In the immortal words of Mr. Ferris Bueller: "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it."

OK, so it's just a glorified version of "stop and smell the roses" or "carpe diem" or "ramalamadingdong" (I can only assume that's what that means), and usually pithy little aphorisms like this tend to make you say, "huh...that's good," and then move on with things, taking your big cues from what your mom taught you about being polite to people and what that bully and the pavement beneath your cheek taught you about when it's OK to fight back.'' And this one is no different...it isn't until long after I've ceased to stop and look around that I realize I don't recall one valuable, long-lasting thing that I've done in months.

It's not that I'm not doing valuable and long-lasting things...the nature of my job is, at very best, that I am doing very significant things for people who I will never meet or talk with about what that ridiculous 3-minute video did for their lives. But I think that's part of the problem...I don't realize a whole lot of what I'm doing. I just sort of do it, and I continue to do it, and then the pressure comes and I do it twice as hard for half as long, and I get tired and I go to sleep. My stomach hurts, then it clears up, I drink a glass of whiskey or a glass of milk and feel my shoulders relax a bit and then I go to sleep. I go to a movie or I go to a bar or I go to my spot on the couch for a couple of hours and I breathe deeply and I fall asleep. It's like autopilot, but requires a lot more work and doesn't come with the pre-heated airplane Chicken Kiev.

I think the trick to Carpe Diem is applying it in measured doses. If I truly lived to "seize the day" every day, I would probably never refresh my Excel spreadsheets with recent log entries, or take out the garbage, or file my tax return. In fact, bathroom visits would seem like a tremendous waste of time. But to be able to seize, let's say, every other day, or every third day, or even just the one day a week...to make it your own, to choose its product and process, and to go to sleep from exhaustion instead of nervous boredom...those are the things that seem to stick. It wasn't until I started lifting weights again that I began to relish the Monday and Thursday mornings that I don't have to go to the weightroom. It wasn't until I started working long hours at the church that I really began to value the four hours at the end of each work day that I am at home, with Stacy on the couch next to me, reading and watching TV and talking and yawning contentedly a lot. I think I'll probably love the day that all the cicada corpses have been washed away by a strong summer's rain, but only because I had spent the last six weeks batting cicadas and scraping them off my windshield. I'm working late tonight...and I think the drive home with the window down and whatever the jocks on 89.7 choose to play will feel good...as long as I choose to feel it.

...Yeah, I think you do have to stop and look around every once in a while. Life seems to present itself most powerfully to me in the little pleasures...and, with the exception of microbiology, most of my college disciplines taught me that, when you take the time to REALLY examine creation of any kind, you'll see the beauty and feel the pleasure it its art.

Coffee feels like that to me.

Peace,
Justin