chapter. The life you live today and will live tomorrow is likely to be more of your creation than those around you, though influences and events will, at times, steer your vehicle off course.
Parenting is a hard job. Parents can be authoritarian in their motives, directives, and demands. And that’s a lesson, as I see it. No matter what your age may be at this moment, you either are a parent, will be a parent, or have parents. Believe me, lessons of parents and parenting will always live in your head. So, it’s best to cut them loose. Your parents are just the folks who brought you here.
Forgive them their bouts of often perceived meanness. Let any negativity go. Do it for yourself. More on that later too. They can now be friends, or not, as you choose. Keep the useful; hold onto the wisdom; abandon the not so useful. With that out of the way, the path is open to really creating the you that you wish to be. It might be in the space created in William Ernst Henley’s epic poem, Invictus, “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my Soul,” figuratively speaking.
As each night ends, a new day is welcomed. We can invent the dawn this new day as the first day of the rest of our lives – unique, rich, and exciting. In the movie, Groundhog Day, Phil Conners, a character played by actor Bill Murray, is condemned to live that day over and over. Sadly for Phil, he knows it. His was not a happy experience.
Perhaps the story idea comes from the genius of philosopher Friederich Nietzche’s External Recurrence theory. His fertile mind uncovered the conceivable, that the fate of us all is to live one fateful day of our lives over and over, with the caveat that we would be unaware that the sun would rise on the same day, just one calendar page turn from the last.
Since we cannot know whether or not that is true, my conjecture remains a supposition as does the concept of multiple dimensions existing in the same timeframe. We cannot know – for sure. We cannot know anything for sure, though we can live as if we are certain just to appease our intellect. A suggestion I offer myself is to live each day such that the next 24 hours I am given is a rich and joyful experience, even if I am required to relive the experience again and again. Hypothetical and improbable, of course, but having utility as a principle in the concept of awareness.
Living joyfully for today speaks to me. Thus, we can be at our best on the worst day of our lives.
Those are my thoughts on Day 1.
Dr. David Waugh 