This morning, as I sat on the edge of my bed, I found myself looking into my empty hands, cupped in my lap, and I thought: “They look like good, strong hands.”
And immediately I was taken back to the movie, ‘The Neverending Story’. But before the movie, came the book by the same title, written by Michael Ende. I read it before I saw the movie. Interestingly, it was NOT in the children’s section of the library, but in the adult section. Having read it, I agree. Even though the protagonist was a child of about sixth grade or so, and it follows him on a road to self-discovery, it is not a coming-of-age book in the normal sense of the phrase.
But I digress.
The point I’m trying to make is, in spite of all my efforts, I feel all my accomplishments slipping away from me, just as the Rock Biter could not hold on to his friends against the pull of the ‘Nothing’.
I feel that all my efforts to hang on to the good that I have done, and the good that I’m trying to do, it is all being stripped away by forces outside of my control.
In Bastian Balthazar Bux’ universe, it is reborn by his renaming of the Childlike Empress, then populated by his imagination.
The book gets deeper about this, which is why this is an adult novel, not a children’s novel. But the first movie pretty much ends at that point, and doesn’t get into the cosmic verities that Mr Ende was trying to explore.
And this rounds us back to the Rock Biter.
The Rock Biter was a large, clumsy, fearful-looking person who ate rocks for food. But he had a gentle demeanor. And he made friends easily; it was usually those to whom he was trying to befriend that had the problem.
But friends he made, and he was loyal to them to the last.
In Real Life, I am looking at how to finish out my days, and get everything accomplished: making sure I leave a legacy to keep my wife and children doing well, my wife especially. I, too, am trying to be loyal to them to the last.
In the immediate economy it’s not easy. At this stage of my life I’m trying to come up with something that will put money in our pockets, to ‘give back what the locust destroyed’. It’s not easy, and the things to do are so very different from the things I would do if this was thirty years ago.
It is very hard to say, ‘Yes, I Can’, right now. But, I can’t blame the economy, though I’d like to. I can’t blame the ‘gimme, gimme’ people, though they do their best to get in the way of those of us who have a mission to be generous by creating and assisting opportunities, to give a hand up assist to those who need that steadying hand to those who need it.
I can’t blame anyone; the only one I can hold accountable is myself.
As the sign at my desk implies, it is all about attitude.
So when you find it hard to say, ‘Yes I Can’, know that I’m right there with you.
But:
Yes, We CAN!
