Be Daring

      This is a photograph of a poster which lives in my office at work.  I can't remember where I got the poster but I can tell you it snags my attention on a daily basis.  What is it that is so attractive about this poster?  Yes, the dog is cool, for sure, and he (yes, he is a he) is irresistible.  But it is the words that mesmerize me and wrap me around their sounds.  I can't even really tell you what they mean.  They simply evoke familiarity and yearning:

       "Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary."    Cecil Beaton


    In all honesty, I think I am a play-it-safer.  I live a conventional life in a nondescript small  town.  There is nothing exceptional about me or my family.  I want to be daring but I am not brave enough to be daring.  I want to be different, but what's the point of that?  Be different for the sake of different?  I don't think so.  Rarely am I impractical.  I grew up knowing frugality and hard work.  Doesn't blend so well with impracticality.

   Why do the words capture me so much?  What do you think?

Owning a LIfe

      The notion of choice has been weaving through my thoughts all weekend.  I recognize that a person really does choose many things in life.  People don't choose their  families of origin and they can't choose many aspects of childhood.  Once, however,  they reached physical maturity  say, age 18, the choices they make become their life.

     The thing about choices is that you have to keep making them. You have to realize you are doing that.  Your decision making must be intentional.  I suspect many lives end being dismally empty or mediocre.  The owners of those lives may well feel as if they didn't have choices along the way (ie, I had to have a job, I had to stay married, I had to buy a house, etc). The real truth is that they did have choices but they didn't recognize the choices at the time.  Or, perhaps they initially saw the choice (I am choosing to work at this occupation) but then fell into the clutches of security and routine (I can't leave this job; I need the paycheck or I am too ________  to try something new - you fill in the blank).  

      I maintain that it takes courage to see life as choices.  It means that you are owning your own life.  It means that you understand that if you are carried away into mediocrity or living a life that is less than you want it to be, then it is your choice.  I can appreciate  that  security, and, grandest of all obstacles, cowardice, can lead to a life of mediocrity and bitterness.  Mediocrity and bitterness are by products of  choices made, even if the choices are made under duress or somewhat unconsciously.  Life will be a disappointment unless you think about everything you do, unless you make every choice the best one you know how to make.