Inspiration

Where do we get inspiration from?

Where do we get inspiration from? Why do we get inspired and what is the purpose? In today’s society, it seems we, especially the younger generations, find heroes on stages or ball fields. Not a lot has changed since the sixties and seventies. No one compared to Ray Nitschke or Dick Butkus. Joe Namath with his ‘controversial’ white cleats. He was labeled a Primadonna until he delivered on the Super Bowl promise. Then you have Bands like Black Sabbath, The Eagles, Bachman-Turner taking the stage. I would also say Michael Jackson and his Thriller album, but that was early 1982.

We all want to be ‘seen’ unless it’s on photo radar. When I was teaching high school, one of the writing assignments I gave my sophomores was pick someone who inspired you, outside your family, and tell me why. It was a constructive essay project with topic paragraphs, sentences, that kind of thing. It gave them something to write about in a format. I took the family away because after a couple of years, that was the default answer, and it was quick and easy. Plus, unfortunately, a lot of them had to make up stuff about their family member they were writing about, especially if they talked about their dads. You could tell their home life was off when they started writing about their cousins. In years of doing this assignment, no one wrote about a historical character, Jesus, Abraham, Senator Goldwater. No one picked a Medal of Honor winner or Mother Theresa.

Frankly, I have to stop and think about that question. Who would I pick? What inspires me to write this column every week or two, keep writing books, keep walking my dogs, keep living alone after my wife died. What is it that keeps me-us, going?

     It was an answer.

I was able to codify an answer. It was an answer I had known for decades. You know it too if you’re reading this. As I get older, I realize my relationships have shrunk to a handful of people, with some fingers missing. I have always been a reserved, kinda quiet, wanting to be in my jammies by seven, even in high school. Friends would come over to drag me out of the house on Friday nights to go do something. Friday night! What high school kid is in his jammies at seven on a Friday night?!

I was cozy, don’t judge me.

In the last few years, the conversations between me and God have grown. They have been there for as long as I have images of my past. But lately, a term I am using pretty loosely, those conversations have become extremely common-and very vocal. https://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?quicksearch=inspiration&version=ESV

     When I went back….

When I went back to teaching, probably not thinking I was quite done when I retired from it, Dad and I had some incredible conversations while driving to work, driving with one hand and holding my coffee in the other. I would speak. He would listen. He always listened. Dad didn’t have any long running ethereal speeches or lectures. By Him not talking, other than with questions, he was letting me find the answer myself. His Son did that. He taught in parables and question format-‘so, you think you should do that? What do you think that would do? Do you want to go-why? Do you think you have enough cheese in that omelette?’

     The List….

Some of the best conversations in my life happen in that truck. I am sure there have been many others over the decades-many. Within the last couple of months, they ramped up again, coming sometimes in the middle of the night. “Okay Dad, I guess we are going to have this discussion-now.” It wouldn’t last long and usually ended when The List started to scroll by of things I need to do, failed to do, all created by that POS, whose sole purpose is to ruin my life-Evil. I ask Dad if we are done, and if this could be part of His Plan, can He please take that bastard out of my head for the night so I can go to sleep?

Ten minutes later I am asleep.

If you don’t believe in God, then your inspiration comes from how fast, how hard, how long, you can peddle your life on that bike. Eventually, you would get extremely tired, and eventually quit. Worn out from a life which seems to have no end of pain, weakness, and performance. A life where, if you are lucky, you get a few hours’ of sleep, a day or so of reprieve, until you have to get back to it.

    …if you dare….

But if you dare to believe in the story, if you are able to have just an eyedropper of faith it could be true, you too will have those conversations late at night or on your way to work in the morning, and it will stun you! The awareness of it will cause you to smile and maybe whisper, it is true. 

Enjoy the ride.

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