Leave Your Ass in the Past - The JourneyMan's Journal

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and keep your mind on the mission

Your eyes are made to look outward 
Your feet are pointed ahead 
Your ass is all that's behind you 
So why would you live there instead?

The human body is built for forward motion. We can make it go in any direction—sideways, backwards, or at any angle—but forward is the easiest, least dangerous, and most intuitive.

Shrimp move backward. Crabs do the, well, crab walk. We are neither shrimp nor crab, which is fortunate because we are higher up the food chain and they are each delicious. Our mobility and ability to reason keeps us at the top of the species order chart and the bottom of the menu. We are designed to be fine as long as we keep moving forward as much as possible.

To move ahead with anything, you must leave something else behind. The first step is the hardest.

I am reticent to write this because I am nostalgic and melancholy. I spend too much time pining for the past.

The Halcyon days of long ago call to me the way mystic sirens sing to forlorn sailors. I am happiest wandering the hills and meadows of Yesterday. Much of my reading is historical fiction or biographies. I have ridden the West on a mule with Kit Carson and chased the giant Marlin into the deep sea off the coast of Cuba with Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea, Santiago. I have endured mutiny, famine, starvation, privation, exposure to the elements, physical pain beyond the pale, and mental torment in the pages of splendid books. I have marched with General Washington triumphantly into Philadelphia to the cheers and chants of the grateful and worn-out citizens of the new Republic, the United States of America. I have sneaked away to grand adventures on the mighty Mississippi with Huck and Finn. I have held multitudes in my hand with Spurgeon. I have painted myself mad with Van Gogh.

Those do not even account for the actual adventures of my life, as vivid to me now as when I did them.

But I am not meant to dwell among the dead. It is good to remember them, honor them, share the lessons learned from them, and be thankful for them, but I cannot live among them.

Why seek ye the living among the dead?
Luke 24:5

I have recently read the same piece of advice from multiple sources and decided to see to whom I may render some credit as I share it. The idea is to get out of your head by getting into action. I found multiple iterations of this advice among the mindfulness crowd. I like this one pretty well:

Don’t let your mind bully your body into believing it must carry the burden of its worries. — Astrid Alauda

Fear paralyzes. Anxiety disrupts progress. It takes courage to go into the unknown, to take on the giants of the shadowlands, that may or may not materialize to challenge you.

Everything you have ever wanted is sitting on the other side of fear. — George Addair

But what if conditions are unfavorable? What if the winds are contrary? What if the waves are fierce? What if the way is hard?

They will be. Go on anyway.

The best thing one can do when it is raining, is to let it rain. —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf. —Jon Kabat-Zinn

Your eyes were made to look outward. Don’t dwell too much on yourself. Be circumspect.

Your feet are pointed forward. The world will move with or without you. Walk on. You cannot get ahead by staying put.

To move ahead with anything, you must leave something else behind. The first step is the hardest.

Holly was born in Springfield, Missouri to parents barely into their twenties. She was born with Spina Bifida and a litany of other afflictions I could name but you would have to look them up. Her mother and I took her to the experts recommended by the pediatrician. We started in Springfield. We didn’t like the answers we got there. So, we took her to Kansas City, where a team of specialists examined her and came to the unanimous conclusion that surgery to remove a bony anomaly in her back was too risky and might paralyze her.

Then, they went on to prepare us for the notion that she would never walk in either case, with or without surgery. They were rational men, and afraid to take the chance, to be the “reason” she didn’t walk. They preferred she reach that conclusion on her own.

So, we took her home to Texas. Pediatric Neurosurgeon Dr. Joy Arpin said without surgery there was no question she would be a paraplegic. As she grew, the bone would sever the nerves because her spinal cord was tethered. Her spinal cord would stretch over that spur and be shredded. She recommended surgery to remove the spur and untether the cord. She gave no guarantee that Holly would one day walk, but it gave her a fighting chance.

We took that chance.

The first step was the hardest.

Years later, Holly took her first step, and then another, and another. She needed a tiny walker at first and then graduated to forearm crutches. Braces were molded for her feet. But she kept taking those steps. She walked. Then she graduated high school. She attended Dallas Baptist University and earned her bachelor’s degree. She moved on to the University of Texas at Arlington and earned a master’s degree. She became a vital member of the top kidney transplant team in Texas and a beacon of hope and inspiration to her clients. She was featured on an episode of Joni and Friends and inspired untold thousands. She gave inspirational speeches and wrote about her journey. She married. With her husband, she is building an incredible business and life.