Staring at Your Crib

Steers waiting to be fed

Staring at Your Crib

It’s that season!  The season where the frost has turned the green grass brown and snow often covers the entire field where my steers were grazing and frolicking from spring through most of the fall.  This all means I need to deliver their food to a feeder crib.

A feeder crib is also called a manger or feeding trough.  In my case it is located very near the hay barn so I can more easily carry the nutritious hay I purchase annually from Scott Droubay Farms to it.  Now, less than one month into the yearly cold weather feeding cycle, all of my steers keep within close proximity, rarely venturing out to dance joyfully in their pasture.  When I venture out to feed them I’ve noticed that they’ve become strangely loyal to it, standing, staring at their crib.

Their winter crib gaze shouldn’t surprise me.  I’ve seen it over and over again, season after season.  Yet, for some reason, this particular occurrence has left a lasting impression on me as I remembered something Robert A. Heinlein said.  “In the absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.”

Nowadays I started asking myself, are you and I wasting the minutes, hours and days of our lives wandering around hoping to bump into a clear direction, good idea, or lucky break while we simply stand and stare at our cribs, crudely designed to keep us fat and not so happy?  Or, are we designing our lives based on our personal, powerful passions, strongest skills and highest aspirations? 

Few would place anything higher than quality of life. Yet, we all need to come to terms with the fact that success isn’t an accident, but rather a purposeful pursuit of specific outcomes.  And, if success isn’t an accident, why do so few of us have motivating clarity about our daily activities?  It is a question to be reflected on, with an accompanying statement that can be made in two differing forms.

“Someday I’ll get there.”

Or.

“Someday, I’ll get there!”

Are you and I asking ourselves, really, what day, how and more importantly, Why?  And, will it really matter to me when I get there?  After all, I can think of nothing sadder than to see someone work a lifetime only to find that they didn’t want what they got in the end.  You see, there is more to life than staring at your crib!

It’s that season!  The season where the frost has turned the green grass brown and snow often covers everything in our lives.  And, it’s the right time for all of us to look at where we’d really like to be grazing and frolicking, from now until our lives reach their autumn.  This all means we need to deliver more than just further food on our plates.

You can I can clearly define what our lives could look like, so we don’t become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately, we become enslaved by it.

The Magic of Animated Living

“I see history as a book with many pages, and each day we fill a page with acts of hopefulness and meaning.  The new breeze blows, a page turns, the story unfolds.” – George H. W. Bush

The Magic of Animated Living

From the moment of my arrival it was like being transported into a magical kingdom.  You’ve likely been there too.  Do you remember the flower portrait at the gate, the magical image of a mouse, living in the form of vibrantly colored flowers greeting you at its very gate?  I remember it vividly, at the entrance to a real, yet carefully crafted Main Street experience.  Its combined pieces make up a fond childhood memory.  Yet, one piece, one component, was the most transforming discovery of my first trip there, a simple “animation flipbook.”

You see, I walked into one of the little shops, on that same main street, and found a small, paper animation flipbook, curiosity.  You’ve likely seen one yourself.  It is a low tech, entertaining introduction to the magic of animation and discovering it allowed me to begin to understand the principle and art of “Story Revelation.”  I say “principle and art” because to live a great, meaningful and hopeful life one must combine the two, step by step, over time.

The creation of a flipbook takes place by imagining a sequence of actions as an outcome and then breaking down its whole into definable, individual steps or drawings.  You can try this out for yourself with a pad of “sticky notes.”  Start on the last, bottom, page and simply draw a small ball in the lower right-hand corner.  Then, allow the next sheet of paper to cover the first one, so you can see the ball, you drew, through the top paper.  Next, draw a new, slightly larger, ball next to the one you can see through the lay-over sheet of paper.  Continue this process across and up sequential sheets until you have created the whole.  Once you’re finished you can simply use your thumb to flip through the pages, which will allow you to see the ball grow in size, while moving across the pages of the book.  Notice that you can only see the whole story by allowing the individual pages to work together through a process of Story Revelation?  Now, begin to interpret the story of your real life by using this transformative process.

The story of who a person is, can’t be told by looking at one minute, hour, day, month or even one or more years individually.  We are all animating our lives through the art of creating it one moment at a time.  We create a great, meaningful and hopeful life by combining the actions of our minutes, hours, days, months and years toward its whole.  And, we can decide what takes place on each page of our story right up until its end.

From the moment of our birth it’s like being transported into a magical kingdom.  You’ve likely begun to discover this too.  Do you remember the hopes and dreams you started with out of the gate, the magical image of a successful life, living in the form of vibrantly visions greeting you at its very beginning?  I’m sure you remember it vividly, all the hope and zeal you felt at a very young age. 

Then, as now, you and I are carefully crafting the life of our dreams with each new, unsure and exciting step forward.  Life’s combined pages make up our whole.  And, there are more pieces, more components, yet to be completed in animation flipbook we all call life.

What will be the result of your Story Revelation?

It's all About the Approach

Getting to know and welcoming everyone in our community

It’s all About the Approach

My stomach was moving up and down along with the small aircraft as the sound of the engines seemed to keep time in accompaniment.  I have to tell you, the view out of the portal window, across my shoulder, was causing me concern as I watched the waves of the Caribbean Sea crash into the rocks below.  One moment it appeared as if the plane would follow the waves right into the rocky cliff and the next it seemed as if we might just make it safely onto a runway starting and finishing with sea cliffs on each end.  I had my doubts right up until the two rear wheels of the small craft touched the dusty dirt of the runway.

As soon as I felt the wheels touch the dry, level ground, the churning of the sea and my stomach seemed to come to an end.  Relief rushed through my body as the plane rushed toward the end of the runway and I gratefully gazed out of the window at the palm trees waiving a warm welcome to the island’s terminal.

Terminal?  It was more of a shack with its hand painted sign, “Utila International Airport,” which brought a smile to my mouth.  As did the stop of the plane.  The door opened and all ten or twelve passengers, and chickens, soon felt the same breeze as the waiving palms.  I ducked my head, took my first step and began descending the stairs.

The terminal was just to my right, near the bottom of those stairs, and I looked a little more to the right and saw another plane.  Well, sort of an air plane.  It was a non-flyer, looking as if it had been sitting there for a long time.  It was missing parts and seemed to be under construction.

“Under construction,” I thought to myself.  “Now that’s a story I’d like to hear.

And, it was a story I did hear in many versions as I lived and studied in this tropical setting.  It was a place of learning and adventure for me as I slept just down the street from the “Bucket of Blood” bar, studied Mangrove Swamp ecology, and listened to the story of a pilot who attempted to land that infamous plane while he was intoxicated.

Almost everyone on the island came running to the airstrip to see what had happened on that exciting day.  When they arrived, they found disaster and laughter.  The plane had come to rest nose down and the pilot was rolling in the dirt, a great distance away, laughing.  He had jumped out just before the crash.  Luckily, he wasn’t hurt.

It made me think more about my own approach to this same island and how I arrived feeling different, afraid and apart from those living there.  As I listened to my friends tell me the story of the laughing pilot I looked up to see other people deplaning.

“They look kind of funny,” I said, “like they don’t belong here.”

My friends smiled, saying the new arrivals looked just like I did, when I came. And, then I remembered my own arrival again. 

My stomach was moving up and down along with the small aircraft as the sound of the engines seemed to keep time in accompaniment.  The view out of the portal window, across my shoulder, was causing me concern as I watched the waves of the Caribbean Sea crash into the rocks below.  One moment it appeared as if the plane would follow the waves right into the rocky cliff and the next it seemed as if we might just make it safely onto a runway starting and finishing with sea cliffs on each end.  I had my doubts right up until the two rear wheels of the small craft touched the dusty dirt of the runway and I was welcomed into a warm and loving community.