PoM 299
To my sponcee:
There is in expression in ACA:
If you wonder why your family of origin pushes your buttons, it’s because…they installed them.
Be very protective of your boundaries on this trip so that you don’t get triggered into:
"I don’t belong"
"Someone doesn’t respect me"
"I am not as good as someone else or…I am better than someone else."
The need for esteem of others is important, but not as high-order a need as self-esteem, and nothing raises self-esteem more than unselfish services to others.
Protect yourself by taking time in your lovely play and winsome frolicking…to stop occasionally and help other addicts.
Just sayin’
PoM 300
Young children, if you pay attention to them, are antidotes to workaholism.
They live in a “second super-real world”, whether it’s running plastic, green trucks along the edge of their crib, rattling fire extinguishers as they walk by, or picking up pretty stones.
While it’s true that they have absolutely no patience and want things immediately (Sound familiar to anyone adult, here?) they are in many ways more sane than adults.
That’s why Gummy and I get along so well. We both like to do things that are “utterly useless”…and yet, “beautiful”.
PoM 301
No one is impervious to lying…that’s the water the addict-fish swims in.
I had to get emergency surgery done on a cavity that fell out of a tooth yesterday.
The student dentist asked me “Does the pain wake you up at night? “
I said that it did… And then realized I was lying.
I did wake up three times that night, and I did feel the pain of the tooth…but it didn’t cause it.
A “spot check inventory” told me that I was angling…to get some opioid based painkillers.
I am immediately backtracked and told her the truth.
No matter how far down the road you get…You are still just three feet from the ditch.
PoM 302
For Still Dave:
Just to give you a heads up on my exercise schedule: I usually run after the noon PrayerCall.
13 miles on a great day, 5 miles on an average day, less when Gummy needs immediate attention or I am rehearsing live.
Then, at night, after Gummy has gone to bed I start practicing.
Ideally, I do it in 1.25 hour increments, three of them.
Ideally, every 15 minutes within that 1.25 hours I do a set of push-ups, so I end up with 15 sets in a day.
If I don’t practice 3.75 hours a day I can’t play the music that I like. It’s very difficult music.
But, if I sit still for 1.25 hours at a time my blood starts pooling, my heart stops pumping effectively and I get old and creaky.
I’d like to say that I am so smart that I created this schedule, but it’s exactly what my second favorite guitarist, Andre Segovia, did…Minus the push-ups. He was a pipe smoking, womanizing whale….But a great guitarist.
PoM 303
To my old friend…or rather to my friend of old.
I remember you as smart, warm, talented and cute…50 years later, there was something that was missing.
In the six months we have been talking I haven’t been able to put my finger on it, until today.
When I sent you a video of Gummy playing in his new bed you wrote me back… And you were funny.
More than anything…That’s what I loved about you.
Welcome back my old friend…
PoM 304
My wife is my beloved mate, a gift from God Almighty.
She believes, and I have agreed with her, that the man is an equal…But the leader of the family.
Today, I needed to negotiate a very tender issue with the raising of our son.
So, I started with a truth that every father’s heart knows, but that neither parent will admit: “I know that you love our son more than me…and I know that you love me “very big”.”
It opened the door…
I asked her to pray with me, while we held hands, before I spoke to her, and asked God to help me be tender.
When I spoke, she looked hurt, but in the true spirit of a soldier’s wife, every bit as courageous as Gandhi’s wife, she agreed to my request.
I loved her fiercely at that moment.