2009 - MY YEAR TO SHINE

Do your own thing. This weekend I was at a piano performance that included my son and three of his four children. The performance was at the Lied Center in Lawrence, Kansas – Home of The University of Kansas. I had a little time before my grandson’s basketball game, so I went into the main street of town to the old-fashioned hardware store where several of my children and nephews had worked when they were students at K.U. As I walked that street, it struck me how almost everyone seemed to be just doing his or her own thing. Kids wearing every manner of dress and body embellishment you could imagine. Green hair; nose rings, tattoos, house slippers, dreadlocks, shaved heads, combat boots, and layers of clothes! Anything you could imagine, kids had in or on their bodies. They were laughing, kissing, playing the drums, doing mime, drinking tea, reading on the curb, eating ice cream. I thought to myself how refreshing it would be to be totally unconcerned about what anyone else thought about you for a few days. To survive in the real-make-a-living-provide-for-yourself-and-your-family-world, you have to temper some of your eccentric tendencies. But think about this: If you could go where no one knows you or would ever see you again, how would you dress? How would you behave? Would you sit in the sun reading poetry drinking white tea? Would you be writing in your green journal having cheese and bread and wine? Would you have the courage to play your violin on the street corner? Would you lead a parade of grandkids down the street with balloons and kazoos? Let’s think today of who we really are and who we want to be and how much we can get away with and still have a job next week. I’m not talking about anything dangerous or stupid. Let’s just think a little about who we were in college or in the past and see if any of that rebellious streak is still in us. Do something without wondering … “What would my kids think or what would my parents think or what would my book club think?” Just go someplace like Lawrence Kansas and find a place in the sun to sit with a big mug of delicious coffee and just be happy and unconcerned about what anyone else thinks about how you look or how you’re dressed or what you’re doing. Pick a day and go to a place and just do your own thing and see what happens!