I’ve shown myself, the past couple of days, how much I am influenced by the music I listen to while driving to the office in the morning. Seems every day I hear a song, and that gets me to thinking. It was Jackson Brown again (I know, time to change my Pandora station), this time the song was Running on empty. Here are the lyrics:
Gotta do what you can just to keep your love alive
Trying not to confuse it with what you do to survive
There it is, what you do to survive squarely pitted against keeping your love alive. You know, I pray with the kids, every night, that we might “keep love in our hearts.” I do. I know it is important, for to lose love, what replaces it, if anything? What fills the place where love once dwelt? Hate? Anger? Envy? Spite? Booze? Smokes? High fructose corn syrup?
Kids, let’s all try hard today to choose love and keep the tank at least half-full.
portland papa 
The Doctor is in my friend. My prescription: touch base with why you started down the path you are on. What governed your choices in life that have led you to today? Happiness can’t be fabricated through material possessions or dulled senses.
When I look back at the shit that I have gone through in my life; the years of violent physical and mental abuse, the years of poverty and powdered milk products, the layaway Christmas’ of my youth – I realize that everything that I have done has lead to today. Every choice, no matter how seemingly insignificant – the choices that led me to find you as a friend, the choices that led me to my beautiful wife and my career, the choices that have sent me like a pinball from coast to coast – all these small factors make me who I am.
I have no faith, no religion, no sense of a higher power guiding me to my destination. I remember a time as an undergrad when bill collectors were harassing me, I struggled to make minimum wage and to keep a roof over my head. At the time I was miserable, distraught and depressed. I told my girlfriend that I was miserable, that I hated my life. She verbally attacked me, telling me that she was part of my life and if I hated my life, I hated our life. At the time she was just an irrational bitch in my mind, someone who figured that everything centered around her existence. Now, I can look back and see that she was right.
Once I decided to open myself up, to bring my lovely wife and children into my protected circle, once I developed lasting friendships with people whom I would never deny – that was when my life no longer was my own. My existence, my happiness, my daily life is the product of all of the people around me. Not just those who are tucked in under my roof when the lights are out and the doors are locked, but also the friends who are hundreds or thousands of miles away, the co-workers who I see everyday, my extended family scattered from coast to coast.
If I was just me, I would scream! I am not just me. I am the product of my choices, the memories of my youth, the smile of my children, the potential of my future.
I love you man!