I have always figured that if you study the things a person devotes themselves to you will know them on a deeper level.
I have been fascinated since childhood with the various reasons an individual would choose a certain occupation.
Two of my passions that have filled my inner world since I was very young have been art and writing.
A very serious 10-year old Suzanna decided that she would never be able to support herself with either of these things and so threw herself into various other practices to secure her future endeavors.
Big mistake, sister, big mistake.
Thirty-five years later you have come full circle.
Thirty- five years later you wish you were as smart as you were at age 9.
Thirty-five years later your heart is younger than at age 10.
As I was researching the illustrious Tatman family of Connersville, Indiana the other day I stumbled across a photo in Harry Smith's Connersville, A Pictorial History. (As soon as I get permission I will post that photograph here.)
The photo was a 1937 lineup of the twenty-nine employees of the News Examiner commemorating its fiftieth anniversary as a daily paper. Twenty-one of those were male, and eight were female. For those of you not in the know - the Tatman family was long associated with, no WAS, the News Examiner.
1937.
Things were still pretty rough all over in 1937.
FDR's New Deal Programs were, at last, budging the morale across the nation.
Work was being provided, skills were being taught, much needed cash was earned, and a sense of pride at earning, instead of being handed supplies, food and cash.
Here again I draw on history to help me cope with the present.
Here again I say "What did my grandparents do?"
What did the nation do?
The previous way of life was gone.
So a new way of life had to be created.
It is time for that again folks.
Instead of saying "It's too hard."
It's time to just find a way while the naysayers are naysaying.
It's time to just get up off the dirt we were kicked into and just do the work of getting on with it.
Many times an ending is overlooked as the beautiful opportunity for a whole new world.
Adventuring into whole new worlds is not for the faint of heart, but it is essential to survival.
Only the adventurers will survive.
Adventurers never need to leave town though.
The most wonderful adventure of all is staying and making what is old and shredded all new again.
I looked at that 1937 photograph of those twenty-nine people and wondered what each one's story would be if I could ask them.
Obviously each one got up and went about the business of business.
This modern American society wants to glamorize the risk takers and drama makers.
Some of the most riveting stories that have been unfolded for me were those of the ordinary man or woman just getting up and living life past the tragedy that every second of life hands us.
Some of the biggest superheroes I have ever met were just average people I worked along side of, or sat next to riding the bus day after day, or the clerk that was always at that shop where I could run in and get what I needed.
The most Shakespearean of dramas play out on the streets of every day American life and we walk past them not noticing every second of everyday.
I have decided to be my own superhero and go back to that 9-year old little girl's world of the possibilities of living a life immersed in art and writing.
We all know what thoughts the other possibilities hold so why entertain them if they do not produce the desired results?
This last little bit I leave you with just to prove that even bad things can make us who we are and we can be ok with them when we finally sit back and realize we would not change a single thing:
- Suzanna
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