A View Through the Lens - A Life Lesson

It's been a while since I have written a View thru the Lens article...with the Christmas season upon us, I'd like to share a few thoughts.

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Nature provides us with a connection to a lost time of innocence...a place to remember...to rediscover youthful dreams...to simply ponder...and when the best of what creation offers presents itself to us, it is not so much the person today who is rewarded...it is that child who never stopped believing in the dreams he dared to dream.

Over the years too many things tended to prevent the adventures dreamed from my youthful imagination an avenue into reality. Over time, other priorities took root and eventually choked off the life giving source of adventurous-desire that ultimately could only sustain them for so long.  The more deeply rooted life priorities became, the more those youthful dreams faded into vague memories of times past.

I suppose that is why I stubbornly cling to memories of adventures that actually did become a reality, for they in some small way, helped to satisfy the depth of the dreams of my youth.  Even then in those early days, I somehow knew most would never come true, but dreamed anyway.  It is not unlike the tired old axiom:  It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.  If it is indeed better to have dreamed and lost those dreams than to never have dreamed at all...then I am truly a blessed individual.

Over time we all are presented with windows of opportunity.  Unfortunately, by the time we are mature enough to recognize the significance of those opened windows, they have long since closed.  It most certainly seems true that...Youth is wasted on the young.

We live in a marvelous technological age, but I can not help but wonder at what cost.  Too many kids spend too many hours sitting in front of a screen playing some kind of virtual game or staring at a hand held electronic contraption, and never take time to explore that big beautiful world out there that is full of reality. I find myself too often doing similar things.

Maybe it is because I have grown older that I have started to reflect more on the lost opportunities I allowed to fade away...never to be explored...whose windows of opportunity closed long ago, and I have realized that there was probably a reason for the way things turned out, and that is encouraging.

I have discovered just how easy it is to become complacent or maybe even aggravated at the world situation where too many people are caught up in pushing ideology and not enough are seeking out truth.  It would be nice if just for once every nation could work together for the betterment of those around them instead of seeking out only what they can get out of a situation.

Wishful thinking?  Probably...in the present world situation anyway, but I prefer to think more Optimistically...instead of what might have been...I think about what could be. Whether you believe in the True Meaning of Christmas or not, the truth of the baby Jesus and the Christmas story and what it meant to the world is the only thing that offers a real solution to that question...not so much about what could be...but what will be someday.