Life at 3 miles an Hour

Can you remember the first time that you heard, probably from your mother, that you should be old enough to know better? It’s probably one of the earliest known parental conversations. Adam and Eve obviously missed it. Maybe it’s due to the fact that they missed their entire childhood. So when sin entered and the first consequence was children, more specifically siblings, for parents to deal with, those conversations began. What it really means is that you should be capable of determining right from wrong based on an advanced maturity level. Defining that maturity level is the elusive part. We tend to place the “old enough” parameters around something that really may have little to do with age. I know people my age who ought to be old enough, but they’re obviously not. On the other hand there are 20 years olds who I see as some of the oldest people on the planet. It’s not age, it is the ability to grasp the concept right from wrong. And that one comes to people at different

Last night my wife and I, along with a gazillion other watchers, got to experience the first half of the season finale of “Grey’s Anatomy”. That’s what their doing now, splitting the finale up into two episodes. The cynical side of me says it’s for revenue, but the practical side of me sees it as a more powerful magnetic attraction into the lives of the characters in the show. Last night was the lead in or the hook into the main event. It’s a good plan I think. The characters in this community that we’ve all come to be concerned with, at least those of us delusional enough to think that they’re real, are all in some kind of crisis or dilemma mode leading into tonight. No one wants to be left hanging. We all want to know how their lives unfold before they become seasonal reruns. They have become a magnetic community. The two part thing is a great idea, however, it now creates an even greater dilemma for my wife and I. It’s on at the same time as our other community of choice,

I was wondering this morning, on my drive to the beach, what might my life have looked like if I had made different choices at various points. Might we have parallel lives running alongside ours, lives that could have been, maybe even should have been had we made different choices? I wonder what my parallel self might look like. Do you ever wonder where you might live now had you chose differently then? If you’re female, what might your life be if you hadn’t said yes, or if you had? Each choice, laid out before us every day that we crawl out of bed in the morning, can lead one direction or another. Even the choice not to get out of bed could have a profound impact on our destination. I wondered this as I drove along the water with the sun rising over a skyline that only six years ago I would never have recognized. Now it’s home. What might my life have looked like if I had said no to this church and yes to another? I think that the choices are like echoes throughout eternity.

So, I woke up late today. And I wouldn’t really call it waking up either. It was more like an instantaneous burst of eyes flashing open and brain registering “dang, I overslept”. Then the questions…what happened to the alarm, what was I supposed to be doing, what day is this, whose house am I in? All of those thoughts were fighting for space along my neurons and threatening to shut my mind down completely. Because then, being the schedule freak that I am, I begin the task of damage control. What tasks must be done before I can get out of here? I get my daughter up, and go figure, she has overslept as well. I’m getting her lunch and counting backwards from my first morning appointment, trying to recalculate my Starbucks time. Starbucks time will recalibrate my day….if I can just get there. Now I’m in the car and my favorite morning show is on, but they’re live from Disneyworld. When did they go to Disneyworld? How did I miss that they were going to be at Disney? I listen ev