How...?

How…

‘How do I love thee?’ A more to the point way of paraphrasing that might be, ‘Oh, how I do love thee!’ Perhaps the ‘How’ is actually inexplicable in the first place…? Maybe instead I should offer a bit of the ‘Why’ as a feeble attempt to make my point…

Her sleek lines, smooth surfaces, beautiful accents, wonderful feel to the touch… She just looks, feels, and rides like a proper motorcycle to this picky connoisseur of such things! Yeah, all of her physical properties and aspects are most appealing, indeed; however… Those don’t even begin to touch upon the reasons for all of the deeper feelings I have for our girl… Nope, not by a long shot!

She represents the transformational journey during some important, critical, years in the life of this meager lump of clay, and she was the magic carpet that transported this lost soul along the turbulent passage through some of the lowest points ever before experienced by this simple passenger on spaceship Earth, and on to the triumphant rise from the ashes this once confused, bewildered ‘Phoenix’ lived through over the span of more than two decades…

From the directionless confusion of 'special' early retirement including the near vacuum of unpreparedness for a life of reason with anything approaching sufficient confidence in his personal value and belief systems, to the heartache of ‘relationship drift’ with his partner-for-life… Into the scary unknown of complete aloneness with no place, nobody… not even a direction… nothing at all in front of him to offer any clue or prospect for even the following day… let alone for the entire remainder of his life.

In time it came to this once naïve accepter of all the ‘correctness’ he’d been given as gospel by those self-appointed shapers of the thoughts and lives of others, that our girl had actually become the rock, that sole anchor for a leaky, weak vessel upon the turbulent, frightening, stormy sea of life. That single fixed point upon which he could affix his focus and begin the long quest for reasonableness… Towards the ultimate elusive goal of inner peace…

Personal growth and strong character do not evolve through ease and relaxation. Indeed, the truly important lessons of life can only be recognized and appreciated through hard work and accomplishment, the challenges and reinforcing rewards of overcoming difficult struggles, and enduring and coping with some degree of sacrifice, pain and suffering. The more the amounts of each, typically, the greater the potential for individual gain…. Just as it is, after all, that through heavy pounding and intense heat steel is tempered, so too are strong people formed… I am convinced self-worth and self-respect can only be achieved by travel along that not-appreciated-at-the-time path…

When our girl adopted this woefully ignorant being, it still remained for that student of life and seeker of peace to pull all of the fragments, shards, bits and pieces of lessons previously available together and to combine them with a whole host of new discoveries into some comprehensible database from which a glimmer of understanding could be drawn. She readily accepted that enormous challenge, all the while her new partner had no clue whatsoever of all that lay ahead!

Looking back, I can clearly see many of the errors, boo-boos, and bonehead mistakes I’ve made, and how much negativity could have been avoided by having made a different choice or gone a different route. How a great deal of pain, discomfort, foolish waste, and hurt to others might have been missed, and… But then… Things would not today be what they are for me, nor would I be the person I have become. “I could have missed the pain, but I’d have had to miss the dance…” Garth Brooks said it better than I ever could…

So, how do I love thee…? I can’t begin to say in words all that comes to mind when I ponder that thought… but I do love thee… a bunch…

DDT