Points Of Light, never give up, never give out, and never ever give in!
Evansville Indiana is the small town I live in. Yes, I know there's a big old world out there beyond these cornfields, but here, in my town, the gravity is light and the atmosphere is easy and breezy. But even in this cornfield town, I carried a heavy load while I searched my soul, looking for everything that made me a bad person - uninteresting and not worth a hang from anyone or anybody. Funny thing is, everywhere I looked, everything I wanted to find seemed to be patiently waiting for me. Who knew buried not so deep below the surface of this man named Tod, said rightly, inside of me, would lie so heavy a treasure of ugliness. Everything I found added to my load as day-to-day its weight seemed to become exponentially heavier.
There would be times when I would rummage through my load, first picking up one thing then another, taking time to study each piece to discover everything that made it horrible, ugly, and useless. I studied hard, being meticulous so as not to miss the minutest details. Those details always taught me the same thing - no one wants to come down this road toward me, they'd not want to come down this road with me, never ever would they want to stay with me while I'm on this road. More than that, the details taught me that I had nothing I myself preferred, nothing I myself wanted, nothing I myself needed; in short I found I didn't like me or my load - period!
I call Evansville a cornfield but we've more than corn here. There's the most wonderful woman in the world living in this very town, she gives away encouragement and works at a tiny retail store. There's a beautiful young woman with a huge heart full of love and compassion who prefers to show her veneer of toughness managing a restaurant. There's a big, old, grizzly kind of man, owner of a chain of restaurants, who assures his employees are paid well; and this big, old, grizzly man has this heart that makes him open to help his employees when they're in need. There're pastors in my town who's heart is to feed the poor and downtrodden - even during worldwide pandemics. In Evansville, this is but a minuscule recitation of the beautiful people I've been given the privilege of rubbing elbows with. I feel I should be doing a much better job of explaining all the light, color and beauty so many people who are busy living their lives in my town exude, I mean, I'm the painter of the color of light in word paintings, geeze.
But for everything I've just said, the same beautiful light is shining forth from all kinds of people from all over the big beautiful world. This world has afforded me the opportunity to visit a few of its wonderful ports of destination where of necessity, I breathed, moved, and lived a life. But no matter where I called home, rather it was Tampa Florida, Mt. Home Idaho, Ramstein Germany, Incirlik Turkey, or here in Evansville Indiana, the road I traveled was forever hard because of the heaviness of this load I carried - because I tenaciously studied this load - because concerning this load, like a tiger acts whos found his back again a wall, I would always guard this load with a fierce and desperate determination.
But my journey has finally changed, and while the load stayed, I don't look at it so much anymore. I started doing some brand new soul searching. I've learned my soul was so very lonely and feeling the outcast as he felt isolated, cold and shivering. My soul found zero comforts in his aloneness. Searching, I noticed my soul found the cold unbearable. Continuing this search, I discovered my soul didn't remember a time he didn't shiver alone.
Then, I realized the hardest thing I ever had to learn - of my soul, I learned he never looked up so he never looked into the eyes of another person's soul to feel the warmth of their light and that never allowed him a chance to find the happiness contained in all the beauty they were freely offering. But this wasn't the hard thing, the hard thing I had to learn was the reason my soul never looked up and into the eyes of another person soul was because I'd always been too busy guarding my heavy load so I could meticulously study it to find all the bad, hideous, and ugly things my load contained. That exercise commanded all my attention and left no time for my soul to look up and then into anyone's eyes. I'd treated my soul badly for sure, of a certainty I caused my soul to severely suffer. I made dead sure he was forever alone, isolated, and shivering in the cold. So you see, those hideous beasts I've been telling you about with their razor sharp teeth that were always growling at me while they nipped at my flesh, I had to learn they were always me. That Points Of Light, is the hardest thing I ever had to learn.
For all my life I'd been waiting to have the light come shining through. Somehow, despite everything I've been telling all of you, despite everything I may have implied and from which you may have inferred, I always held on to a belief that that light would come shining through; and while I'll never ever meet her, she showed up. She made everything worthwhile, and even though I'll turn 60 in twenty-one days, I finally get to say my life has been changed for the good. My story may tell you my life has forever marched to the beat of a different drum, you need to understand my life will continue into forever marching to that drummers beat. That's not important though. What's important is that my soul is warming up and for the first time ever, my soul is not feeling so isolated.
As Always, Much Love and Peace Tod w/ only one d
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