How Many Chances Do We Get?

Blessings or Curses?

This painting was done in 1994. Sixteen years seems like a long time ago.

A much younger man than I am now did this painting. And that younger man was troubled and pressured by circumstance to weigh the truths of life. Feeling the need to resolve unanswerables.

Some in my life had made choices of faith that I couldn't. It put a space between us.

We remain friends thanks to their generosity and I never did make a choice. Couldn't. Can't.

After all this time we still come back to those points of discussion. There is less heat and fire to the discussions now and we agree to disagree. We all know where we stand. What we do now is exchange honesty and sincerity.

After all this time of examining what I do and don't believe about the whole shebang of the universe, I come down to a few simple guideposts, none of which can be traced to any particular doctrine.

Those points involve individuals or groups who are in difficulty like that guy up there is.

The one in "Last Match".

He's lost in the woods, in the dark, and down to his last match.

My guiding points are to try to avoid getting lost in the woods. Avoid getting down to that last match. And I try not to be so alone that these things happen in the first place.

I'm a loner by nature, but I'm not foolish. Good friends will get you through this life.

I've often wanted to drift from those friends over the sixteen years of discussion and argument, but we're still together, most of us. The irony is that I'm still here discussing and arguing with them while some of their group have strayed off, alone, into the woods.

But above the belief in friendship I try to adhere to, is the desire to pay that friendship forward. I don't do that well. I'm a pretty clumsy friend. But I try.

The people in Haiti have just gotten shoved into the deep woods. They long ago ran out of matches. There are a lot of friendly people trying to get to them and we know they won't find all the lost folks. I'm overworking this metaphor, but bear with me.

We all know the parables. We were all taught to be good do-bees, that a friend in need is a friend indeed.

And it gets real old, this helping others. It's a slog. Specially when the same people seem to need help again and again. But, honestly, in spite of all the cynicism, what else is there to do?

Change the channel to American Idol?

All this week an old song by the '60s rock group Rare Bird has been running through my head.

The song's title is "Sympathy" and the punchline is "And sympathy is what we need, my friend, because there's not enough love to go around."

We can scream and yell about whose fault it is that help is needed. Or we can help.

Someone else's curse can be a blessing of sorts. It shows us to be better off than that person. And it gives us a chance to reach out beyond our safety zones.

And in a lifetime we get plenty of chances to be both blessed and cursed.