The Quiet, Peaceful Places

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Live your life in the chaos of the city. Find solace in the quiet, peaceful places.

There where nature is active, peace can be found in the simpler movements. A pool of water attracts life of all kinds: the small and quick, the verdant, or the large and lumbering.

Lose your life in the chaos of the city. Find it again in the quiet, peaceful places.

In the burbling sounds of a slow stream, find the meditation of the soul. The mind follows, addresses itself in complimentary phrases. Heart becomes whole.

Get to the place that is more like you than the you you left behind. Find solace, find yourself.

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Live life in the city of chaos. You didn’t even know you were lost.

Get out. Take a hike. How long is your patience? Watch the growth of a tree. Ask yourself, “How long will I live? How long will this tree live? Why do trees live so much longer than me? Is it because they take their time?” Trees don’t rush anything.

Live in the chaos, but don’t be the chaos. Be the better you. Be in the scene but not of the scene. Enjoy the peace you know is out there. Take it with you. Take pictures. Collect memories.

Take easy breaths of sweet nature. Nothing cleaner than the smell of the natural places. It’s the smell of living things. It smells green. The air is pleasant and it truly feels better than the mechanical air of the city. Clean air goes in the lungs in great gulps, like water quenches thirst, like food cures hunger.

Expel the chaos. Live in a camera, live in nature.

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Live again. Be born again in the quiet, peaceful places.

Attention

It’s a wonder any blogs ever get new posts. I’m amazed at all those who continue to do their thing. Because really, how many more things are there to do besides this? Half a million? Twenty thousand? Forty bazillion?

Even one thousand different activities can be too many. How do we manage to stay safe from seagulls who want to peck out our eyes? How do we choose to occupy our time? How do you choose between one good thing and another equally good thing? And how many times do the not so good things take over your attention?

Speaking for myself, I get carried away by the pleasant distractions often enough. There are easier paths: watch a movie, play a video game, scroll through digital media. None of those are productive at all. They are the actions of a consumer. I end up consuming something someone else created.

That sort of action makes me feel less than human. Is it sane to think one’s humanity is defined by how much one creates? It sounded a little bit insane to me just then. But then again, I know I’m not the only workaholic out there. I know people who are always repairing cars or fixing houses or making new things out of wood and metal.

Despite the world being filled with distractions, those who work really hard will always have the ability to focus on their current project and ignore the sparkly sideshows.

Meanwhile, the people who are fascinated by their cell phones will have birds peck their eyes out—because they weren’t paying attention to the world around them.

Fragile

To be honest, it wasn’t a familiar trail I was riding.

I was exploring new trails when I snagged my brake tubing on a branch. It didn’t look like it was damaged. It looked like it only came out of its retainer. So I kept riding, testing the brakes occasionally to see if any real damage happened. Sure enough, I soon felt the soft feeling hydraulic brakes get when air gets introduced into the system. Soon after that—nothing—no front brakes at all.

Without being on my knees, I said a quick heartfelt prayer and thanked God it was the front brakes; losing the back brakes can mean the end of riding, or the end of the rider, if he doesn’t know he’s lost his brakes. And the idea of walking my bike is heinous to my mind. I wasn’t going to do it.

Have you ever seen kids walking with a skateboard in their hand? Did you then wonder why they don’t just ride it? That’s how I react to the scene.

“Why don’t you just ride it?!”

And that’s what I would tell myself, even though riding without brakes is dangerous. Then I’d do it and think something equally dangerous like, “I’ll just drag my foot on the ground to slow down.”

Yeah, like that would work. Might as well pretend I was going to whip the loose brake tubing around a nearby tree and stop myself that way. And it would work—in my daydreams.

Back in reality, I know I have some work ahead of me. I’m going to have to bleed brakes (again), cut the tubing back to remove any and all holes, and refill (again).

Man, hobbies can be a lot of work, can’t they? But then, the work is part of the allure.

New Pets

So you think you want a new pet?

One of the greatest stories to come from pandemic life is that the animal shelters are perfectly empty. The way they should be.

Lots of people felt the time was right to adopt a pet.

Pets are great at battling loneliness. If you’re secluded, separated from society in any way, a pet can be a wonderful force for good in your life. They’ll bring a smile to your face. They’ll keep you occupied and entertained.

One piece of advice to give is: before adopting, be ready.

Get a water dish and a food dish. Prepare a shelter. If you adopt a cat, get a litter box and some litter. If you adopt a dog, a sheep, or a horse, get a shovel.

Do you need a leash for your pet of choice? Do you need a collar?

It may be wise to buy some food for your pet beforehand, or maybe not. If you might change your mind on which pet to adopt, maybe you should wait until you come back from the animal shelter. Knowing yourself is always a good thing. If you know yourself well enough, you can plan financially. You can be financially ready to supply food and shelter to your new pet.

The only part no one can teach anyone else is how to truly care for a pet. We can’t really teach each other the love. We can explain ways to love.

I can tell you, “Scratch your puppy behind his ears and he’ll know you love him.”

I can’t tell you, or anyone else, how to develop the love in your own heart. Maybe it will just come to you as you care for your pet, or maybe you already had the love before you decided to adopt a pet. All I can tell you is your pet will need it. Pets absolutely need someone to love them.

The last bits of advice I would have for anyone thinking about adopting a pet concern those of you with children. If you have children, be prepared to teach them how to care for the animal. It’s a great teaching tool when you let children participate in caring for a new pet. They can learn the value of work and responsibility. And someday they may teach children of their own how to care for a pet.

Make Up Your Own Rules

Yes, I spawned a maniac.

It all started with board games.

You and your family may be like many families during a quarantine, and if so, you may have been playing some board games. I’ve played my share during the last few months.

As for the maniac, I blame chess. It all started when I taught my son how to play chess. I taught him the rules…but loosely. I would let him move the pieces any way he wanted so he would get the idea of capturing. Then I taught him a rule here, a rule there. How pawns capture on the diagonal, how bishops do the same, and how rooks command rows and columns. Each time we played, I taught him a little more. I would let him win just to teach him the rules. Eventually we got to the most difficult piece to move, the knight.

Whether you call it a flower pattern, a sun pattern, a series of L-shapes, a queen killer, the knight moves can be the most difficult to see in your mind. He started to understand it until he could finally win legitimately. Now I have a challenge when we play, he’s so good.

Regardless of whether I won or lost, I told him it was fun.

We used to take apart old board games, mix them up, change them with markers and make our own. Making our own rules was a lot of fun. We still love to play the Monopoly game we altered so the Chance cards have added zeros. (Instead of 100 dollars, you pay 1000.) It adds some surprise to the game.

One of my favorite games when I was younger, was Risk.

When I tried to teach my son how to play Risk, he wanted to make up his own rules. I honestly had no idea how to implement his rules into the game. Risk is a lot more complicated than chess. There are rules on how to gain armies, when to place armies, how to attack, how to defend, when to get cards and what to do with them when you get them, plus 17 other rules with their own timing.

We struggled for a while, him trying to make up newer, better rules, me trying to make them fit in smoothly with the rest of the rules. We would still play Risk, but it hardly ever ended with a clear winner. It usually ended with us upset at each other (sort of how real-life international politics end up, but that’s a subject for another time).

Recently, we pulled the box out of the closet and started a war, a board game war, by reading the rule book. Yep, we played by the rules, and I didn’t let him win; he won with some skilled chess-like strategy.

And at the end, he said, “Hey, that’s a fun game.”