You never think the last time is the last time.....{6}

Through anything, through cancer. You wouldn't know about sleeping sitting up in a hospital room for two months holding her hand and not leaving because the doctors could see in your eyes that the term "visiting hours" didn't apply to you. And you wouldn't know about real loss, because that only occurs when you lose something you love more than yourself, and you've never dared to love anything that much. I look at you and I don't see an intelligent confident man, I don't see a peer, and I don't see my equal. I see a man. Nobody could possibly unterstand you, right will? Yet you presume to know so much about me because of a painting you saw. You must know everything about me. You're an orphon, right? Do you think I would presume to know the first thing about who you are because I read "Oliver Twist"? And I don't buy the argument that you don't want to be here, because I think you like all the attention you're getting. Personally, I don't care. There's nothing you can tell me that I can't read somewhere else. Unless we talk about your life. But you won't do that. Maybe you're afraid of what you might say-good will hunting. You are everything I never knew I always wanted. Look, sometimes bad things happen, and there is nothing you can do about it, so why worry? Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. Men are haunted by the vastness of eternity. And so we ask ourselves will our actions echo across centuries? Will strangers hear our names long after we are gone, and wonder who we were, how bravely we fought, how fiercely we loved? I'd rather have thirty minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special. There are some fish that can't be caught. It's not that they're bigger or faster then the other fish, they're just touched by something extra. If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there. The best way to waste your life, .........is by taking notes. The easiest way to avoid living is to just watch. Look for the details. Report. Don't participate. The unreal is more powerful than the real, because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. because it's only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. stone crumbles. wood rots. people, well, they die. but things as fragile as a though, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on. Courage is he discovery that you may not win, and trying when you know you can lose. The Invitation~~ It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.~~ It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.~~ It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!!!! I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.~~ I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without coutioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.~~ It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself, if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.~~ I want to know if you can see beauty even when it's not pretty. every day, and if you can source your own life from it's presence.~~ I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "Yes!"~~ It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.~~ It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.~~ It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside, when all else falls away.~~ I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments. You gotta fight like hell to make sure you're still alive. because you are. and the pain you feel: it's life. the confusion and the fear that's there to remind you that, somewhere out there, there's something better. and that something is worth fighting for. ...............TO BE CONTINUED