Yes, I know the tone of the various posts seem to be as mercurial as the weather. My mood and my thoughts do seem to rise and fall with the weather, the sun, the rain, the cold, the warmth and today is just another example.

I took the “outrageous” leap and, instead of my usual protein shake breakfast, made a [turkey]bacon, egg and cheese sandwich this morning to go with my morning coffee. Keep in mind that since my sleeve surgery 7/2015, I have been very rigid in starting the day with the shake. It keeps me satisfied till lunch, jump starts my day without the need for any thought or prep or clean up, I’d say it works out to about 340 mornings a year where that’s the case…the other 25 or so, I do go “off book” and do something “rash” like have a real breakfast…and it feels really good…

Life, as it says in the title, has been good to me when I give thought to everything. A career, that while not financially uplifting, continues to be nothing but a joy. Overall health (even over the years where things were not so solid, I’ve always been blessed with the ability to muddle through without much interruption and to recover from various maladies easily). When life has taken me, as it takes us all, to the bottom of the roller coaster ride, life has also then taken the inevitable long slow climb back to the top. Love came and went, but then came back stronger than ever.

While the travel we hoped to engage in has been temporarily squashed, I believe the coaster will also find that long slow climb back up again. Even now, where we very much look at being unable to make the move we’d like to Hilton Head in a year or so due to the fact that moving the current home is neigh impossible, I’m hoping that too is just the coaster moving down to the bottom (though that seems to happen much more quickly) and when it reaches the bottom we will be able to put our arms in the air, give a loud shout and try to turn the next chapter.

Just the fact that we are able to talk about it, to plan realistically (?) means that life continues to be good to me.

Back in the late ’60’s when I was learning to surf, I was very, very frustrated at being unable to stand up for more than 1/2 second. I was ready to quit, my instructor shrugged and said “go ahead if that’s what you want” I, very angrily said:  “hey, if you would teach me how to stand I could do it”, his reply…pretty profound “apparently you have not fallen down enough to figure out what YOU are doing wrong so you can correct it and stand up, I’m not the one on the board, YOU are, I can tell you what to do, I can show you what to do, I can even explain why certain things work and others don’t, and I’ve done all of that, but until you take those pieces and put them together in a way that works for You, you are going to continue to plotz, I can’t stand on the board for you (and wouldn’t even if I could so quit if that’s what you want”. 

Long story short, I didn’t, eventually I figured out how to push up, balance my weight and even discovered what happened when I shifted the wrong way. His lesson, not about surfing, but about dealing with difficulty, resonates to this very day and really embodies much of the philosophy I continue to use in the classroom…

Yup, once in a while, along the way, life’s been good to me.