Browsing Category: Quick Thought

CHIMERAS

“…it is one of the fatalities of humanity to be condemned to eternal combat with phantoms.  It is difficult to seize darkness by the throat, and to hurl it to the earth.”               Chimeras are not real.  They never were.  The lion exists.  A goat is real, serpent too, but not the way Man […]

A DIFFERENCE

            Some people are different, and it doesn’t show until the fire—when you see the full of what’s within.  When others break, they smile, not of cruelty but with compassion.  They assure in doubt, strengthen in times of weakness.  When others fear, they are calm, steady, and in uncertainty around, others follow out of trust. […]

MOVED

            “If they make you better, that’s what matters.  Don’t destroy something good simply because it’s of a source you did not expect.  Don’t judge from preconceptions that inhibit growth: live, experience, respond.              People and circumstance come into our lives to bring about our change, our growth, and movement towards something better.  We cannot […]

MOMENT WHILE IT LIVES

            I love the sound of a child’s door drawn over carpet in the morning, the known cadence of little feet as he walks—still sleepy-eyed—out from his room, and the high sound of his voice when he calls to me from the hall.  He is growing fast, and if he follows the course of his […]

A FEW DROPS OF WATER

            “If it had not rained in the night between the 17th and the 18th of June, 1815, the fate of Europe would have been different.  A few drops of water, more or less, decided the downfall of Napoleon.  All that Providence required in order to make Waterloo the end of Austerlitz was a little […]

WHAT WE SEE

            I used to write with a focus for struggle, disillusionment, and loss.  Hardship and hurt were the lenses through which I wrote.  Hemingway wrote this way until he blew his brains out, alone, in a depression he designed.  Fitzgerald wrote the same, but in a softer light, until he drank himself to death.  Steinbeck […]

CHANGE THE WORLD

“The world is shaped by force. It is changed by love.” I wrote this quick thought this morning reflecting on how I’ve best been affected and influenced in my own life. In the Marines, often we try and shape conditions by the amount of force we bring to bear for a targeted effect. It usually […]

TRUCE

            There comes a point when you are hurt enough; when you recognize the pattern, method, and the ways when what is good becomes twisted to cause pain, and you decide never again.  Attempts are still made, but they no longer have effect.  You do not feel better—only cold—knowing you are no longer touched by […]