A Letter to Myself

Dear John,

The time is now fast approaching. While you have spent the year trying to slow time itself, the end of your 40th year has been pressing forward like a runaway train across the frozen tundra. It will arrive in the station in two months whether you are there to greet it or not.

The train will not leave the station again. It will sit by the dark foggy platform and slowly purge the steam of all that has pressured inside its boiler as it has journeyed these past four decades. That route will be done. A new train will leave the station on a much different track. A train re engineered from the lessons of the old. The faults, mistakes, and shortcomings have been removed by learning from what broke down on the old one. While the body of the old train is scarred and marked by the happenings of the past, the new train has a shine of new promise. A shine as bright as a clear sunrise on fresh mountain snow. And a new journey will begin.

You have learned your lessons, and you will forge a new path. No matter how you've longed for the halcyon days of your youth, you know they are gone. You can't wade waist deep in the mustard fields full of wonder on a breezy summer day. You know the answers now, the breeze whispered them to you all those years ago. You will learn that about aging, the impatience of your youth is gone, but you must open your eyes again. You have allowed your eyes to narrow and harden from all you have seen, you can be wide eyed again, by appreciating what is around you instead of trying to learn a lesson from it. The world is full of wonder, and the sooner you realize that, the quicker the breeze will whisper to you once again.

You have long been an island of a person. There isn't a single person that has known you your entire life. You don't know when it was, maybe it was something that the wind told you many years ago, but you have closed yourself off to others. You have held your cards so close to your chest it has become some type of armour, and that too must change. You must learn to trust. Yes, people can be mean, people can have their agendas, but they aren't all out to get you. You have turned your back on as many people that were trying to help you as were trying to hurt you. You have never cared for money or possessions, the only thing they can steal is your heart, a heart that has been broken for so long. Let them in, give them a chance. Beyond no doubt you have nothing to lose.

You have drowned your beliefs for so many people, moving through life like a chameleon. You had to move often as a boy, and always had to find new friends at what seemed like the wrong time. Life can be cruel that way. But those days are also gone. You have been discarded so many times, and it wasn't the fact of the matter that ever bothered you, but rather the casual nature of your removal from an others life. You will never forget family saying goodbye to you, not face to face but through the speaker of a door security intercom. So abrupt, so inner shattering. So many years walking your path wondering why, only to find the answer in a hushed whisper from a death bed. The answer being so simple, so impossibly simple, it left you walking around in a daze for a week. You know who you are know, stay true to yourself. Don't go changing your colours for anyone.

There was a time many years ago, you were in a meadow just below the Great Divide in the Rockies. It was a crisp autumn morning, and the sky seemed to reach forever. There was a mountain in the distance, awash in the green of mountain pines. Almost directly in the middle of up and down and left and right, there was a small speck of yellow and orange. It was a few miles away, but your curiosity got the best of you and you started hiking off in that direction. The meadow was alive that day. A flock of Bighorn drank from the waters, eagles soared overhead, and many deer and elk crossed your path as you made for the treeline. It wasn't easy once you moved into the pines, the undergrowth was such that you knew no one had been through here in some time if ever. You had to essentially keep a straight line or you would never find the pot of gold that you sought. You finally came to a small clearing, a clearing that had forced the pines to stand at bay to the mighty branches of an oak tree. You knew that oak trees did not belong in the Rockies, but here it was. At least 80 years old judging by its size. It was fully ablaze in its autumn glory, and it stood there alone. It was the true individual, and it was beautiful. You are like that tree now. Even though you have weathered the storms, you have also bathed in the sun. You have reached your arms to the sky, and you have found your spot in this world. Let them come see you now. You are strong and will not be broken. Continue to grow, reach forever like the sky's of that day.

The train leaves in two months, get on board and enjoy the ride. You never know what is just around the next corner.

Best Wishes,

Johnny