TOTAL TACTICAL

TACTICAL

Relatively unchanged.  Have to REALLY commit to running.  I have been waking up and taking my meds @ 0530hrs to acclimate myself to being up early in the morning for running before school.  Another reason that I want to run in the dark morning hours is the discipline and sense of accomplishment that it has always seemed to provide me with.

The last few comments that Thomas have left on my blog really raised my self-esteem.  I mentioned back in the day that as a boxer, one of the best compliments that I received as a sparring partner was that I was the “tryingnest n*gga” that the Champ had ever seen.  I like to think that I am all about filling the unforgiving minute with whatever energies I have.  The trait of perseverance is one that I hope has passed on through me to my daughters as well.

In the past I have characterized my “stick-to-it-tiveness as due to my simply being too stupid to know when I should stop trying!  It was easier to make light of my nature than to talk of the high concepts that I find in not giving into difficulties.  Right now I have the phrase, “getting used to being uncomfortable” on repeat as I get ready to mount this next assault on my academic future.  Hopefully I won’t stop until I get my Master’s in Nutrition!!

There has been an odd sort of development between me and this cat who I work with… I have sort of become a mentor to him.  This week I have been stressing to him that he still has time orient and live a more fulfilling life.  I don’t know how I stumbled into this role but I am guessing that it is more about what he needs in his life and I have the information that he requires to make to take his next steps in reaching his “whatever”.

Reflecting on how this relationship has begun to develop, it really shows why I place an emphasis on the fit of different experiences and goals before I get closer to people.  After all, it was only after my summer visit to Detroit where I really felt the love that my Father has for me… I mean, I could actually “see and feel” the love he has for me in his eyes and in his embrace.  Coming so near to my having seen KT graduate, I could make the parental understanding connection in a tangible way.  The feeling I got from him was the same feeling that I had when my daughter walked across the stage and grew from child to a young woman.  And for that, as well as my knowledge of "...how way leads on to way”, is what makes the gift of what Ken and Beth gave to me mean so, so much to me.

Getting back to me and my co-worker, I can sense the questioning, the uncertainty, the feelings that I, too, once had when I was around his age.  Would I have liked to have had the kind of conversations that we occasionally have with someone, a man who could identify with my situations and struggles, and for this person to be able to share his experience with me??  I know what hindsight says, and because I do it creates in me an obligation to confer my experiences and opinions as objective as I can.  But I never presume that our conversations will be about his inner thoughts because that would, at least to me, be an assumption of things that implies other purposes.  And for me to do that would rob me of my objectivity and my usefulness.

I am sharing this tidbit with you also to show how most of my kvetching about relationships are born.  For me, there are no real overlying concerns about the spinnings between me and the fairer sex.  It is almost exclusively when my space has been compromised and I have to cope with people who, for lack of my originality, are lost in the fog of living so to speak, and their proximity creates an even thicker fog for me to move through.  These people, unseeing as they are because of the fog, and struggling to rise above their baser instincts and reactions, but are either unable or unwilling to think beyond their own immediate sense of need.  I mean, it has been years since I have had to talk about relationships and how they reflect issues that I am currently dealing with.  That is what being in control of my environment has done for me.  It has given me the ability to set my own ethos and let that determine the priorities in my life.  It has given me clarity and allowed me to develop a sense of purpose that I did not have when I was stuck “in the provincial town that I once jogged ‘round”.  And that was, too, of course, YEARS ago.

One of the proofs that I think that I have confirmed is that I do have a “why” to my life.  I have also been able to reaffirm that my personal philosophy is sound and productive.  If there was one question to my life, I believe it would be that of whether it is the goal or the road to the goal that matters most.  Myself, I have always been a “the road IS the goal” kind of guy.   So it stands to follow, that no matter how long I travel, no matter what obstacles must be overcome, and despite the testing that must take place along my journey,  as long as I am utterly convinced that I am on my road, that I am also on the way to reaching my goal.