If it is inevitable, embrace it.

Back in Indianapolis this weekend. Sonia's dad turning that corner that we all will hit. Sometimes it happens in our 70's, sometimes in our 80's, if we are lucky enough to live that long. We have all seen it. No matter the neglect or the care, we can't do much to out pace that genetic clock and when that happens the decline sets on rapidly.

If it is inevitable, embrace it.

We are going to "Graduate of the Hearts" tonight at the University of Indianapolis, Sonia and me. Sonia should have gone to DePauw University with her intellect and incredible self discipline, persistence and focus. I probably should have gone to prison. But instead, we met somewhere in between at Indiana Central University.  Fortunately, by now, I have learned that destiny is largely inescapable and there isn't much sense in trying to control the outcomes and swim against the currents carrying us to where we are supposed to be. I suspect Sonia and I were supposed to meet there and despite too many actions without thinking on my part and poor decisions when I did make conscious choices, our lives were supposed to intersect and we were supposed to grow and transcend together.

If it is inevitable, embrace it.

I was reading one of Tom Russell's back stories for a new song "When the Legends Die." Tom, the last living Beat and incredible song writer, writes about a Christmas spent alone, no calls from the children, and a half drank bottle of wine. Mine came ten years ago. My birthday shortly before 9/11. Alone in my cabin a more than self imposed exile. The kids were too busy to see their old dad. Sonia was of course gone. One of the most gut wrenching days of my life. Just learning how not to anesthetize emotions, I made it through the day sober some how. Not by will, but by surrendering.

Just a year earlier, I had a co-birthday party with John Baryla a good friend and colleague born one day apart. Just a couple of hundred of our close  friends - renting out a Alcock's Tavern, a live one man band, and a chartered bus to a White Sox game. The night culminating in a case of mistaken identity and gun play. The definition of living large. I always said at the time live life at the extremes not the middle.

I am not sure what Tom took away from his holiday solitude, but truly alone for one of the first times, in the north woods, I celebrated one of the most important and most memorable birthday's in my life. What some would call a first birthday.

If it is inevitable, embrace it.

Back now from the "Graduates of the Heart" dinner after a busy day visiting a new friend from my high school that I hadn't seen in at least 34 years and her beau, after then spending a pleasant two hours talking with one of our professors who was important in both our lives, especially Sonia's, and visiting our alma mater, I am left thinking how fortunate I am that despite not thinking but reacting and then after learning to think, taking twenty years to learn how to surpass my emotions, that I was truly blessed to grow up in East Gary, Indiana and to seek out Indiana Central and to meet Sonia. Had it not been for the kindness of many strangers and a great deal of providence, my fate could have been entirely different. Sure it is true I took the action, and life does reward action, but the blessings flowed forth bountifully.

Now with the race largely run, I think I have moved the bar forward enough for one life time, it is now time to return those oh so many wonderful and timely gifts and kindnesses I have received in this life.

If it is inevitable, embrace it.

Jim N